For most of his adult life, Daniel Saynt considered himself a Democrat.
Raised as a Jehovah's Witness, he grew up in a faith that prohibited political participation altogether. Voting wasn't allowed. Political activism wasn't encouraged. When he eventually left the religion, politics became something of a civic calling.
“I was never allowed to vote,” he says. “Which is why I became so political once I left, because it was like, ‘Oh, I can finally vote, and I'm going to use my democratic power to make change.’”
Professionally, Saynt—who founded Fashion Indie, an online media network that at its height reached nearly 4.2 million consumers—spent more than a decade building communities centered around consent culture while running a members club. During that time, he became highly aware of manipulation, coercion, gaslighting, and the ways people maintain power over others.
Daniel Saynt, who publicly distanced himself from the Democratic Party recently, told me about his grievances with the party while heading to the New York Times protest.
It is through that lens that he now views politics.
“I see manipulation, I see coercion.”
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The same behaviors he spent years teaching people to recognize in toxic relationships, he says, are now visible inside the Democratic Party.
“I really now look at the Democratic Party as that abusive boyfriend, that individual who is willing to harm anyone and lie and gaslight in order to keep you there.”
For Saynt, nowhere is that more apparent than in the party's treatment of Jews.
One of the factors that pushed him away, he says, was “how they've reacted to antisemitism within their ranks, and kind of this open acceptance of hostilities towards Jewish people.”
Although he isn't Jewish himself, he was struck by how quickly a group that had long been embraced by progressive politics suddenly found itself viewed with suspicion.
“If you are taking the most oppressed minority of the minorities and making them the enemy, and you do that so naturally, so quickly, so easily, just to keep votes, or keep a more extremist voter base within your party, that's not principled, and that's not moral.”
He sees that shift as part of a broader pattern.
Over the years, he argues, the Democratic Party has repeatedly moved its attention from one constituency to the next.
“The party leaves people feeling politically homeless a lot of times, because they claim to care about these things, and then when they have the power to do something, nothing is done.”
At the same time, Saynt argues that criticism of the party is increasingly shut down through labels rather than debate. Whether the accusation is racist, transphobic, fascist, or “secretly MAGA,” he sees the tactic as a way of avoiding substantive conversations.
“It's like, if I can justify that you are this evil thing, the villain, then everything I say is right, and everything you say is wrong, and it's like I don't have to actually talk about policy, I don't actually have to talk about what's actually happening and what's really going on.”
That same frustration extends to the influence of money in politics.
Saynt argues that public attention is often directed toward AIPAC while larger lobbying interests escape scrutiny.
“AIPAC is a very small drop in the bucket in terms of funding.”
Instead, he points to pharmaceutical and healthcare interests as examples of what he sees as far more powerful forces shaping Democratic priorities.
“The real funders in the United States right now are Qatar, a lot of the Islamic states, as well as healthcare.”
To him, that disconnect—focusing on a highly visible target while ignoring larger sources of influence—mirrors the same pattern he sees throughout modern politics.
And it ultimately leads back to his biggest concern:
“I think we're looking at an infiltration of our democratic society right now.”
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