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The Futile Quest to Build a “Liberal Joe Rogan” (theintercept.com)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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For months, pundits have decried the absence of a “Joe Rogan of the left” — an online media figure who can galvanize young men to support Democrats in the way that popular right-wing creators like Rogan, Adin Ross, and the NELK Boys have done for President Donald Trump. Now, it appears that Democratic operatives have a $20 million plan to build such a figure.

Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Stacey Abrams, said instead of propping up a creator who checks the perfect ideological boxes, Democrats should embrace the online spaces for young men that already exist.

For example, creators like Hasan Piker, a left-leaning creator with over 5.5 million subscribers on Twitch and broad popularity among young men, has largely been ignored by the Democratic establishment. Piker’s political content leans farther left, sharing a populist economic message paired with strong criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Israel.

“There is a tendency to shy away from those spaces because our favorite thing to do in the Democratic Party is to, pardon my language, shit on the left,” said Smith.

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[–] BenLeMan@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Actually, I think you're both right. Yes, Joe Rogan (as a cultural phenomenon) has no good reason to exist and I, too, want to see him destroyed.

But the evidence is mounting that many people love to listen to a wretched, moronic, self-important piece of shit like him (or Alex Jones or countless others on the right). Because he validates all of their worst tendencies for bigotry, conspiracist thinking, and intellectual laziness. Building up another Hasan Piker or Jimmy Dore isn't helping because all they do is preach to the choir.

If you want meaningful change you have to get money out of politics, reform the voting system, and focus on education. Not that any of that is going to happen without a major upheaval but hey, I'm trying to be constructive here...