Young Turks’ Founder Cenk Uygur Exposed for Racism Against Asian Men, Objectifying Asian Women

December 28, 2017

Cenk Uygur, creator of the popular progressive online network “The Young Turks”, was recently outed for writing multiple racist and sexist blogposts in the early 2000s.

Uygur was found to have made a number of posts using objectifying language to describe women during his early days as a blogger. In one of the graphic posts in 1999, he wrote that women were genetically “flawed” because of their lack of sex drive, according to The Wrap.

“Obviously, the genes of women are flawed,” Uygur wrote, reportedly expressing frustration over the limited amount of sex he was getting at the time in Miami, Florida. “They are poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully.”

In a 2002 blog entry, Uygur specified that “there must be orgasm by the fifth date” while describing the “rules of dating.”

In an article supposedly about suicide also written in 2002, he even inserted a diss against Asian men while advising overweight or unattractive men to seek Japanese women, who he believes will easily sleep with American men.

“Every American is John Wayne to a Japanese girl who needs a new purse, a grammar lesson in English and a decent sized penis for a change,” Uygur wrote.

He also wrote a column in 2003, describing an incident at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana where he “kissed over 23 different women, saw and felt countless breasts” while intoxicated.

Another post, written by “The Young Turks” co-founder David Koller in 2004, described the teenage girls that he and Uygur met near a gas station in Pennsylvania as “whores in training, literally looking for boys to pick them up.”

In an interview with The Wrap, Uygur apologized by stating his comments were “really insensitive and ignorant.”

“If you read that today, what I wrote 18 years ago, and you’re offended by it, you’re 100 percent right,” Uygur was quoted as saying. “And anyone who is subjected to that material, I apologize to. And I deeply regret having written that stuff when I was a different guy.”

Uygur explained that at the time, he “was still a conservative who thought that stuff was politically incorrect and edgy.”

Following the expose, progressive political action committee Justice Democrats ousted Uygur, one of its founding board members. According to the Huffington Post, the left-leaning political group announced on Friday that it is severing its ties not only with Uygur but also David Koller who served as Justice Democrats’ treasurer.

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“The words and conduct in Mr. Uygur and Mr. Koller’s posts degrade what it means to be a Justice Democrat,” said Justice Democrats executive director Saikat Chakrabarti in another statement demanding the two’s resignations. “We do not feel that Mr. Uygur is fit to lead or participate in an organization that truly believes women’s issues and the issues of black and brown people are all of our issues.”

Uygur, who is married to marriage therapist Wendy Lang, officially resigned from his position in Justice Democrats on December 22, 2017.

NextShark has reached out to The Young Turks for comment and will update this post accordingly.

Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/tytvault (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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