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Justice Dems Origin Story
Justice Dems are a PAC formed in 2017 to install progressive candidates in Congress with the goal of “taking over” the Democratic Party. They famously backed The Squad—AOC, Omar, Tlaib and Pressley—in their runs for Congress in the 2018 midterms.
Justice Dems are a PAC formed in 2017 to install progressive candidates in Congress with the goal of “taking over” the Democratic Party. They famously backed The Squad—AOC, Omar, Tlaib and Pressley—in their runs for Congress in the 2018 midterms.
Justice Dems was formed to combine two ideas: (1) Brand New Congress, a PAC founded by Bernie campaign staff, and (2) Justice Dems, a brand developed by two YouTube shock jocks. Both ideas focused on taking over the Democratic Party by installing progressives in Congress.
Brand New Congress was a PAC formed in 2016 by Bernie staffers with the goal of taking software they developed to coordinate Bernie’s network of nationwide grassroots volunteers, and using that software to support hundreds of simultaneous Congressional campaigns.
Brand New Congress (BNC) was headed by a presumed multimillionaire, Silicon Valley software developer named Saikat Chakrabarti, who joined the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015 as its Director of Organizing Technology.
For Chakrabarti’s full profile, see the following thread: https://twitter.com/JusticeDemWatch/status/1339264339514109952
For Chakrabarti’s full profile, see the following thread: https://twitter.com/JusticeDemWatch/status/1339264339514109952
BNC sought to run 400 candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterms from a pool of 10,000 applicants. In the end, they only found 12 of the candidates suitable, only one of whom would go on to win her race: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, causing Chakrabarti to label the plan a failure.
Chakrabarti then pursued a new model where he would back AOC and his other 11 candidates, but also back other progressives already running campaigns. He had the technology to organize grassroots support for the candidates but needed a media arm to generate interest in them.
To generate interest and help drum up donations and volunteers, Chakrabarti teamed with Cenk Uygur (YouTube: The Young Turks) and Kyle Kulinski (YouTube: Secular Talk) who had been promoting a brand called Justice Dems, to turn the informal Justice Dem brand into a formal PAC.
Uygur was a hard-line conservative with extreme views on gender, race and religion who purported to become a progressive Democrat in the mid 2000s, enabling his TYT YouTube channel to attract millions of primarily young adult male subscribers.
Here is a full profile on Uygur: https://twitter.com/JusticeDemWatch/status/1339677830343520257
Here is a full profile on Uygur: https://twitter.com/JusticeDemWatch/status/1339677830343520257
Like Uygur, Kulinski ran a shock-jock style YouTube channel called Secular Talk, catering to a smaller audience of primarily progressive young males focused on the issues promoted by Bernie Sanders, such as free healthcare and college. For his full profile, see this thread: https://twitter.com/JusticeDemWatch/status/1338274672736137217
In January 2017, Chakrabarti’s technology team left BNC to the care of fellow former Bernie staffer, Alexandra Rojas, and formed the Justice Dems PAC with the propaganda team of Uygur and Kulinski, with the express goal of taking over the Democratic Party. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/23/progressives-launch-justice-democrats-to-counter-primary-corporate-legislators/
Uyger and Kulinski were open about the goal of Justice Dems being a “takeover” of the Democratic Party, and they both used their YouTube channels as propaganda outlets for the Justice Dems and their candidates for the entirety of 2017:
The planned “takeover” hit a snag in December 2017, however, when Uygur’s sexist and racist past was discovered by the media, prompting Justice Dems to claim to sever ties with Uygur, thus prompting Kulinski to claim he was stepping down in protest of Uygur’s ouster: https://twitter.com/justicedems/status/944356205476106240
Despite condemning Uygur and severing formal ties with him and Kulinski, Justice Dems continued using interviews and propaganda from the TYT and Secular Talk YouTube channels and social media platforms to promote and raise grassroots support for their organization and candidates. https://twitter.com/justicedems/status/1070124631934169088
Chakrabarti devoted most of his effort to serving as AOC’s campaign manager and, after she won, he left Justice Dems to become AOC’s Chief of Staff, but he was forced out after minor scandals and gaffes, followed by an ill-considered public attack on the Democratic Establishment.
Alexandra Rojas, less than five years out from high school and fresh off an internship with the Bernie campaign, took the helm of Justice Dems in May 2018, and she continues to run the organization and coordinate its attacks on the Democratic Establishment as of the end of 2020.
Chakrabarti now works on the Green New Deal as part of a think tank called New Consensus and continues using his Twitter account to level attacks against the Democratic Establishment, with a focus on attacking Nancy Pelosi and calling for her ouster as Speaker of the House.
Uygur and Kulinski continue using their YouTube and social media platforms to advocate for Justice Dems and attack the Democratic Establishment, including support for Russian disinformation about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities and bogus claims that he is a sexual predator.
It is unclear how much allegiance The Squad owes to their original backers and whether they are, or ever were, puppets controlled by Chakrabarti, Uygur or Kulinski. Nor is it clear how much The Squad’s political futures are dependent upon their continuing ties with Justice Dems.
What is clear, however, is that The Squad owes their political fortune to the efforts of a shady group of characters who installed them in power with the goal of taking over the Democratic Party.
It’s important to know whether The Squad and other Justice Dem candidates are puppets under the control of those who installed them in office but, even if they are not, Justice Dems’ goal of taking over the Democratic Party is incredibly problematic for many reasons.
First, Justice Dems are not focused on helping the Democratic Party in their struggle with the GOP for control of Congress. Rather than seeking to defeat GOP candidates and gain seats for Democrats, Justice Dems focus on primarying centrist Democrats in deep blue districts.
And, after gaining seats in Congress, Justice Dems seek to push the Democratic caucus further left in ways that often are counterproductive to getting helpful legislation passed and that make it hard for Democratic candidates in “purple” districts to win races against the GOP.
And Democrats from blue districts must live in fear of being attacked and/or primaried if they dare to run afoul of Justice Dems and their media surrogates who will lambaste them and open them up to possible losses in upcoming elections.
Adding people to Congress who call themselves Democrats, yet cast themselves as “Democratic Socialists” and espouse radical views like open borders with free health care and college, create boogeymen the GOP can use to castigate the entire Democratic Party come election season.
A charismatic, populist progressive like AOC may even be able to win a Democratic primary for POTUS someday, maybe even in 2024 (when AOC will be just old enough to run), but it’s far less clear that someone with AOC’s political views can win the general election for POTUS.
A populist progressive or “Democratic Socialist” like AOC would be unlikely to win any votes from registered Republicans in a general election and likely would scare away many centrist Democrats.
All of this raises the question of whether groups like Justice Dems are truly committed to taking over the Democratic Party to move it to the left or whether their true goal, or at least their true effect, is to cripple the Democratic Party’s ability to compete with the GOP.
