More harm than good for our movement?

Operation Hope
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are there people we don’t want associated with our populist movement? I think we should be as inclusive as possible as far as bringing in people from all sides of the political spectrum. that being said I don’t think we should bring in those that would hurt the movement because of their past actions. i think the bar for this should be really high but people that have committed terrible crimes or put our democracy in danger seem like they should be avoided.

for instance i was surprised to hear matt gaetz who has trafficked minors suggested as someone we should go after. politically he seems like a decent choice but the harm having someone like that associated with us seems far too great. if he hadn’t committed the crimes i would say bring him in but we need to look at the entirety of the harm he would cause to getting others to sign on.

anyone have thoughts on whether we should be avoiding endorsements or on bringing matt gaetz onboard specifically? if we should be avoiding endorsements who from?

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Yeah, I think the sex trafficking of minors is seriously over the line. Any form of rape, trafficking, or abuse of women or girls ought to stand in the face of everything we stand for, and that should be an easy bar to fit under. Overt racism, misogyny, and bigotry should be a deal breaker as well. Thank you for bringing this up, @NickMudar, as this is a vital conversation. I was thinking (hoping) the Matt Gaetz idea was a joke.

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thank you! yes hopefully matt gaetz was a joke but sometimes when cenk talks to people for the show he ends up seeing them in a kinder light than maybe is deserved. RFK and matt Gaetz are two examples of this. so i think we should make it clear that we think matt gaetz would be detrimental to the movement. RFK as well come to think of it. that is if others feel that way too

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I one hundred percent agree!

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Please please please… if this is a thing we need to vet people very copiously:

Outside of being a vile individual Matt Gaetz is generally not seen as an ally for progressive causes. His voting record and political stance align more closely with conservative values. Here are some key points that demonstrate why he is not typically associated with progressive movements:

  1. Conservative Voting Record:

Gaetz has consistently supported conservative policies, particularly in areas like fiscal matters, defense, and social issues. For example, he has voted against environmental protections, public health measures, and progressive social programs. His voting record reflects a strong alignment with right-wing factions within the Republican Party.

  1. Environmental Issues:

As indicated by his low scores from environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Gaetz has voted against policies aimed at addressing climate change and promoting clean energy, which are central to progressive causes.

  1. Healthcare:

Gaetz has supported efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and has been critical of universal healthcare proposals, which is a key issue for many progressive activists.

  1. Social Justice and Equity:

Gaetz has not been a vocal supporter of progressive policies aimed at addressing racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, or other social equity issues in the way many progressives advocate for.

  1. Economic Policies:

Gaetz supports lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy, a hallmark of conservative economic policies, while progressive causes often focus on wealth redistribution, raising the minimum wage, and expanding social safety nets for working-class families.

In summary, Matt Gaetz is not aligned with progressive causes and is more associated with conservative ideals. His political actions and voting history suggest that he would not be a strong advocate for progressive policies or social justice movements.

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Even though these people are aligned with the progressive movement, they should be vetted even more…

Here are some famous people who are often aligned with the progressive movement, advocating for social, environmental, economic, and political changes to benefit marginalized communities:

Politicians and Activists:
1. Bernie Sanders – U.S. Senator from Vermont, known for advocating for universal healthcare, climate action, wealth inequality reform, and workers’ rights. His “democratic socialism” platform has shaped much of progressive politics in the U.S.
2. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) – U.S. Representative from New York, championing progressive policies like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, affordable housing, and climate justice.
3. Elizabeth Warren – U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, known for her focus on financial regulation, consumer protection, and anti-corruption efforts.
4. Ilhan Omar – U.S. Representative from Minnesota, a strong advocate for racial justice, universal healthcare, and immigrant rights.
5. Rashida Tlaib – U.S. Representative from Michigan, focuses on progressive policies around criminal justice reform, healthcare, and social equity.
6. Pramila Jayapal – U.S. Representative from Washington, a leader in the fight for Medicare for All and progressive immigration reform.
7. Cori Bush – U.S. Representative from Missouri, an advocate for racial justice, defunding the police, and economic equality.
8. Stacey Abrams – Voting rights activist and politician in Georgia, known for her work on voter suppression, advocating for fair elections, and pushing for progressive policy changes.
9. Ava DuVernay – Filmmaker and activist, known for her documentaries that examine racial justice, such as “13th,” which addresses mass incarceration in the U.S.

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Public Figures and Celebrities:
10. Leonardo DiCaprio – Actor and environmental activist, advocating for climate change action through his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
11. Emma Watson – Actress and activist, known for her advocacy for gender equality through her work with the United Nations Women’s HeForShe campaign.
12. Colin Kaepernick – Former NFL player, known for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality, and for his activism for racial justice and equity.
13. Greta Thunberg – Climate activist, who has gained international recognition for her calls to action on climate change and environmental justice.
14. John Legend – Musician and activist, advocating for criminal justice reform, educational access, and racial equity through organizations like FreeAmerica.
15. Laverne Cox – Actress and LGBTQ+ rights activist, known for her work advocating for transgender rights and gender inclusivity.
16. Michelle Obama – Former First Lady, known for her work on education, healthy living, and advocacy for girls’ empowerment.
17. Ellen DeGeneres – Comedian and TV host, who has used her platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and social justice.

Intellectuals and Writers:
18. Noam Chomsky – Linguist and political theorist, known for his criticism of neoliberal capitalism, U.S. foreign policy, and corporate media.
19. Ta-Nehisi Coates – Writer and journalist, who focuses on issues of race, reparations, and African-American history in the U.S.
20. Angela Davis – Political activist, academic, and author, known for her work on racial justice, prison abolition, and gender equality.

These individuals are influential figures who use their platforms to push for progressive policies that promote social, environmental, and economic justice.

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Today, I finally learned of the term Strawman - something I hear in a lot of the shows on this network, but never understood what it meant.

Whenever the progressives question Cenk’s need to put down the progressive left when going on right wing shows, being cozy with them while distancing him with the left, calling the left names, normalizing a lot of the terrible things that the right wing hosts have done, he and Ana would brush the comments aside and claim that they are trying to control who they talk to and not discuss common policy goals.

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thank you for your response. i agree matt gaetz is certainly not a progressive. remember we are trying to be inclusive and accept those from all parts of the political spectrum so a persons conservative record would not be an issue as long as they agreed with the populist plank. the issue with matt gaetz is his past criminality and being a vile person that would be problematic for our movement.

the list of people you added seem like great candidates for people to reach out to for endorsements thank you

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thanks for the response. please try to give Cenk and Ana the benefit of the doubt. I agree Cenk can sometimes be harsh in his criticism of the left especially when speaking with the right but his record of fighting for progressive causes is incredible. he has shown time and time again that he is a warrior for the left and the lefts causes. Cenk has a tough job of trying to unite people across the political spectrum and point out that we can fight together for common causes. i understand his criticism of the left can be tough to handle for those of us that consider ourselves to be the far left. we need to try to keep our eyes on his long term goals and what he’s trying to accomplish though

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Let’s be honest: Cenk’s job is not to unite people across the aisle. Cenk’s job is to report the news, and it used to be to advocate for Progressive politics. It’s progressively (no pun intended :wink:) getting harder not to bow out of all of the Populism idea pushing and Progressive politics backpedaling that TYT and everything associated with it is forcing. I’m all for alliances, but I can’t pretend that Populist ideas mean more to me than Progressive politics. I feel like I’m throwing people under the bus by being strongly discouraged from fighting and advocating for what I really want to get a few more people on our side. It feels disingenuous. I want to fight for everyone, not just the majority, even if it’s an uphill battle. And I don’t want to be consistently insulted for believing that being woke and advocating for DEIA and CRT is not just the right thing to do but also the right way to go. Regardless of what may be said, this is clearly what’s happening. Considering bringing Matt Gaetz and Charlie Kirk on board is just another reminder.

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I agree 100%. When you said, “anyone but Matt Gaetz” last month, you were speaking the thoughts in my head.

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I agree with you on Gaetz, Kirk, and their ilk. Going on right wing shows is fine, and is something both Cenk and Ana have been doing for years. But there are some hosts whom I believe should be given a wide berth, and some politicians too. Kirk and Gaetz definitely fall in that category.

I don’t agree that reaching across the aisle is not Cenk’s job. As someone on here pointed out, Wolfpac, which he started years ago, requires both red and blue states to come together on getting money out of politics. Since both parties have been captured by their donors, it is the voters who must come together.

That being said, their are several pitfalls that must be avoided when conversing with the right. One of them is not giving them talking points that they can weaponize. Saying things like, “The Left is more welcoming than the Right” is both counterproductive, and untrue, as Francesca pointed out to him. I think we need to continuously remind him not to fall into that kind of trap.

As for the populist plank, I don’t think we have to stop pushing progressive policies at all. In fact, that’s one reason we now have 2 separate meetings each month. One is to work on the plank, the other is to continue pushing the progressive agenda. In fact, I was one of the people pushing for separating the 2. We need a safe space to continue our fight for that agenda.

By the way, in last night’s town hall you demonstrated yet another one of your talents, keeping the group on task. When people who are passionate about what they believe in, they can inadvertently derail the process if no one pulls their coattails. You and Mike Hahn led that effort last night. I’m sure Kara appreciated that. I certainly did.

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I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But once I watched his interview with Francesca, it REALLY rubbed me to wrong way to the point where I was looking for an alternate daily program to watch. His justification he kept on talking about on his show and in the interview was not even related to why people have been upset with him and Ana. It was shocking.

Having a large platform in a way has given them excessive egos, in my opinion.

When you watch Dr. Rashad Richey, for example, you don’t get any of that. He never talks about himself on his shows.

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My evolution on reaching out to the MAGA right followed a similar progression to my reaction to Operation Joy.

No way it will work → Not sure it will work → It’s worth trying out → I actually think it will be beneficial → It’s actually working, at least to some extent.

So either Cenk is right (as in correct!) again, or he’s very convincing.

If we have 6 clear ideas where populists on the right agree with populists and progressives on the left, why not find common ground with them? Why not get them to say they agree with these things and get them into the marketplace of ideas on the right?

What I do disagree with, as Dreamer and others have said, is being okay with potentially allying ourselves with folks like pedophiles and open fascists / authoritarians. Steve Bannon is not any ally. He is a racist anti-democratic fascist. If he happens to agree on an economic issue here or there, so be it, but we don’t have to go out of our way to emphasize this.

Matt Gaetz was fine with trying to overthrow elections to please Trump and paying for sex with underaged girls. It’s a line too far to ally with him on anything just because he didn’t take corporate PAC money and a few other populist positions.

Where the line is, I don’t know. An open tent is a good thing. But I think we have to make sure we don’t do the equivalent of Kamala Harris campaigning with neocon Liz Cheney. Just because a horrible figure on the right marginally agrees with us on some things doesn’t mean that stragically or morally it’s best to become allies. Just like being close with the Cheneys turned off voters, being okay with the far right even just on an issue on issue basis will turn off many progressives and other populists on the left. I could see people saying “Matt Gaetz (or insert other name) is involved in this? Hard pass”.

Just my two cents (while we still have pennies!). Like I said overall I agree with the premise, it’s the details that can be tricky.

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I completely understand the need for boundary-setting and protecting our movement from bad-faith actors. But I also worry about how we ensure we aren’t unintentionally falling into purity-focused exclusion—something that has historically weakened progressive movements.

Right now, Americans are already deeply divided, often because of litmus tests that shut down conversation rather than encouraging growth. If we reinforce that by assuming that people who haven’t arrived at the ‘right’ position yet are inherently harmful, how do we expect to build power?

So my question is: How do we differentiate between necessary boundary-setting and exclusion that weakens us? What criteria should we use to determine when engagement is still valuable vs. when it becomes truly harmful?

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to be weird for a second i just wanna say i love this conversation. we feel comfortable criticizing our movement and talking difference of strategy on how best to fight for our values on a website set up for us by the people/movement that we are in part criticizing. i love this conversation and this group.

back to the substance, matt gaetz is trash and should be nowhere near this movement. like eclectic said anyone that will make decent people from either side of the political spectrum think twice about endorsing should be avoided.

I largely agree with the criticizism of how Cenk has been treating the left and wish he wasn’t so defensive about it like he showed on the francesca show and generally. I believe he’s been wrong a lot recently in his treatment of the left, on LGBT issues and the effect they had on the election. I wrote him a substantial email before christmas telling him this and that he should stop feuding with those on the left instead of continuing to double down. I sent it to kara to pass on to him but just got a response from kara saying she appreciated me writing the email. so it seems unlikely he read it. his coverage of crime has also seemed super off and right wing recently.

that being said I think his overall strategy is the correct one. our enemy is not the right wing base. our enemy is the 1% of rich assholes that control both parties and make our life increasingly more hellish by the year. so if we can work with the right wing base to accomplish any of the populist plank and get progressive wins through collaboration i’m in. It’s pretty hard to argue that any part of the populist plank being accomplished wouldn’t be a massive win for progressives.

which all leads to the questions i believe are at the heart of our conversation, porque no los dos? why not both? can Cenk accomplish progressive agenda/values by talking to the right and unifying us while still needing to be pushed a little to the left on some progressive issues? can we help him to accomplish populist/progressive policy by unifying while still pushing him on areas we believe he needs to move left on? can we fight for this populist agenda while still fighting for other left wing policy? yes I believe we can have both. we can and should fight for all of this.

it is cenks job to unite because anyone that wants to accomplish something in todays political climate created by the 1% needs to unify to get what they want accomplished. uniting to fight the 1% was always going to be messy but it is absolutely essential.

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great questions that I’m not sure i have the answer to. I also don’t want to have a purity test ruin our unity but people like matt gaetz would be detrimental to the movement. so maybe we set the boundary super high. perhaps we should take votes on those we don’t want to have associated with the movement and have to be over 80% in agreement. surely we can reach over 80% agreement that someone who has committed sex crimes against minors shouldn’t be associated with us. whatever we decide on I agree the bar should be super high. would we accept an endorsement from donald trump for instance? if we would how do we exclude anyone when his crimes are more numerous and terrible than just about anyones?

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:heart:

I agree that we need boundaries, especially for people like Matt Gaetz. But what’s our guiding principle for setting that ‘super high’ bar? Is it legal crimes, moral harm, or something else?

Also, how do we handle people who have changed? Do we allow room for growth, or is it a one-strike policy? If we set standards too rigidly, we risk shrinking rather than growing our movement.

Maybe the key question is: How do we create boundaries that reflect our values without turning into a purity test?

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at the end of the day we shouldn’t be passing judgement on people other then what they would bring or take from the movement by endorsing so what if for anyone that multiple members feel should be barred we make a case for what they would bring to the movement if they endorsed and what their endorsement would take from the movement. we vote and if the vote has more than 80% saying they would be more harmful than positive then they are barred from endorsing.

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