Progressive journalist Ana Kasparian has revealed that the Left’s intolerance “for the other side” led her to walk away from the Democratic Party.
Kasparian, co-host of the far-left “The Young Turks” show, blasted Democrats over efforts to “demonize and even dehumanize” their opponents.
She described feeling “politically homeless” over the past few years.
Kasparian revealed that she started seeing an intolerance to debate and the free exchange of ideas from the Left that she believed was detrimental to society.
She also blasted the Left’s embrace of soft-on-crime policies that favor criminals over hard-working citizens.
While admitting she used to be a person who believed you could not be friends with conservatives or someone who supported President Donald Trump, she slammed the Democrats’ ongoing efforts to “demonize and even dehumanize the other side.”
Kasparian made the remarks Monday on Jillian Michaels’ “Keeping It Real” podcast while explaining what drove her to ditch the Democratic Party.
Both women said they identified with disaffected Democrats who now feel unwelcome in their former party.
Kasparian said a turning point for her was when she was scolded by liberals for confessing she was fearful to leave her house after being attacked.
She said she was sexually assaulted by a homeless man while walking her dog in Los Angeles in 2022.
Recalling the negative messages she received, Kasparian said:
“Before I knew it, I started getting these messages, and it’s really, really harsh stuff, about how ‘You are painting a picture of the homeless community. How could you be like this? These are your unhoused neighbors and they need help.’
“A few people accused me of being racist, even though I had never disclosed the race of the individuals who did this to me.
“And in fact, they were white,” Kasparian continued.
“That woke me up,” Kasparian said.
“Some of the people that I’ve associated myself with because I thought they were the good people….
“They definitely have stereotypes in their head and are totally blind to the fact that they have those stereotypes and go around accusing others of being bad actors when they themselves need to do the work.”
Kasparian said she also disagreed with the “defeatist mentality” shown towards minorities*.
“At some point last year, the other thing that really hit me was the difference between my upbringing and what the Democratic Party espouses,” Kasparian said.
She described being raised by “very tough” parents who taught her to work hard to be self-sufficient and create her own opportunities.
While she acknowledged there are obstacles today that some younger people are facing that older generations may not have had to face, she still sees America as a land of opportunity.
However, she noted that the American Dream goes against messaging from the Democrats.
“However, we all get to wake up in the morning and make choices for ourselves,” she said.
“And when I hear the Democratic Party constantly disempower people of color because that’s what they’re doing.
“They keep using this messaging that infantilizes them and makes them seem as though, you know, if it weren’t for us white saviors, messing around with these laws and policies, they would never be able to survive.
“And I find that so gross,” she added.
Kasparian gave examples of how a Los Angeles school district scrapped its honor student program because there weren’t enough Hispanic students enrolled in the program.
“That p—d me off,” Kasparian said.
“It’s doing away with an opportunity rather than seeing what the flaws are in our education system and then rising to the occasion to help these students, where we do see the disparity, to get to where we want them to be.
“That’s the right way to approach it.
“But there’s just this weird defeatist mentality.
“And I’m honestly also very sick of white people going around being offended on behalf of marginalized people.”
“They’re just virtue signaling. It’s disgusting,” Michaels agreed.
Later during the interview, in a discussion about the “fat-acceptance” movement on the far Left, Kasparian said:
“We should celebrate people who want to better themselves and better their lives.
“Instead, there’s this effort to basically tell people, ‘You’re fine the way you are, you don’t need to change a thing,’ even if that thing is slowly killing you.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she noted.
The pair also said they’ve seen their home state of California become “crazy*” over time from when they were growing up.
Michaels, who left California in 2021, has previously shared how the deep blue state’s soft-on-crime policies drove her and her family to leave and move to Miami.
“Nothing was crazy* like this right?” Michaels told Kasparian.
“Homelessness, crime, advocating for medicalization of children, advocating for late-term abortion?”
California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is leading the “madness” in the state, Michaels said.
“The concern is that it goes from California to a federal problem,” she noted.
“Unfortunately, some of the failed policies we’ve started here have been exported to other states,” Kasparian agreed.
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