Kyle Kulinski
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“”If your God is the God who would support somebody like Trump, fuck your God. Your God can blow me.
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| —Kulinski on Michele Bachmann's support for Trump[1] |
Kyle Kulinski is the host of Secular Talk, an atheist and progressive talk show that appears on The Young Turks network. Kulinski has almost complete autonomy on his show, so it's not uncommon for him to disagree with other TYT hosts.
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[edit] Opinions
[edit] Religion
Highly critical of fundamentalism, and an outspoken New Atheist, Kulinski considers himself somewhere between New Atheism and more traditional progressive camps on the subject of religion: he argues that geopolitics and foreign policy will force populations to radicalize, but adds that the dogma is responsible for violence and chaos as well; he goes on a case by case basis.[2] He dislikes some of the tactics used by New Atheists if only for strategic reasons, believing they could turn people against atheism. He most often finds himself disagreeing with Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Sam Harris, particularly on foreign policy, but most especially on American and Israeli foreign policy or military actions. He often notes that Harris is either incredibly naive on foreign policy, or an outright apologist for the Israeli and American states, and has consistently called him out on it.[3][4][5] True to form, he is critical of Islam while also being highly critical of anti-Muslim bigotry and those who dismiss it. He pushes back against the "Regressive" label used by certain liberals and atheists towards the progressive left, arguing that the progressives focus more about the effects and consequences of foreign policy and are not "Islamic apologists." Although, at the same time he has acknowledged that whilst the term is often misused, genuine regressives do exist.[6]
[edit] Politics
On foreign policy, he is non-interventionist, and is highly critical of Israeli foreign policy whilst also denouncing Hamas.
Considering himself a social democrat and left libertarian[7], Kulinski spends most of his time debunking right-wing bullshit (usually from Fox News) and covering the recent radicalization of the US Republican Party, with whom he disagrees on virtually everything; Kulinski is also a card-carrying Democrat. However, he strongly dislikes establishment Democrats (so much so that he has said he would probably burn his Democratic Party card if his state of New York adopts the open primary), and supported Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary.
He is a civil libertarian on social issues, especially regarding drug laws: he thinks all drugs should be decriminalized and marijuana and others should be legalized, taxed, and regulated. He also opposes NSA domestic surveillance and police having too much power. However, he supports the death penalty in theory, saying it should be used for the most heinous of crimes where no help is possible, but opposes it in practice due to the high false positive rate.
[edit] Free speech and feminism
He is a fierce advocate for free speech and harbors a deep dislike for political correctness, especially trigger warnings, safe spaces, and the concept of microagressions.[8] However, he's more irate about right-wing political correctness because no one talks about it, despite countless examples.[8] In particular, he despises the notion that Donald Trump is politically incorrect, especially since he uses "politically incorrect" as a cover for his bigotry, along with the fact he likes to file libel suits against people who badmouth him and wants to diminish the First Amendment once in power.[9] As a result, he refers to Trump as a "Politically Correct Bitch" and a "Right Wing Social Justice Warrior".[10]
Unlike a lot of New Atheist vloggers, Kulinski considers himself to generally be a feminist and has called the men's rights movement "stupid" and "whiny", and maintains this stance despite it pissing off a good chunk of his audience.[11] However, he is sharply critical of some aspects of third-wave feminists, though some of the terms he uses to describe them are incorrect and arguably overly general.[12][13] In addition, he deeply dislikes social justice warriors. He does prove that one can question more radical versions of feminism without being a reactionary asshole.
[edit] Drugs
Kulinski loves to use pharmaceutical drugs such as Adderall, Vicodin, Percocet, Xanax, and Klonopin. He's also done cocaine. He is scared of hallucinogens such as LSD, magic mushrooms, and DMT. He also dislikes cannabis because it gives him paranoia and anxiety most of the time.[14] He uses the plant drug Kratom to help him focus for his job, so he was understandably outraged when the DEA wanted to ban it.
[edit] The Conservapedia affair
Conservapedia editor Conservapedia:Conservative wrote an article in which he accused Kulinski of being an immigrant and another nasty liberal.[15] Kulinski immediately debunked this which resulted in User:Conservative issuing a challenge to Kulinski to debunk their article on atheists.[16] He mocked the site and then tore apart their atheist article.[17] To the surprise of no one, User:Conservative claimed victory nonetheless.[18]
[edit] External links
Secular Talk's Youtube channel
Secular Talk's Twitter
Secular Talk's Facebook
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Michele Bachmann: 'God May Have Lifted Up Trump' To Be President, 13 July 2016
- ↑ Should Atheists Criticize All Religions Equally?
- ↑ Sam Harris On The Israel/ Palestine Conflict
- ↑ Sam Harris: It's 'Delusional' To Say U.S. Policy Created ISIS
- ↑ Sam Harris: I'd Vote For 'Imbecile' Ben Carson Over Noam Chomsky
- ↑ Leftist UK Politician Wants To Bring Back Blasphemy Laws
- ↑ https://youtu.be/76D1_SktnJI?t=116
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Jon Stewart On Political Correctness
- ↑ Trump: 'I'm All For Free Speech, But...'
- ↑ Donald Trump Isn't Politically Incorrect, He's the Opposite
- ↑ Kyle's A Bad, Bad Sexist
- ↑ For instance, he calls it neo-feminism despite that being the exact opposite of what he opposes (Neofeminism is a movement emerging from third-wave feminism that believes women can be empowered if they want to embrace more traditional gender roles.)
- ↑ When Walmart Banned Feminist Shirts For 'Offending Family Values' in 1995
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZUsIehKzuo
- ↑ Fact Checking Conservapedia's 'Secular Talk' Entry
- ↑ No really
- ↑ Conservapedia, Stop Embarrassing Yourself
- ↑ He doesn't seem to understand what the word "defeated" means