Leaving the Left: The Young Turks' Ana Kasparian Explains Her Shift From Radical Leftist to Politically Unaligned

And why others are taking the same route.

I’ve been working on a Substack that includes people in the public sphere who have left the Left within the last couple of years. For now, I will highlight one of those people: The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian. Recently, she appeared on Jillian Michaels’ “Keeping It Real” podcast and shared with her the startling epiphanies that was visited upon her (derived from two notable, traumatic experiences), that have slowly made her realize that perhaps “her side” was not quite her side anymore.

While she is still on The Young Turks, a left-wing, progressive political commentary show that can be viewed on its on website and also on YouTube, and despite viewers calling on her co-producer and co-host, creator Cenk Uygur to fire her, she recently started a Substack called Unaligned, where she declares her independence from any political party at the moment.

A sentence from her inaugural article summed up her head space perfectly: “Today I’m less certain and more curious than I was four years ago. I’ve made humiliating mistakes while covering political news because I was previously unwilling to consider or understand the perspective of Americans who vote differently from me.” (Full article below:

Ana Kasparian

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Independent and Unaligned

The process she has embraced which helped her to arrive at this point in her thinking was “diversifying her media diet”—something that I often challenge people with whom I am debating, to do. There is no way anyone is getting all the information needed to tackle an issue, particularly a controversial one, if their consumption habits exist on only one side of the political spectrum. Each side has its inherent biases to make a point in order to appease their audience and/or to denigrate or uplift the subject at hand. It is IMPERATIVE to see what all sides have to say, particularly during these times where “journalistic integrity” has sadly become oxymoronic.

Below, YouTube clip of Ana Kasparian explaining to Jillian Michaels her process as to how she approaches news topics now. Transcript excerpts are below the video; emphasis mine. (Video is 1:43)

Ana: “And the important thing is to learn from those mistakes. And by the way, I mean, I made so many of those mistakes during the pandemic era. I got so many stories wrong, and I felt awful about it, which is why my whole process now is so different.”

Jillian: “Tell me about your process.”

Ana: “I, first of all, have really diversified my sources and my media diet. I would only trust legacy media and legacy media that was very obviously left-wing. And so I had shut myself off from any reporting from more conservative sources.

When you do that, what happens is there are certain elements or details to a story that you're just gonna miss. I hadn't realized that while the Washington Post, New York Times, they're not necessarily lying in their reporting, but what I noticed was happening is they were omitting certain details to a story that gives you a full picture. And so now, with a more diversified media diet, certain things that aren't being reported by the New York Times is being reported by National Review. [And vice versa.] Right, so, if I read both sources, I get a more wholistic look at this issue or the story…

FULL INTERVIEW on APPLE PODCASTS AND YOUTUBE

From Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels: Abandoning Tribalism with The Young Turks’ own Ana Kasparian!, Oct 7, 2024.

(Podcast is 1:51:00)

(Video is 1:50:00)

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ALLSIDES MEDIA BIAS CHART

The chart below has been shared with my readers several times before, as I believe it is imperative to show how important it is not to consume information only from one side of the chart—if you want to be a well-informed citizen, like Kasparian so deftly explains. To get a more wholistic look at issues and stories, it behooves us all to emerge from our echo chamber in order to engage in more nuanced discussions with others. Some of the most interesting discussions that I partake in are with people who are on the Left, but they DO consume at least a little information on the Right, enough for us to meet on some common ground, shallow though it may be.

My most unproductive interactions are with people who stick with news coming only from the left two columns, as they have ZERO frame of reference when I bring up topics that the Right might cover. For example, the number of children aged 12-18 who have undergone gender surgery has skyrocketed over the last few years. Gender surgery encompasses genital reconstruction surgery, including orchiectomy (removal of testicles) and hysterectomy (removal of uterus); top and bottom surgeries, such as mastectomy (removal of breasts) and phalloplasty (construction of a penis).

One person with whom I spoke about this believed that it was a non-issue, because she hadn’t heard anything about it. In reality, THOUSANDS of 12-18 year olds have gone “under the knife” in recent years¹—but primarily only one side of the political aisle has covered it in-depth, including the plight of detransitioners. It is an inconvenient truth for the other. (And vice versa, depending on the issue.)

For my part, I relish reading and hearing both sides, particularly intellectual debates, as long as they are not vitriolic.

What are your reading/viewing habits?

https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

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GROUND NEWS: Find out who is covering what.

Ground News is a news aggregator service that allows users to compare media coverage from across the political spectrum. It is a resource that I have found to be extremely enlightening and engaging, as it CLEARLY shows just how biased our news outlets are in deciding what to cover or not cover, while showing the specific percentage of coverage by the left, right, and center on a particular news story.

See the simple bar graph below each headline to observe the amount of coverage each story receives by the left, right, and center.

My favorite section of Ground News is called “Blindspot”. The Blindspot feed highlights news topics that are disproportionately being reported by publications from only one side of the political spectrum—and loosely “calls out” the other side for not covering them.

Ground News Front Page

About Ground News

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And let’s not forget one of my favorite quotes by Malcom X, which I have posted several times before. It is so incredibly accurate—and, unfortunately, so incredibly dispiriting.

FoxyHeterodoxy (Debra C) is a former high school teacher and counselor presently taking time to explore next steps until an epiphany occurs. With this Substack, she is committed to curating and correcting the misinformation pablum spouted by corporate media on topics such as COVID, the border crisis, "safe & secure" elections, vaccines, transgenderism, climate "crisis", Trump, homelessness, government caring about us, et al, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. She is a wife, mother of three grown children, and dog mom to Cocoa, 14. You can find her on X, Rumble, Instagram and Gettr—though she needs to post more on the latter two.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/over-5700-children-5-year-period-had-gender-surgeries-most-from-5-liberal-states-watchdog

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