Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
Interview with The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur
Interview
July 30, 2024
post photo preview

Interview: Cenk Uygur

AD_4nXfF79oAgdBraBuUxxv8ltfkd1egylcxSeok6J_jxKE4lkxL_MbtIrSRMtvwggI79Eu21IbcPgkOLnvTgIK6c1f_uHNHClvWLLOf8_-OdvUw2Im8jw49Sxroby43F_QQA-VosUOxEepa6rigKAely66nRCrIQ4G-VkUa40V20g?key=RYmctqW0yAzME3e7eAn-bg

My next guest – this one is going to be exciting for me – I'm excited to welcome, Cenk Uygur. He is the founder of the Young Turks. I formerly worked for the Young Turks in a previous life. I always respected and appreciated the autonomy that I was given within the Young Turks to do my own thing, even when it rustled some feathers and maybe everyone didn't always agree, so, Cenk has my admiration for that. And Cenk actually technically ran for president for the Democratic primary nomination in 2024. Largely, he says, because he was so insistent that Joe Biden was going to be a disaster electorally. So, I want to check in with Cenk and see what he makes of the current DNC machinations to corner Kamala in this bizarre, private, process and see if that, satisfies the grievances that he articulated. 

 

M. Tracey: So, Cenk, welcome to System Update with Glenn Greenwald although I'm not Glenn Greenwald, I'm Michael Tracey, and I am filling in for the time being. So how are you? 

 

Cenk Uygur: I'm good. And I'm familiar with both of your work, so I'm pretty sure I know. Yeah. I'm good. Thanks for having me on. 

 

M. Tracey: As we said, you ran for president. Obviously, you never maintained that you stood a particularly good chance of winning the nomination and that wasn't really the point. The point was you wanted to force the issue and get Democrats to realize that if they pressed ahead with Joe Biden, they were going to be in for a nightmare, that Donald Trump could romp, that Joe Biden didn't have the capacity to run a vigorous campaign. 

AD_4nXdteBHJZN0uIe7eGIpcAOzOxNALeHZzYLdJvDEuAMkmfdd2IdCrDZnG8IzAV_P_mIhkWKN3WoQ1Tb-zyrrxhCoI56dw-U3ZGpRLa1ry9LH0z2YHQnHPLFup85dErK2GYOngtfztD1FHjdXwAgBcP-ue3x0yvuDMVZqoUC-b3Q?key=RYmctqW0yAzME3e7eAn-bg

Your name was on one of these ballots, along with Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson and, of course, Joe Biden, but conspicuously missing from that list of candidates was Kamala Harris. So, one of the points that I've been making is that Kamala Harris is being ushered to the nomination through a process that has remarkably small Democratic input from voters. She hasn't had to win a single vote, a single primary. She got a grand total of zero delegates in 2020 and zero in 2024, at least, if you go by state and territory primary election outcomes. So, I thought we were going to get this open convention process where they could have a mini primary or something truncated to actually gauge the will of the electorate. And in fact, Joe Biden was denouncing these insider maneuvers against him just in the past couple of weeks, he said that they would thwart the will of the primary voters. We're now even told that the DNC is going to have a virtual nomination, still a virtual roll call before the convention, basically negating the whole purpose of the convention, which they were going to do with Biden, now they're going to keep doing with Kamala so that nobody can even contest it, apparently, on the floor or the whole purpose of a convention has now been overturned. So, what do you make of it? I mean, does this satisfy your criticisms of how the primary process was conducted now that Kamala is just having the red carpet rolled out for her? 

 

Cenk Uygur: Well, let's start with a fun fact. I received more votes for president than Kamala Harris. 

 

M. Tracey: That’s a very fun fact. 

 

Cenk Uygur: Yeah. And not only am I just an online talk show host, but I'm a naturalized citizen. So, that's why I was only on seven ballots. That's a civil rights issue somebody should get back to someday. But that was, of course, not the primary reason that I ran. I ran, as I stated from the beginning, in almost every interview that I did, it was an act of desperation because I felt like we were all on board the Titanic and we all saw the iceberg. Or at least a lot of us saw the iceberg, apparently, and I was actually surprised later in the process to find out that blue MAGA existed and that they didn't see the iceberg at all until the debate. But I saw it. I know a bunch of people saw it, and I thought, well, it doesn't look like anybody's going to do anything about it. So, I'm just going to lunge into the captain's quarters and try to move the wheel, because otherwise we're toast and Donald Trump is going to win and God knows what happens to democracy, etc., etc.. But you know what? All the folks who decided to try to make a difference, whether it was like any strange bedfellows – I don't know anyone who criticizes Nancy Pelosi more than I do and so me and Nancy Pelosi on the same side, that is weird – and Ezra Klein and James Carville and David Axelrod and by the way, let's also note, Axelrod, top adviser to Barack Obama, James Carville, top adviser to the Clintons and no one got the memo. I'm like, it's the Obamas and the Clintons telling you there’s something wrong with Joe Biden, and you knuckleheads aren't getting it right. So, there are old fights, Michael, between progressives versus the establishment. And in this particular election, I sense I'm one of the few Democrats who actually think that democracy is on the line. It led to completely different coalitions, people who were perfectly happy to lose to Donald Trump and people who really, really didn't want to lose to Donald Trump. So, me, Carville, etc. were the ones who didn't want to lose to Donald Trump. Blue MAGA was like, who cares, as long as we obey Democratic leadership. That's what “Morning Joe” taught me, Oh, I had to bow my head, the top, value of the Democratic Party is obedience, right? I'm like, man, you guys have lost a thread. You completely forgot what the Democratic Party was supposed to be about. 

So, am I satisfied with the result? Well, I'm enormously satisfied that Joe Biden is out of the race, because we went from about a 0% chance of winning to about a 50% chance of winning. So hard to not be satisfied with that. What about the process of democracy? Was that fulfilled here? Of course, not, but, look, democracy has a number of issues in current day American politics and then I'm going to get to “Yes, but that's the best we can do.” Right? So, number one, come on, the donors control everything. We don't have a real democracy anyway, right? And I talked about this in my book, “Justice is Coming”. You know, a person in Northwestern did a 20-year study, 1800 policy issues. The bottom 90% of Americans have zero effect on public policy. Absolutely zero. Okay? The top 10% don't control everything, but when they want something, they get it 45% of the time. So, already is hilarious.

Reid Hoffman, today, gave $7 million to Kamala Harris and demanded that Lina Khan be fired. And guess what? She'll be fired. That's AIPAC. And when, you know, bought all of Congress, Netanyahu, notorious war criminal, one of the most evil men of my lifetime, getting standing ovation after standing ovation. So what? Democracy? 

Secondly, when you get into the primaries, the Democratic primaries are a joke and have been for a long time. Under the bullshit rubric of unity, notice they never have unity around progressives. There's never any unity other than corporate democratic leadership. So, and this was a sham primary, again, I know, because I was in it and, in Florida, they just canceled the election. North Carolina, Tennessee, they didn't just take me off. A lot of states took me off because of the naturalized citizen issue. That's a totally different thing. But they took Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson off of the balance in North Carolina and Tennessee. So, a joke of a primary, and I kept saying the whole time and mainstream media just didn't pay any attention because running against Joe Biden was a violation of etiquette. And so, I was a bad guy. I was a radical for wanting democracy. And I would say, if you're going to try to defend democracy in a general election, wouldn't it be nice if you had won in the primaries and people in mainstream media were like, how dare you bow your head to Joe Biden? He's the most young, dynamic guy that anybody's ever seen. 

But, Michael, at this point, that ship has sailed. So, then the next layer of it is, okay, I call for an open convention, as Ezra Klein did and others did. And that's obviously the last vestige we have of democracy at this point. And, at this point, Kamala Harris has gotten the majority of the pledged delegates. No one's even running against her. I mean, this Democratic Party, it's just incredibly frustrating. So, she's going to be the nominee. Let us at least go to the convention. No, no, they're lying about how Ohio this and we can't get on the ballots that. So, they're going to do a virtual roll call on August 7 and snuff out any delegates changing their mind before the convention because the DNC is authoritarian by nature, so they just can't help themselves. But with a straight face, they'll say they're wanting to protect democracy and these same guys who wanted to keep their job because Biden hired them were willing to totally risk democracy and have given Donald Trump about a 99% chance of winning. 

 

M. Tracey: So Cenk this was a letter that Joe Biden delivered to congressional Democrats on July 8. This is the same day that he had his infamous Defiance Morning Joe column. Here's what he wrote in that letter. And maybe I'm on my usual because I actually read the letter and I remember it. It was only a couple of weeks ago. I know everything. We just throw down the memory hole at warp speed nowadays.

AD_4nXcV274TzX4CUmAEes6Z8TdsC5J7_FepRfjbn5Hibrd3ewyCjpoEeeBK3BF7gCgB9TxtHPiWsChwzoZhOmSquOW7feBnIW98L3BAMmBLpUiGJM9LP2e3RxktRgorgag42kfUkiGwn6xHzBQo2BSnxv8RyzwHKjG_Xz6bYro4Qg?key=RYmctqW0yAzME3e7eAn-bg

AD_4nXe_o76QC9N41hmkRxAlnhOl1LwuB88MPWDEwZu8gWNx-sRIWIRFOJn20RZjSYsI2sLoPVm9Q2mEVCy_X5ve6DNXdzSWHwuNthvKMYocZPZBf3UGkJa9fJnVKPh_xyb7IgZ7mTYmFNEANsvqp7WVr5dW-xYD9K1xlisx3MQUjg?key=RYmctqW0yAzME3e7eAn-bg

But he says, “It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned, the voters – and the voters alone – decide the nominee of the Democratic Party.” And this is the kicker: “How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that. I will not do that.” 

So how are the Democrats, with a straight face going to start screaming, as they have incessantly forever. You apparently agree on the substance of this point; I might quibble a little bit, I think a lot of the rhetoric around democracy and Trump overturning it tends to be a bit histrionic and overblown, but that's like more of a substantive conflict we may have. But in terms of the consistency of the Democrats own messaging, Joe Biden himself is the one who said that it would be undermined if they allowed this insider putsch to go forward. So, are we just going to memory hold this letter? Is Joe Biden really now going to be so cast by the wayside that everybody supposed to forget? Ezra Klein, not Matthew Iglesias, Thomas Friedman, The Washington Post, Vox, name your Democratic aligned pundit or media outlet, are they all going to forget that? You know, two and a half weeks ago, Joe Biden said that if you go through with this ouster of me, it means that our own party, the Democratic Party, is thwarting democracy. I mean, I feel crazy. 

 

Cenk Uygur: Yeah. Look, Joe Biden wrote that same letter for the same reason that he said, You know what? I demand to have a primary in Florida. I can't believe they canceled that election. And I demand that all everybody be put back on the ballot in North Carolina and Tennessee during the primaries. And I demand that we do debates during the primaries so the candidates can be tested and that the voters get what they want – Oh, right. You didn't do any of that? No. He's monumentally full of crap. He loved that. The primary was totally authoritarian, totally rigged, to not only make sure that he was a candidate, but that he was protected and hidden in a basement and that he wouldn't have to actually run against any of us. I mean, look, they were hiding him from me, Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. They knew he was going to lose! If you can't beat us in an open debate or in an open and fair contest, of course you're going to get your ass handed to you even by a moron like Donald Trump. So, that letter is garbage. It's trash. He never meant a word of it. So, I don't really care about that letter just because I already know that Joe Biden's a hypocrite. But look, that goes to the point that I'm making. So, I'm one of the few people who actually believe it, because I think Donald Trump had fake electors and, and that's a real coup attempt against democracy. And he's a spoiled little brat, and he wanted to take his toy and go home when he lost. And so, he's a super dangerous guy to have in charge and just never believed in democracy. Praises dictators at every check. So, but I have proven that I'm not a hypocrite on that, that I actually believe in democracy all the way through the process. And I actually believe that he's a danger to democracy. That's why I did the desperate thing that I did, which helped a little bit in setting the party in the right direction. But everyone else who pretended this is the most important election of our lifetime and democracy was on the line. They're like, yeah, we don't mind losing as long as we're obeying Joe Biden. Those guys apparently never meant…

 

M. Tracey: So, let's delve into this notion that Donald Trump represents some profound threat to democracy. This couldn't be more standard rhetoric among Democratic partisans. And you say you believe it. I believe you that you were sincere in your contention on that and I will also acknowledge that you're consistent in matching your actions with your words, because you took the rather drastic steps you've been running yourself to try to make clear that you thought the threat was so severe that it compelled you to throw your own hat in the ring. So, I fully acknowledge that. But I don't know. Should we step back for a moment? Does Donald Trump throwing a hissy fit after the 2020 election and trying to come up with cockamamie theories as to how Mike Pence could potentially take a different set of electors than the one sent by the states, and that was denied by Pence, and then he, you know, he whips up a mob of yahoos who really had no ability or even seeming intention to overthrow the United States government, I mean, temporarily delaying a legislative proceeding on January 6, 2021 – never even had the ability or the possibility of in any way implementing a coup in the United States government. That's outlandish rhetoric to underscore the preexisting grievances that people have about Donald Trump. So, I agree – and people on the right get mad at me all the time because I don't buy into the election fraud stuff that I don't feel has ever been remotely empirically proven – but Donald Trump throwing a tantrum and then leaving power? And now running again. I mean, so let me ask you this. What would Trump do if he were to win this time that would actually sabotage democracy? Would he not obey the Constitution and leave power after a second term? Would he defy the 22nd amendment? I think that's the correct amendment. Like what tangibly would he do that would flush democracy down the toilet? That's what I'm not clear on, the specifics of what people are alleging when they make this argument. 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
2
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
SPECIAL AFTERSHOW - SYSTEM UPDATE 500
01:07:46
Answering Your Questions About Tariffs

Many of you have been asking about the impact of Trump's tariffs, and Glenn addressed how we are covering the issue during our mail bag segment yesterday. As always, we are grateful for your thought-provoking questions! Thank you, and keep the questions coming!

00:11:10
In Case You Missed It: Glenn Breaks Down Trump's DOJ Speech on Fox News
00:04:52
Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

For years, U.S. officials and their media allies accused Russia, China and Iran of tyranny for demanding censorship as a condition for Big Tech access. Now, the U.S. is doing the same to TikTok. Listen below.

Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

Are you still posting transcripts?

What's with the American flag replacing the green on the Rumble logo? I tweeted at Rumble and Pavlovski, but they probably will pay no attention to me, and might pay attention to you. No one in the chat tonight wanted the change, FWIW. Also, Michael Tracey has a good post about deification of Charlie Kirk, which I assume is what prompted this unwelcome change.

Hi Glenn

I recently heard you say that Kyle Rittenhouse was rightly acquitted. Rittenhouse is from IL so he had to pass the same gun safety course as I did to get a gun permit. The training includes guidance, based on case law, that places the onus for safety on the gun owner. My training said that if you bring a firearm to a place where you expect violent conflict or the law presumes you are out looking for trouble, not defending yourself. Don’t take a weapon out unless you’re prepared to fire it. Don’t point a weapon at anything (or person) unless you’re prepared to destroy it.

Rittenhouse brought a rifle to a riot, appointed himself guardian of someone else’s property, and threatened a crowd with deadly force by brandishing his gun. Each of these acts was escalatory, which increases his culpability for the acts that followed.

Rittenhouse followed a similar fact pattern as the killers of Ahmad Aubry a few months earlier, except Aubry didn’t have his own weapon.

Why do you ...

post photo preview
Trump and Rubio Apply Panama Regime Change Playbook to Venezuela; Michael Tracey is Kicked-Out of Epstein Press Conference
System Update #508

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

 

 The Trump administration proudly announced yesterday that it blew up a small speedboat out of the water near Venezuela. It claimed that – without presenting even a shred of evidence – that the boat carried 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and that the boat was filled with drugs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio – whose lifelong dream has been engineering coups and regime changes in Latin American countries like Venezuela and Cuba – claimed at first that the boat was headed toward the nearby island nation of Trinidad. But after President Trump claimed that the boat was actually headed to the United States, where it intended to drop all sorts of drugs into the country, Secretary of State Rubio changed his story to align with Trump's and claimed that the boat was, in fact, headed to the United States. 

There are numerous vital issues and questions here. First, have Trump supporters not learned the lesson yet that when the U.S. Government makes assertions and claims to justify its violence, that evidence ought to be required before simply assuming that political leaders are telling the truth. Second, what is the basis, the legal or Constitutional basis, that permits Donald Trump to simply order boats in international waters to be bombed with U.S. helicopters or drones instead of, for example, interdicting the boat, if you believe there are drugs on it, to actually prove that the people are guilty before just evaporating them off the planet? And then third, and perhaps most important: is all of this – as it seems – merely a prelude to yet another U.S. regime change war, this time, one aimed at the government of oil-rich Venezuela? We'll examine all of these events and implications, including the very glaring parallels between what is being done now to what the Bush 41 administration did in 1989 when invading Panama in order to oppose its one-time ally, President Manuel Noriega, based on exactly the same claims the Trump administration is now making about Venezuela. For a political movement that claims to hate Bush/neocon foreign policy, many Trump supporters and Trump officials sure do find ways to support the wars that constitute the essence of this ideology they claim to hate. 

Then, the independent journalist and friend of the show, Michael Tracey, was physically removed from a press conference in Washington D.C. yesterday, one to which he was invited, that was convened by the so-called survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and their lawyer. Michael's apparent crime was that he did what a journalist should be doing. He asked a question that undercut the narrative of the press event and documented the lies of one of the key Epstein accusers, lies that the Epstein accuser herself admits to having told. All of this is part of Michael's now months-long journalistic crusade to debunk large parts of the Epstein melodrama – efforts that include claims he's made, with which I have sometimes disagreed, but it's undeniable that the work he's doing is journalistically valuable in every instance: we always need questioning and critical scrutiny of mob justice or emoting-driven consensus to ask whether there's really evidence to support all of the claims. And that's what Michael has been doing, and he's basically been standing alone while doing it, and he'll be here to discuss yesterday’s expulsion from this press conference as well as the broader implications of the work he's been trying to do. 

 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
post photo preview
Minnesota Shooting Exploited to Impose AI Mass Surveillance; Taylor Lorenz on Dark Money Group Paying Dem Influencers, and the Online Safety Act
System Update #507

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

 

The ramifications of yesterday's Minneapolis school shooting – and the exploitations of it – continue to grow. On last night's program, we reviewed the transparently opportunistic efforts by people across the political spectrum to immediately proclaim that they knew exactly what caused this murderer to shoot people. As it turned out, the murderer was motivated by whatever party or ideology, religion, or social belief that they hate most. Always a huge coincidence and a great gift for those who claim that. 

There's an even more common and actually far more sinister manner of exploiting such shootings: namely, by immediately playing on people's anger and fear to tell them that they must submit to greater and greater forms of mass surveillance and other authoritarian powers to avoid such events in the future. As they did after the 9/11 attack, which ushered in the full-scale online surveillance system under which we all live, Fox News is back to push a comprehensive Israel-developed AI mass surveillance program in the name of stopping violent events in the future. We'll tell you all about it. 

 Then, we have a very special surprise guest for tonight. She is Taylor Lorenz, who reported for years for The New York Times and The Washington Post on internet culture, trends in online discourse, and social media platforms. She's here in part to talk about her new story that appeared in WIRED Magazine today that details a dark money program that secretly shovels money to pro-Democratic Party podcasters and content creators, including ones with large audiences, and yet they are prohibited from disclosing even to their viewership that they're being paid in this way. We'll talk about this program and its implications. And while she's here, we'll also discuss her reporting on, and warnings about new online censorship schemes that masquerade as child protection laws, namely, by requiring users to submit proof of their identity to access various sites, all in the name of protecting children, but in the process destroying the key value of online anonymity. We'll talk to her about several other related issues as well. 


 

There've been a lot of revelations over the last 25 years, since the 9/11 attack, of all sorts of secretive programs that were implemented in the dark that many people I think correctly view as un-American in the sense that they run a foul and constitute a direct assault on the rights, protections and guarantees that we all think define what it means to be an American. And a lot of that happened. In fact, much of it, one could say most of it, happened because of the fears and emotions that were generated quite predictably by the 9/11 attack in 2001 and also the anthrax attack, which followed along just about a month later, six weeks later. We've done an entire show on it because of its importance in escalating the fear level in the United States in the wake of 9/11, even though it's extremely mysterious – the whole thing, how it happened, how it was resolved. But the point is that the fear levels increased, the anger increased, the sadness over the victims increased and into that breach, into that highly emotional state, stepped both the government and their partners in the media, which essentially included all major media outlets at the time, to tell people they essentially have to give up their rights if they want to be safe from future terrorist attacks. 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
post photo preview
Glenn Takes Your Questions on the Minneapolis School Shooting, MTG & Thomas Massie VS AIPAC, and More
System Update #506

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

 

We are going to devote the show tonight to more questions that have come from our Locals members over the week. It continues to be some really interesting ones, raising all sorts of topics. 

We do have a question that we want to begin with that deals with what I think is the at least most discussed and talked about story of the day, if not the most important one, which is the school shooting that took place in a Catholic church in Minneapolis earlier today when a former student who attended that school went to the church, opened fire and shot 19 people, two of whom, young students between eight and ten, were killed. The other 17 were wounded, and amazingly, it’s expected that all of them are to survive. The carnage could have been much worse; the tragedy is manifest, however, and there is a lot of, as always, political commentary surrounding the mass shooting attempts to identify the ideology of the shooter in a way that is designed to promote a lot of people's political agenda. So, let's get to the first question.

 It is from @ZellFive, who's a member of our Locals community. He offers this question, but also a viewpoint that I think really ought to be considered by a lot more people. They write:

 

So, I'm really glad that this is one of the questions that we got today because this is a point I've been arguing for so long. So, let me just try to give you as many facts as I possibly can, facts that seem to be confirmed by law rather than just circulating on the internet. 

So, the suspected killer is somebody named Robin Westman, who is 23 years old. After they shot 19 people inside this church, killing two young children, they then committed suicide with a weapon. The person's birth name is Robert Westman, and around 16 or 17 years old, he decided that he identified as a woman, went to court, changed the legal name from Robert to Robin, and began identifying as a trans woman, so that obviously is going to provoke a lot of commentary, and there's been a lot of commentary provoked around that. We will definitely get to that. 

 

The suspected killer also left a very lengthy manifesto, a written manifesto which they filmed and uploaded on a video to YouTube, along with showing a huge arsenal of guns, including rifles and pistols and some automatic weapons. I believe various automatic rifles as well. I don't think they used any of those weapons at school. I believe they just used a rifle and a pistol, if I'm not mistaken. But we'll see about that. 

It was essentially a manifesto both in written terms, but then they also wrote various slogans on each of these weapons and various parts of the weapons. And we're going to go over a lot of what they put there because there's an obvious and instantaneous attempt, as there always is, to instantly exploit any of these shootings before the corpses are even removed from the ground. And I mean that literally. The effort already begins to inject partisan agenda, partisan ideology, ideological agendas to immediately try to depict the shooter as being representative of whatever faction the person offering this theory most hates or to claim that they're motivated by or an adherent of whatever ideology the person offering the theory most hates. And it happens in every single case. 

Oftentimes, there's an immediate attempt to squeeze some unrelated or perhaps even related agenda in and out of it instantly. Liberals almost always insist that whenever there's a mass shooting, it proves the need for a greater gun control without bothering to demonstrate whether the gun control they favor would have actually stopped the person from acquiring these weapons in the first place, whether they were legally acquired, whether they could have been legally acquired, even with gun control measures, it doesn't matter, instantaneously exploiting the emotions surrounding a shooting like this to try to increase support for gun control. Whereas people on the right often do the opposite. 

On the right, they typically will argue that more guns would have enabled somebody to neutralize the shooter more rapidly, that perhaps churches and schools need greater security. We need more police. So, there's that kind of an almost automatic and reflexive exploitation again, almost before anything is known, but there is an even more pernicious attempt to instantly declare that everyone knows the motives of the shooter, that they know the political outlook and perspective of the shooter. They know their partisan ideology and their ideological beliefs in an attempt to demonize whatever group a person hates most. 

This is unbelievably ignorant, deceitful and ill-advised for so many reasons. The first of which is that every single political action, every single ideological movement, produces evil mass shooters. For every far-leftist mass shooter that you want to show or white supremacist mass shooters that you want to show, you can show people who have murdered in defense of all kinds of causes. And so even if you can pinpoint the ideology of the shooter on the same day the shooting happened, I mean, you can develop a clear, reliable, concise and specific understanding of the shooter that you never even heard of until four hours ago, but you're so insightful, your investigative skills are so profound, that you're able to discern exactly what the motive of this person was in doing something so intrinsically insane and evil as shooting up a church filled with young school children. 

The idea that anyone can do that is preposterous on its face. I mean, the police always say, because they're actual investigators, actual law enforcement officers who want to collect evidence that stands up for public scrutiny and also in court, “We don't know yet what the motive is; we're collecting clues.” But almost nobody on Twitter or social media or in the commentariat is willing to say that. Everybody insists immediately, no, the killer was motivated by the other party, the opposite party of the one I'm a member of, or this ideology that's not mine, or in this religion that is the one I like the most to demonize. It's just so transparent and so blatant what is being done here. And yet it's so prevalent. 

I mean, you could go on to social media and principally the social media platform where the most journalists and political pundits, influencers and the like congregate, which is X, and I could show you probably 40 different theories offered definitively with an authoritative voice. Not like, hey, this might be possibly the case, but saying clearly, we know that the killer was motivated by this particular ideology, this particular set of beliefs. And I'm not talking about random X users, I'm talking about people with significant platforms, people who are well-known. 

I could probably show you 40 different theories like that, where every person is purporting to know definitively exactly what the motive of the shooter was and by huge coincidence they all have latched on to whatever ideology or faction or motive most serves their own political worldview to demonize the people with whom they most disagree, or whatever ideology or group of people they most hate. That's always what is done. And I guess in some cases, if a shooter leaves a particularly clear and coherent manifesto, and we have had those sometimes, we have had Anders Breivik in Norway, who made it very clear that his motive was hatred for Muslim immigrants who shot up a summer camp in Norway. We had the Christchurch, New Zealand killer who attacked two mosques and mass murdered dozens of Muslims at a mosque and made clear he was doing so because it was viewed that Islam is a danger. We had the mass shooter in a Buffalo supermarket, who made manifest their white supremacist views. We've had mass shooters who are motivated by hatred of Christianity, as happened in the Nashville shooter attack on a Christian school there, I mean, I could go on and on. 

As I said, every single political faction produces mass shooters, mass killers, evil, crazy people who use violence indiscriminately against innocents in advance of their beliefs. But most of the time, and you might even be able to say all of the times – I mean, maybe I don't like the phrase all of the times because you can conceive of exceptions, but close to all the time, most of the time, people who go and just randomly shoot at innocent people whom they don't know are above all else driven by mental illness and spiritual decay, not by political ideology or adherence to a political cause. That often is the pretext for what they're doing; that may be how they convince themselves that what they are doing is justified. But far more often than not, the principle overriding factor is the fact that the person is just mentally ill or spiritually broken, by which I mean just a completely nihilistic person who has given up on life and wants to just inflict suffering on other people because of the suffering that they feel or their suffering from delusions. 

And this isn't something I invented today. This is something I've long been saying. And I just want to make one more point, which is, even though there are sometimes manifestos that are extremely clear and say, “I am murdering people in a supermarket that is African-American because I hate Black people and I don't think they belong in the United States,” or “I believe that white people are the sole proper citizens of the United States and I want to murder and kill inspired by those other mass murderers” that I mentioned, even then, it may not be the case that the person's representation of what they're is the actual motive because it could be driven by a whole variety of other factors, including mental illness, or all kinds of other issues to be able to conclude in six hours, even with a crystal-clear manifesto that the person did it for reasons that you're ready to definitively assert are the reasons is so irresponsible. It's just so intellectually bankrupt. 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals