There’s a reason progressives don’t have their own Joe Rogan
In the aftermath of its loss on Nov. 5, the left has turned its lonely eyes to Joe Rogan.
The irreverent, world-conquering podcaster — 14.5 million Spotify followers and counting — is considered a symbol of Donald Trump’s ability to use unconventional media outlets to reach disaffected voters, especially young males, a k a “bros.”
Trump’s interview with Rogan has garnered 50 million views on YouTube, while the podcaster endorsed the former president in the final hours of the campaign.
With Trump showing extraordinary strength among young men, progressives are wondering how they can get into the Joe Rogan-type game.
As a headline in The New York Times put it, “Trump’s Win Leaves Democrats Asking: Where Are Our Bro Whisperers?”
Bernie Sanders has said when “clearly you have an alternative media out there” with “millions and millions of viewers,” Democrats have to be taking part.
Elie Mystal of the left-wing Nation magazine has declared, “Liberals need to BUILD THEIR OWN JOE ROGAN.”
Progressives are correct about the power of Rogan and his cohort of bro podcasters, but they don’t understand how thoroughly anathema their ideology and cultural sensibility are to this kind of programming.
They could — like the Harris campaign — have $1 billion to spend and still not be able to create one semi-popular bro podcaster.
How is the party of policing what people say to ensure that the discussion always stays within a narrow set of guardrails going to create — or even tolerate — free-wheelingly heterodox media voices?
If the left did manage to create a progressive Joe Rogan in a lab, as soon as he said something controversial out in the wild, he’d be anathematized and subject to cancelation.
This is exactly what happened to . . . Joe Rogan.
Before he was a Trump bro, he was a Bernie bro.
He is socially liberal, has mocked religion and is no way a traditional Republican.
But the left turned on him with a vengeance because he expressed controversial views on COVID and had a rogue virologist on his show.
This made Rogan a public enemy who had to be controlled or silenced.
A key aspect of Rogan-type influencers is that they question authority, and the authority they question is, largely, the elite consensus — making them dangerous and beyond the pale for the people who believe that consensus should be enforced via social pressure or censorship.
Expecting a woke Democrat to embrace these sort of shows would be like asking an advocate from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to hang out in the local speakeasy during Prohibition.
It is telling that Kamala Harris didn’t appear on Rogan, and the reason why.
“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff,” a senior adviser to the Harris operation explained, “that didn’t want her to be on it.”
Although the adviser in question tried to walk this back, her story is an accurate reflection of how the Democratic world works — it is susceptible to the demands of youthful ideological enforcers who are easily offended and unforgiving of those giving offense.
The left is also so beholden to the ideas of “toxic masculinity” and male “privilege” that a podcast featuring guys talking about MMA, working out and hunting, while making off-color jokes, feels more like enemy territory than a potentially useful platform.
It says it all that Trump’s method of appealing to males was to go on the podcast of comedian Theo Von and talk freely about using cocaine, and Barack Obama’s method was to try to shame black guys for their alleged misogyny.
Trump’s method was fun and entertaining, Obama’s earnest and scolding; Trump’s un-ideological, Obama’s feminist; Trump’s was successful, Obama’s fell flat.
If progressives created their own Joe Rogan, he’d likely be a bore.
He’d have to watch what he said, and toe the party line on cultural questions.
Progressives have plenty of media outlets that do this already — and they, notably, have no appeal to the bros.
Twitter: @RichLowry