If the left had a Joe Rogan, Democrats would despise him
We know this is true because we've already seen it happen multiple times!
Last weekend I went tailgating with a childhood friend who, in between rounds of beer pong, decided that he wanted to talk politics. My friend - let’s call him Kyle — isn’t a very political guy, so this surprised me. He isn’t a particularly reactionary guy either, so I was just as surprised when he said that he voted for Trump. I asked him why, and he answered: “Did you see him on Joe Rogan?”
No, I didn’t. But Kyle’s explanation was straightforward:
“It’s cool that Trump talked to him for that long, you know? I don’t know why Kamala wouldn’t. It’s like, if she won’t talk to Joe, she probably wouldn’t talk to me either.”
I don’t think Kyle’s criteria for selecting a president is very wise, but I also think he’s right, but I do think I understand why a Joe Rogan fan would think about things that way.
If you have some time to kill, here’s a recommendation: listen to Joe Rogan’s interview in June with 90s pop folk icon Jewel. The first thing you’ll notice is that this interview is long — nearly four hours long. And the second thing you’ll notice is why: Jewel spends the interview spilling her guts about homelessness and depression, and Rogan is a genuinely fascinated and generous listener.
Rogan’s influence on his male audience has become the stuff of myth and legend in political media, but if you actually listen to him you’ll see that he really isn’t doing anything special. He is just a friendly and unpretentious host who models how to listen for his audience by being a good listener himself. He’s so good at this that he can even get his frathouse audience to listen to a minor Lillith Fair celebrity spend hours talking about her feelings.
So in this regard Kyle is probably right: if Kamala Harris can’t talk to a host as amiable as Rogan, there’s no way she would talk to a guy like Kyle. Rogan’s fans see themselves in him, so when someone like Harris refuses to appear on the show, they predictably feel judged themselves.
***
I was thinking about Kyle this morning when I read the latest of the thousand “we need a leftist Joe Rogan” takes that have flooded the discourse over the past few days.
Because the fact is that we already have a lot of leftist Joe Rogans. We already have, that is, a number of people who 1) are media personalities 2) that appeal to a young male audience 3) while advancing broadly left politics. This obviously describes the hosts of Chapo Trap House, who have run a wildly popular podcast for several years now and routinely bring on a range of guests just as diverse as Rogan. Want to hear about conspiracy theories like Rogan talks about? Listen to TrueAnon. Want to hear about gaming and internet culture? Check out Hasan’s Twitch stream.
Why aren’t any of these media personalities the Joe Rogan of the left? It’s tempting to conclude that guys like the Chapos are just uncivil dirtbags who are being excluded from polite company, but there are plenty of uncivil liberals in the media. It’s also common to allege that all of these media personalities are prone to saying problematic things that are too reactionary for liberal norms — but plainly, we have plenty of reactionaries in the media as well. So that can’t be it, either.
Here’s my theory: the reason we don’t have a Joe Rogan of the left is that liberal and conservatives dominate the media, and both really hate the left. That’s why even Very Respectable and Professional leftists barely have any presence in national media. Remember when Bernie Sanders won Nevada in 2020 and a panel of panicked MSNBC hosts concluded “I guess we’ll have to start bringing some Sanders supporters on”? If you don’t, there’s a reason: they never did.
Liberals and conservatives run the giant corporations that sponsor most media outlets. All of the major dark money investors, from Thiel to Soros, are liberals and conservatives. Liberals and conservatives occupy all of the positions of upper management in major national media. They’re the producers and the hosts.
Leftists in the media will never get the kind of promotion from major outlets that could transform them into major players in the industry. We know this because there are tons of them; because they have proven themselves remarkably competent and successful despite the lack of industry backing; and because they still don’t have industry backing.
The great irony in all of this is that a left Joe Rogan would actually be a boon to liberals as well, because leftists in the media shift the center of political gravity and instantly transform liberals into moderates. The right understands this perfectly well, which is why there is hardly a media figure or outlet too reactionary for major right-wing media institutions to occasionally promote. That’s what makes this so tragic: liberals hate the left so much they’re willing to impede their own politics if it’ll just keep us out of the public eye.
Thanks for reading! My blog is supported entirely by readers like you. To receive new posts and support my work, why not subscribe?
Refer enough friends to this site and you can read paywalled content for free!
And if you liked this post, why not share it?