8.1 million people listened to Bernie talk about important social programs for an hour uninterrupted and uncluttered by advertisers.
I find it fascinating that people are working really hard to frame that as a bad thing.
Is there any venue which can deliver an uninterrupted hour of Bernie to 8.1 million listeners that Bernie shouldn't go on? Breitbart? 8chan? Stormfront? A Klan rally?
I get that any chance for Bernie to get his message out is a good thing for Bernie; but is it always a good thing for, you know, society?
I depute the idea that Breitbart can deliver an uninterrupted hour of Bernie. That doesn't seem like a thing that can happen.
I'm not even going to talk about the idea that a Klan Rally would have him come and speak.
Apologizing for Bernie going on the Joe Rogan experience is probably the clearest example yet of how there is a cleavage in "the left" that is in fact only economically left, and there are a not-insignificant amount of "leftists" who are either socially "conservative" (regressive) or otherwise apathetic/not as concerned with social welfare.
Incredible how "tell it like it is" socialists will all of a sudden wind up in rhetorical pretzels when one of their own goes on a show that has repeatedly hosted the likes of Shapiro, Peterson, and Gavin fuckin McInnes. Last I checked being anti-fascist means making these assholes persona non grata, not throwing out thinkpieces about how, actually, we're going to convince fascist-curious folks to switch sides via the millennial equivalent of tv punditry.
You could say the same shit about the Iowa State Fair.
The Iowa State Fair glorifies and normalizes the imprisonment and murder of animals- it not just their guests the entire event celebrates it. They actively auction off slaves there. People cheer when someone puts in a new high bid for the right to murder and consume someone. Why would any liberal attend that event, or support any other liberal attending it?
Apologizing for Bernie going on the Joe Rogan experience is probably the clearest example yet of how there is a cleavage in "the left" that is in fact only economically left, and there are a not-insignificant amount of "leftists" who are either socially "conservative" (regressive) or otherwise apathetic/not as concerned with social welfare.
Incredible how "tell it like it is" socialists will all of a sudden wind up in rhetorical pretzels when one of their own goes on a show that has repeatedly hosted the likes of Shapiro, Peterson, and Gavin fuckin McInnes. Last I checked being anti-fascist means making these assholes persona non grata, not throwing out thinkpieces about how, actually, we're going to convince fascist-curious folks to switch sides via the millennial equivalent of tv punditry.
You could say the same shit about the Iowa State Fair.
The Iowa State Fair glorifies and normalizes the imprisonment and murder of animals- it not just their guests the entire event celebrates it. They actively auction off slaves there. People cheer when someone puts in a new high bid for the right to murder and consume someone. Why would any liberal attend that event, or support any other liberal attending it?
If you were a meat is murder vegetarian then it would indeed not make sense to attend the event or support people who did... Unless you were attending in a manner explicitly to bring to like the practice for which you had significant disagreements with the fair(like a protest...)
Apologizing for Bernie going on the Joe Rogan experience is probably the clearest example yet of how there is a cleavage in "the left" that is in fact only economically left, and there are a not-insignificant amount of "leftists" who are either socially "conservative" (regressive) or otherwise apathetic/not as concerned with social welfare.
Incredible how "tell it like it is" socialists will all of a sudden wind up in rhetorical pretzels when one of their own goes on a show that has repeatedly hosted the likes of Shapiro, Peterson, and Gavin fuckin McInnes. Last I checked being anti-fascist means making these assholes persona non grata, not throwing out thinkpieces about how, actually, we're going to convince fascist-curious folks to switch sides via the millennial equivalent of tv punditry.
You could say the same shit about the Iowa State Fair.
The Iowa State Fair glorifies and normalizes the imprisonment and murder of animals- it not just their guests the entire event celebrates it. They actively auction off slaves there. People cheer when someone puts in a new high bid for the right to murder and consume someone. Why would any liberal attend that event, or support any other liberal attending it?
If you were a meat is murder vegetarian then it would indeed not make sense to attend the event or support people who did... Unless you were attending in a manner explicitly to bring to like the practice for which you had significant disagreements with the fair(like a protest...)
So I don't understand what you're trying to say.
It doesn't make sense if your goal out of the political process is anything more than value signaling. Say I'm whatever confluence of beliefs we are treating as the One True Liberal, plus meat is murder vegetarianism. I should refuse to support any of the democratic candidates? Any candidate I support shouldn't appear on any TV broadcast with a non-vegan cooking segment?
Rogan's audience is comprised of a crap ton of relatively centrist folks. Some more this way, some more that way, but by and large he has an audience of people that belong to neither pole on the political spectrum. Instead its mostly regular working class folks that listen while they work or commute. That's how he racks up so many listens/views and why he is one of (of not the) most popular podcasts in America.
You guys can wail and gnash teeth, but two things are certain:
1. He isn't some alt-right succubus (no matter how bad you really want him to be)
2. Keeping left leaning folks from going on his show is LITERALLY leaving votes on the table. And a lot of those votes are in states the democrats LOST last election.
To test the hypothesis that Bernie is leading so many leftests to Joe Rogan like lambs to the slaughter, I decided to check out if his Youtube views went up after the Sanders interview.
Luckly, there was a perfect video for doing this. One day after Bernie, Joe had Brendan Schaub on his show. Brendan is a podcaster/comedian that used to be an MMA fighter.
The last time Brendan was on Joe's podcast was a scant 2 months ago, and his appearance generated 2.5 million views.
The recent appearance has thus far generated 1.8 million views. Now it's possible that over the next month or two an extra million or more views will come in but that is not the usual pattern for Youtube views.
Early findings show that Bernie's effect on Joe's lasting audience is wildly exaggerated.
If that's the conclusion you want to draw, go nuts. But again: If Rogan's effect on Sanders' audience is negligible, then Sanders' effect on Rogan's audience is also negligible and the idea that anything was gained for the left by going on the show is undercut, unless you can make the argument that exposure to Sanders was specifically much more effective at flipping Rogan fans than exposure to Rogan was at flipping Sanders fans.
You cannot simultaneously argue that 1)there was no harm from Sanders going on Rogan's show because people tuning in for one interview aren't converted into habitual supporters/won't listen to other content and also that 2)it's good and important for the left to go onto platforms like the JRE in order to win converts who will seek out their other content.
Either audiences are easy to convert in this context, in which case going on Rogan was a bad idea because the cost of converting some of his audience into Bernie Sanders supporters was putting a proportional amount of your own much larger audience into the alt-right recruitment pipeline
or audiences are hard to convert and don't stick around, in which case going on Rogan was a bad idea because you're just wasting time on an ineffective platform for no gain whilst legitimizing a dude who keeps humanizing far-right bigots in front of large crowds.
The argument for going on the show being a good recruitment strategy for the left requires you to try and have it both ways, and you can't.
If people honestly believe that every argument is equally convincing regardless of content or presentation, it goes a long way to explaining why they're so afraid to engage with those they disagree with, less the words from their forked tongue worms their way into their souls.
1)Every argument doesn't have to be equally convincing for my claim to hold. The audience for this interview consisted of significantly more Sanders supporters than Rogan listeners (as evidenced by all the viewership stuff earlier). Since you can't convert your own audience, that means that Rogan earned a much larger pool of possible converts than Sanders did, because Sanders was proselytizing to Rogan's usual 1.2-1.8m listeners while Rogan had access to the 6m+ that Sanders brought to the table. If they were equally convincing, then Rogan made way more headway than Sanders did, but even if Sanders was four times as effective as Rogan that would just make it a wash which is still a bad trade because you're trading alt-right introductions 1 for 1 with Bernie introductions (which, again, aren't even 'progressive introductions' or 'democrat introductions', they're just Bernie introductions, which don't translate frictionlessly into progressive support because you're dealing with an audience that if flipped at all is predisposed to flip to a position along the lines of 'I like Bernie and I've never liked the Democrats and they rigged the primary against him and Clinton killed a guy so I'd support Bernie but not any other Democrat' - which as has been mentioned is great for Bernie but not necessarily great for the left at large).
Maybe Bernie wasn't just four or five times as effective a recruiter, maybe he was ten times as effective at flipping the audience, but A)you'd still have to make the argument that trading two Sanders introductions for 1 alt-right introduction is a good trade, which is an easier but still non-zero lift and if your means for threading the 'we gained support one direction because audiences are fungible but didn't give up any in the other direction because audiences are not fungible' needle is to claim that Sanders was orders of magnitude more effective at outreach, you're the one making an outlandish claim in need of strong evidenciary support you don't have.
2)If there is any audience for whom every argument is equally convincing regardless of content or presentation, it's the sort of credulous disengaged conspiracy-theory-prone both-sides-bad populist stoner bro that is overrepresented in both Sanders' and Rogan's audiences - the exact sort of person most prone to thinking 'Bernie's gonna go on the show where Elon Musk smoked weed on camera and talked about how reality is a simulation? I definitely gotta see that! I wonder what other cool shit is on this show - maybe I'll check out the other most popular episodes, like all these ones with this Jordan Peterson guy.'
In what way do you believe Rogan prevented Sanders from getting his message out?
Well, by first priming his audience with a bunch of rhetoric about 'SJWs' and 'science religions' and conspiracy theories about the government until they became broadly less amenable to liberal ideas, but that's not really the point. He doesn't have to prevent Sanders from getting his message out. Sanders can stump to Rogan's 1-2 million average viewership all he wants for all the good it'll do him. What Rogan got in exchange was an audience five times as big to talk to, which he'll have a much easier time messaging to because it's his fucking show in the first place, as well as an easy whatabout anytime someone takes him to task for hosting alt-right personalities and acting as a gateway to their Hell Dimension - "I can't be an alt-right gateway, I had Bernie Sanders on that one time! You just don't like that I talk to both sides!"
It's a net loss. Sanders going on the show scored one point for Bernie Sanders and five points for Neonazi Recruitment and Sanders' supporters are trying to argue that doing so was a good trade because the one point for Bernie Sanders is the only thing that matters. It is, charitably, a deeply myopic stance to take.
It doesn't particularly matter what Rogan said in that interview. A source they trusted (Sanders) indicated to them that Rogan was a legitimate venue who interviewed trustworthy people. Now that they've tried this new podcast that they've been shown interviews people worth listening to, some portion those millions of people are going to go look at his other interviews, including his most popular ones, where he credulously interviews people like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and assists them in presenting themselves as reasonable people who have a useful perspective and make some good points, and some portion of those are going to get sucked into thinking that maybe this Ben Shapiro guy is right about Israel/Palestine and maybe he's right about other stuff too and that's how radicalization happens.
Moreover, there's a whole ecosystem of people already going through that process and now they and Bernie supporters are both gonna respond to any attempt to call it out as an alt-right recruitment path by saying 'nu uh, he talks to both sides! remember when he interviewed Sanders?' and it's going to be harder to interrupt all the recruitment that was already happening independently of Bernie's audience because this interview has helped legitimize him.
I feel like I've explained this point several times and you keep trying to circle back to the fallacious idea that if Rogan didn't actually say "Nazis are great and minorities are bad! Join Gab!" during this specific interview then everything must be fine, which is missing the point by a mile and then some.
In what way do you believe Rogan prevented Sanders from getting his message out?
Well, by first priming his audience with a bunch of rhetoric about 'SJWs' and 'science religions' and conspiracy theories about the government until they became broadly less amenable to liberal ideas, but that's not really the point. He doesn't have to prevent Sanders from getting his message out. Sanders can stump to Rogan's 1-2 million average viewership all he wants for all the good it'll do him. What Rogan got in exchange was an audience five times as big to talk to, which he'll have a much easier time messaging to because it's his fucking show in the first place, as well as an easy whatabout anytime someone takes him to task for hosting alt-right personalities and acting as a gateway to their Hell Dimension - "I can't be an alt-right gateway, I had Bernie Sanders on that one time! You just don't like that I talk to both sides!"
It's a net loss. Sanders going on the show scored one point for Bernie Sanders and five points for Neonazi Recruitment and Sanders' supporters are trying to argue that doing so was a good trade because the one point for Bernie Sanders is the only thing that matters. It is, charitably, a deeply myopic stance to take.
It doesn't particularly matter what Rogan said in that interview. A source they trusted (Sanders) indicated to them that Rogan was a legitimate venue who interviewed trustworthy people. Now that they've tried this new podcast that they've been shown interviews people worth listening to, some portion those millions of people are going to go look at his other interviews, including his most popular ones, where he credulously interviews people like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and assists them in presenting themselves as reasonable people who have a useful perspective and make some good points, and some portion of those are going to get sucked into thinking that maybe this Ben Shapiro guy is right about Israel/Palestine and maybe he's right about other stuff too and that's how radicalization happens.
Moreover, there's a whole ecosystem of people already going through that process and now they and Bernie supporters are both gonna respond to any attempt to call it out as an alt-right recruitment path by saying 'nu uh, he talks to both sides! remember when he interviewed Sanders?' and it's going to be harder to interrupt all the recruitment that was already happening independently of Bernie's audience because this interview has helped legitimize him.
I feel like I've explained this point several times and you keep trying to circle back to the fallacious idea that if Rogan didn't actually say "Nazis are great and minorities are bad! Join Gab!" during this specific interview then everything must be fine, which is missing the point by a mile and then some.
Pretty sure "everything must be fine" is a position that nobody has actually expressed in this thread.
In what way do you believe Rogan prevented Sanders from getting his message out?
Well, by first priming his audience with a bunch of rhetoric about 'SJWs' and 'science religions' and conspiracy theories about the government until they became broadly less amenable to liberal ideas, but that's not really the point. He doesn't have to prevent Sanders from getting his message out. Sanders can stump to Rogan's 1-2 million average viewership all he wants for all the good it'll do him. What Rogan got in exchange was an audience five times as big to talk to, which he'll have a much easier time messaging to because it's his fucking show in the first place, as well as an easy whatabout anytime someone takes him to task for hosting alt-right personalities and acting as a gateway to their Hell Dimension - "I can't be an alt-right gateway, I had Bernie Sanders on that one time! You just don't like that I talk to both sides!"
It's a net loss. Sanders going on the show scored one point for Bernie Sanders and five points for Neonazi Recruitment and Sanders' supporters are trying to argue that doing so was a good trade because the one point for Bernie Sanders is the only thing that matters. It is, charitably, a deeply myopic stance to take.
It doesn't particularly matter what Rogan said in that interview. A source they trusted (Sanders) indicated to them that Rogan was a legitimate venue who interviewed trustworthy people. Now that they've tried this new podcast that they've been shown interviews people worth listening to, some portion those millions of people are going to go look at his other interviews, including his most popular ones, where he credulously interviews people like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and assists them in presenting themselves as reasonable people who have a useful perspective and make some good points, and some portion of those are going to get sucked into thinking that maybe this Ben Shapiro guy is right about Israel/Palestine and maybe he's right about other stuff too and that's how radicalization happens.
Moreover, there's a whole ecosystem of people already going through that process and now they and Bernie supporters are both gonna respond to any attempt to call it out as an alt-right recruitment path by saying 'nu uh, he talks to both sides! remember when he interviewed Sanders?' and it's going to be harder to interrupt all the recruitment that was already happening independently of Bernie's audience because this interview has helped legitimize him.
I feel like I've explained this point several times and you keep trying to circle back to the fallacious idea that if Rogan didn't actually say "Nazis are great and minorities are bad! Join Gab!" during this specific interview then everything must be fine, which is missing the point by a mile and then some.
I reject the idea that Bernie's followers started listening Rogan's other interviews. If that had happened, we would see a spike of viewership for Rogan after the one Sanders did. We don't.
Finally, you can't tip-toe your way around bad faith arguments. "Oh gee" you say"If only Bernie Sanders had never gone on Joe Rogan, then the people who refused to listen to me tell them that Alex Jones is a shithead would listen to me".
To test the hypothesis that Bernie is leading so many leftests to Joe Rogan like lambs to the slaughter, I decided to check out if his Youtube views went up after the Sanders interview.
Luckly, there was a perfect video for doing this. One day after Bernie, Joe had Brendan Schaub on his show. Brendan is a podcaster/comedian that used to be an MMA fighter.
The last time Brendan was on Joe's podcast was a scant 2 months ago, and his appearance generated 2.5 million views.
The recent appearance has thus far generated 1.8 million views. Now it's possible that over the next month or two an extra million or more views will come in but that is not the usual pattern for Youtube views.
Early findings show that Bernie's effect on Joe's lasting audience is wildly exaggerated.
If that's the conclusion you want to draw, go nuts. But again: If Rogan's effect on Sanders' audience is negligible, then Sanders' effect on Rogan's audience is also negligible and the idea that anything was gained for the left by going on the show is undercut, unless you can make the argument that exposure to Sanders was specifically much more effective at flipping Rogan fans than exposure to Rogan was at flipping Sanders fans.
You cannot simultaneously argue that 1)there was no harm from Sanders going on Rogan's show because people tuning in for one interview aren't converted into habitual supporters/won't listen to other content and also that 2)it's good and important for the left to go onto platforms like the JRE in order to win converts who will seek out their other content.
Either audiences are easy to convert in this context, in which case going on Rogan was a bad idea because the cost of converting some of his audience into Bernie Sanders supporters was putting a proportional amount of your own much larger audience into the alt-right recruitment pipeline
or audiences are hard to convert and don't stick around, in which case going on Rogan was a bad idea because you're just wasting time on an ineffective platform for no gain whilst legitimizing a dude who keeps humanizing far-right bigots in front of large crowds.
The argument for going on the show being a good recruitment strategy for the left requires you to try and have it both ways, and you can't.
If people honestly believe that every argument is equally convincing regardless of content or presentation, it goes a long way to explaining why they're so afraid to engage with those they disagree with, less the words from their forked tongue worms their way into their souls.
1)Every argument doesn't have to be equally convincing for my claim to hold. The audience for this interview consisted of significantly more Sanders supporters than Rogan listeners (as evidenced by all the viewership stuff earlier). Since you can't convert your own audience, that means that Rogan earned a much larger pool of possible converts than Sanders did, because Sanders was proselytizing to Rogan's usual 1.2-1.8m listeners while Rogan had access to the 6m+ that Sanders brought to the table. If they were equally convincing, then Rogan made way more headway than Sanders did, but even if Sanders was four times as effective as Rogan that would just make it a wash which is still a bad trade because you're trading alt-right introductions 1 for 1 with Bernie introductions (which, again, aren't even 'progressive introductions' or 'democrat introductions', they're just Bernie introductions, which don't translate frictionlessly into progressive support because you're dealing with an audience that if flipped at all is predisposed to flip to a position along the lines of 'I like Bernie and I've never liked the Democrats and they rigged the primary against him and Clinton killed a guy so I'd support Bernie but not any other Democrat' - which as has been mentioned is great for Bernie but not necessarily great for the left at large).
Maybe Bernie wasn't just four or five times as effective a recruiter, maybe he was ten times as effective at flipping the audience, but A)you'd still have to make the argument that trading two Sanders introductions for 1 alt-right introduction is a good trade, which is an easier but still non-zero lift and if your means for threading the 'we gained support one direction because audiences are fungible but didn't give up any in the other direction because audiences are not fungible' needle is to claim that Sanders was orders of magnitude more effective at outreach, you're the one making an outlandish claim in need of strong evidenciary support you don't have.
2)If there is any audience for whom every argument is equally convincing regardless of content or presentation, it's the sort of credulous disengaged conspiracy-theory-prone both-sides-bad populist stoner bro that is overrepresented in both Sanders' and Rogan's audiences - the exact sort of person most prone to thinking 'Bernie's gonna go on the show where Elon Musk smoked weed on camera and talked about how reality is a simulation? I definitely gotta see that! I wonder what other cool shit is on this show - maybe I'll check out the other most popular episodes, like all these ones with this Jordan Peterson guy.'
Question before I respond:
Are we assuming that this one show completely and irreversibly flipped some Bernie Bros into Alt-righters and via versa, or are we acknowledging that changing one's ideals is a process that can stop at any point well short of that?
And if we agree to the second, are we also saying anyone who isn't any longer a full-fledged Bernie Bro or alt-righter "lost to the cause" or simply no longer adhering to the full dogma? And is there any difference between the two when they become lost or not?
I have to ask because several in the thread give the impression that the fall to alt-right happens immediately with any change or questioning of beliefs yet an alt-righter is one until they embrace every single tenat of whatever they hold as the Liberal Truth.
Hey, here's a question for you: If calling people Nazis is going to turn people into xenophobic assholes somehow, where is the concern trolling about Fox News, et al. labeling centrist Democrats like Biden "socialists" turning all Democratic supporters into radical leftists?
Republicans calling everything socialist has likely aided the cause of socialism in the US by letting us lay claim to basically any serious social program and has made recruitment easier by presenting socialism as just the thing that isnt what conservatives do.
So......
So the rise in openly racist people hinges on them refusing to recognize their own behavior as racist, and more people openly embracing their racists beliefs as a consequence of having an openly racist president doesn't mean these people have suddenly become more racist, just that they're being more open about the beliefs they already quietly held.
Or to put it another way:
A rise is socialist beliefs is because more people are finding them appealing.
The same goes for racist and bigoted views: people are finding them appealing.
It's nothing new really, it's same old trick of conservative appropriation of liberal terminology. People expressing bigoted views are now being "discriminated against for being conservative." The reason people find this narrative appealing is because they share those bigoted views, and this reassures them that they aren't actually bigots, the real bigots are the ones who won't tolerate their bigotry.
"They were racist all along" sounds like a wonderful excuse to treat people like they are less than you and not feel bad about it.
You don't think I feel bad about living in a systemically racist society?
I think you shouldn't use, much less have to use, post-hoc excuses to justify your behavior.
To say racism makes your skin crawl and you want nothing to do with anyone who partakes in it is fine. Maybe not the epitome of tolerance, but I don't think anyone here would blame you for feeling that way.
To say that it's okay to treat racists with nothing but contempt and disdain, and anyone that is turned off by that is also a racist, just not ready to admit it, not only doesn't really line up with how people work, it sets a very dangerous precedent to treat anyone that disagrees with you as racist.
And that is not the logic of someone dedicated to social equality. It's the logic of a fanatic.
There exist opinions that should disqualify people from polite society. Supporting racism or fascism are two examples, even if the people who support them believe they have good reasons for doing so. I'm honestly aghast that you implied wanting nothing to do with anyone who partakes in racism is intolerant and have multiple people agreeing with you. There's been too much suffering already at the hands of racists and fascists, and treating them with kids' gloves because it's uncomfortable to confront is not only what's led us to this point, but an out available only to those who are not currently their targets.
This idea that we can't tell the difference between a moral, immoral, or neutral point of view or action, and that by vehemently condemning and shunning those that support the immoral ones we are really priming ourselves to paint anyone with different opinions on *anything* with the same brush is frankly stunning. I, and assume most people in these threads, base my political beliefs on my morality. I don't pick my stances based on who I vote for, I vote for the people who most closely align with the beliefs I already have.
Anyone still voting Republican at this point I can only assume is pro racism, pro authoritarianism, pro sexism, anti LGBTQI, and anti social welfare, to the point where they're actively harming themselves and their communities in service to those ideals. If you read about the concentration camps on the border, their history of violence and oppression against people of color and the queer community, and their contemporary attempts at dismantling our country for their pocket books and feel the need to defend them when we point out that their vision looks a lot like the Weimar Republic, you are AT BEST enabling them. Because those are really the only consistent values the GOP hold at this point, and not only are we expected to drag them kicking and screaming into a survivable future, we're expected to turn the other cheek when they continue to hate us for making their lives better. It's like Charlie Brown and the bloody football, but we keep being told that we just need to try harder or somehow trick them into voting for things that might help them instead of for their prejudices.
We know the kind of harm people like Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Gavin McInnes cause, and calling them your friends or having them on your show for a polite chat is unacceptable. I don't care how many other non-awful people you like talking to if you're repeatedly inviting them back to hang out. Because actions, and yes, even words, have consequences, as we've seen over and over and over. When you keep hosting parties with racists and non-racists, eventually the non-racists are going to catch on and stop coming.
I mean yeah fine words have consequences and these are bad people. Pretending we're doing anything useful by avoiding major platforms just because theyve been on them is laughable.
What did Joe Rogan say in the Bernie Sanders interview to convince people to become Alt-right?
No one has said Rogan said anything alt right in the Bernie interview
He has said transphobic stuff, he's friend with Alex Jones. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Steve Crowder have been guests and are absolutely bigots
Yeah but, did the viewers Sanders brought hear or see any of those things? Or does Joe had a come-hither stare he uses to turn people Alt-right while they are listening to arguments for leftist policy?
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
To test the hypothesis that Bernie is leading so many leftests to Joe Rogan like lambs to the slaughter, I decided to check out if his Youtube views went up after the Sanders interview.
Luckly, there was a perfect video for doing this. One day after Bernie, Joe had Brendan Schaub on his show. Brendan is a podcaster/comedian that used to be an MMA fighter.
The last time Brendan was on Joe's podcast was a scant 2 months ago, and his appearance generated 2.5 million views.
The recent appearance has thus far generated 1.8 million views. Now it's possible that over the next month or two an extra million or more views will come in but that is not the usual pattern for Youtube views.
Early findings show that Bernie's effect on Joe's lasting audience is wildly exaggerated.
If that's the conclusion you want to draw, go nuts. But again: If Rogan's effect on Sanders' audience is negligible, then Sanders' effect on Rogan's audience is also negligible and the idea that anything was gained for the left by going on the show is undercut, unless you can make the argument that exposure to Sanders was specifically much more effective at flipping Rogan fans than exposure to Rogan was at flipping Sanders fans.
You cannot simultaneously argue that 1)there was no harm from Sanders going on Rogan's show because people tuning in for one interview aren't converted into habitual supporters/won't listen to other content and also that 2)it's good and important for the left to go onto platforms like the JRE in order to win converts who will seek out their other content.
Either audiences are easy to convert in this context, in which case going on Rogan was a bad idea because the cost of converting some of his audience into Bernie Sanders supporters was putting a proportional amount of your own much larger audience into the alt-right recruitment pipeline
or audiences are hard to convert and don't stick around, in which case going on Rogan was a bad idea because you're just wasting time on an ineffective platform for no gain whilst legitimizing a dude who keeps humanizing far-right bigots in front of large crowds.
The argument for going on the show being a good recruitment strategy for the left requires you to try and have it both ways, and you can't.
The underlined does not follow.
In order for Joe Rogan's worst guests to have an impact on Bernie's followers, Bernie's followers have to stick around and listen to Joe Rogan's worst guests. They don't reach forward through time and space and convince people who watch content they aren't a part of.
On the other hand, every habitual Joe Rogan listener has now listened to Bernie.
You don't have to "have it both ways" to think this is a win for Bernie.
Yeah it's silly because the way this kind of system works, whether we're talking about political campaigning, advertising or doing interviews on late night shows, is by definition asymmetrical. The guest promotes medicare4all or their latest movie to the entire audience, and the host may get a tiny percentage of new viewers to stick around. When Idris Elba goes on Hot Ones to promote his latest project a bunch of new viewers might tune in because of him which is great for Sean, but the far larger audience of all the regular viewers of Hot Ones are made aware of Elba's new project.
It's ridiculous to ignore the obvious and argue over whether audiences are hard to convert or not. Even ignoring the asymmetry, Bernie Sanders is not some podcast host. His goal isn't to get people to listen to his show or whatever, it is to get across a political message to as large an audience as possible. Rogan viewers aren't meant to seek out Sander's other content, they're meant to consider his ideas for the upcoming elections.
Hey, here's a question for you: If calling people Nazis is going to turn people into xenophobic assholes somehow, where is the concern trolling about Fox News, et al. labeling centrist Democrats like Biden "socialists" turning all Democratic supporters into radical leftists?
Republicans calling everything socialist has likely aided the cause of socialism in the US by letting us lay claim to basically any serious social program and has made recruitment easier by presenting socialism as just the thing that isnt what conservatives do.
So......
So the rise in openly racist people hinges on them refusing to recognize their own behavior as racist, and more people openly embracing their racists beliefs as a consequence of having an openly racist president doesn't mean these people have suddenly become more racist, just that they're being more open about the beliefs they already quietly held.
Or to put it another way:
A rise is socialist beliefs is because more people are finding them appealing.
The same goes for racist and bigoted views: people are finding them appealing.
It's nothing new really, it's same old trick of conservative appropriation of liberal terminology. People expressing bigoted views are now being "discriminated against for being conservative." The reason people find this narrative appealing is because they share those bigoted views, and this reassures them that they aren't actually bigots, the real bigots are the ones who won't tolerate their bigotry.
"They were racist all along" sounds like a wonderful excuse to treat people like they are less than you and not feel bad about it.
You don't think I feel bad about living in a systemically racist society?
I think you shouldn't use, much less have to use, post-hoc excuses to justify your behavior.
To say racism makes your skin crawl and you want nothing to do with anyone who partakes in it is fine. Maybe not the epitome of tolerance, but I don't think anyone here would blame you for feeling that way.
To say that it's okay to treat racists with nothing but contempt and disdain, and anyone that is turned off by that is also a racist, just not ready to admit it, not only doesn't really line up with how people work, it sets a very dangerous precedent to treat anyone that disagrees with you as racist.
And that is not the logic of someone dedicated to social equality. It's the logic of a fanatic.
There exist opinions that should disqualify people from polite society. Supporting racism or fascism are two examples, even if the people who support them believe they have good reasons for doing so. I'm honestly aghast that you implied wanting nothing to do with anyone who partakes in racism is intolerant and have multiple people agreeing with you. There's been too much suffering already at the hands of racists and fascists, and treating them with kids' gloves because it's uncomfortable to confront is not only what's led us to this point, but an out available only to those who are not currently their targets.
This idea that we can't tell the difference between a moral, immoral, or neutral point of view or action, and that by vehemently condemning and shunning those that support the immoral ones we are really priming ourselves to paint anyone with different opinions on *anything* with the same brush is frankly stunning. I, and assume most people in these threads, base my political beliefs on my morality. I don't pick my stances based on who I vote for, I vote for the people who most closely align with the beliefs I already have.
Anyone still voting Republican at this point I can only assume is pro racism, pro authoritarianism, pro sexism, anti LGBTQI, and anti social welfare, to the point where they're actively harming themselves and their communities in service to those ideals. If you read about the concentration camps on the border, their history of violence and oppression against people of color and the queer community, and their contemporary attempts at dismantling our country for their pocket books and feel the need to defend them when we point out that their vision looks a lot like the Weimar Republic, you are AT BEST enabling them. Because those are really the only consistent values the GOP hold at this point, and not only are we expected to drag them kicking and screaming into a survivable future, we're expected to turn the other cheek when they continue to hate us for making their lives better. It's like Charlie Brown and the bloody football, but we keep being told that we just need to try harder or somehow trick them into voting for things that might help them instead of for their prejudices.
We know the kind of harm people like Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Gavin McInnes cause, and calling them your friends or having them on your show for a polite chat is unacceptable. I don't care how many other non-awful people you like talking to if you're repeatedly inviting them back to hang out. Because actions, and yes, even words, have consequences, as we've seen over and over and over. When you keep hosting parties with racists and non-racists, eventually the non-racists are going to catch on and stop coming.
As I said, saying you don't want to have anything to do with anyone who deals in racism is fine.
However, when someone points out that your absolute position might turn away people, possibly even to those very ideologies, and you respond with "they were already racists to begin with," that is the kind of Post-hoc justification that has given us such wonderful things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Reign of Terror.
Someone disagreeing with you on one point does not mean they oppose all your beliefs, someone questioning your methods does not mean they do not believe in the idea or urgency behind those methods. No one has the omniscience to know that absolute correct way to solve any problem, and noone is ever going to fully 100% agree with you on all points, and anyone who says they do is lying to you, probably because they are too afraid of what might happen if you found out.
Yet half the people on this thread have been talking like every statement from the above is absolutely false.
EDIT: added an important bit that will hopefully not be ignored because it wouldn't fit their argument. Didn't notice it until almost 30 minutes later. :bigfrown:
There was a time not long ago where Joe’s position on Trans folk would have been avant-garde. Naturally, we seek progress and that’s good. What was great in the past is no longer great. However, there seems to be no gradient. The prevailing opinion seems to be that either you are a 100% full and true believer of all the most cutting edge and controversial liberal opinions or Fuck You, Go Away. I posit that this is extremely unhelpful and always has been. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that.
Moreover, this is what drives people away. Because I’m describing is not a set of beliefs, a creed, a philosophy or a party platform. It is an orthodoxy, from which variation is heresy punishable by excommunication. It is an ugly look on anyone and we are no exception.
Frankiedarling on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
Apologizing for Bernie going on the Joe Rogan experience is probably the clearest example yet of how there is a cleavage in "the left" that is in fact only economically left, and there are a not-insignificant amount of "leftists" who are either socially "conservative" (regressive) or otherwise apathetic/not as concerned with social welfare.
Incredible how "tell it like it is" socialists will all of a sudden wind up in rhetorical pretzels when one of their own goes on a show that has repeatedly hosted the likes of Shapiro, Peterson, and Gavin fuckin McInnes. Last I checked being anti-fascist means making these assholes persona non grata, not throwing out thinkpieces about how, actually, we're going to convince fascist-curious folks to switch sides via the millennial equivalent of tv punditry.
if you cannot tell the difference between rogan, and then shapiro, and then richard spencer...
if you cannot tell the difference between going to someone else's platform to spread your message to their viewers and having them come on your platform...
if you don't understand that evein -if- rogan was literally the same as shapiro and was literally the same as spencer, that he has many listeners who simply aren't, there's no discussion to be had. that being said if rogan actually was on the level of Spencer I'd have a problem with bernie in any way being supportive of his project, or bringing eyes to it or getting clicks.
persona non grata the nazis. debate the faux intellectuals (or ignore them, I think they're the absolute least important people in this puzzle and get way more attention than warranted from everyone). get interviewed by the people too ignorant and "open minded" to stop talking to the faux intellectuals and batshit conspiracy nuts.
it's like you have no conception of who you reach by going on rogan. if you think everyone that lisens to rogan is a fascist you legit just have no notion of how big his podcast is. very few people can spend hours a day or week knowing everything ben shapiro has tweeted. they might agree or disagree with what they heard him say on rogan, or maybe they missed the episode.
the left has a LOT to say to a LOT of people. closing it off as strictly as you're proposing is death. I am NOT saying you have to go on everyone's show at all. but fox isn't tucker, rogan isn't the fucking daily shoah.
In what way do you believe Rogan prevented Sanders from getting his message out?
Well, by first priming his audience with a bunch of rhetoric about 'SJWs' and 'science religions' and conspiracy theories about the government until they became broadly less amenable to liberal ideas, but that's not really the point. He doesn't have to prevent Sanders from getting his message out. Sanders can stump to Rogan's 1-2 million average viewership all he wants for all the good it'll do him. What Rogan got in exchange was an audience five times as big to talk to, which he'll have a much easier time messaging to because it's his fucking show in the first place, as well as an easy whatabout anytime someone takes him to task for hosting alt-right personalities and acting as a gateway to their Hell Dimension - "I can't be an alt-right gateway, I had Bernie Sanders on that one time! You just don't like that I talk to both sides!"
It's a net loss. Sanders going on the show scored one point for Bernie Sanders and five points for Neonazi Recruitment and Sanders' supporters are trying to argue that doing so was a good trade because the one point for Bernie Sanders is the only thing that matters. It is, charitably, a deeply myopic stance to take.
It doesn't particularly matter what Rogan said in that interview. A source they trusted (Sanders) indicated to them that Rogan was a legitimate venue who interviewed trustworthy people. Now that they've tried this new podcast that they've been shown interviews people worth listening to, some portion those millions of people are going to go look at his other interviews, including his most popular ones, where he credulously interviews people like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and assists them in presenting themselves as reasonable people who have a useful perspective and make some good points, and some portion of those are going to get sucked into thinking that maybe this Ben Shapiro guy is right about Israel/Palestine and maybe he's right about other stuff too and that's how radicalization happens.
Moreover, there's a whole ecosystem of people already going through that process and now they and Bernie supporters are both gonna respond to any attempt to call it out as an alt-right recruitment path by saying 'nu uh, he talks to both sides! remember when he interviewed Sanders?' and it's going to be harder to interrupt all the recruitment that was already happening independently of Bernie's audience because this interview has helped legitimize him.
I feel like I've explained this point several times and you keep trying to circle back to the fallacious idea that if Rogan didn't actually say "Nazis are great and minorities are bad! Join Gab!" during this specific interview then everything must be fine, which is missing the point by a mile and then some.
I reject the idea that Bernie's followers started listening Rogan's other interviews. If that had happened, we would see a spike of viewership for Rogan after the one Sanders did. We don't.
Finally, you can't tip-toe your way around bad faith arguments. "Oh gee" you say"If only Bernie Sanders had never gone on Joe Rogan, then the people who refused to listen to me tell them that Alex Jones is a shithead would listen to me".
The person who you are describing doesn't exist.
It doesn't matter if you reject it when he got a pretty significant bump in subs and views for about a week. And for the matter of the viewership spike, yes we absolutely do:
There was a time not long ago where Joe’s position on Trans folk would have been avant-garde. Naturally, we seek progress and that’s good. What was great in the past is no longer great. However, there seems to be no gradient. The prevailing opinion seems to be that either you are a 100% full and true believer of all the most cutting edge and controversial liberal opinions or Fuck You, Go Away. I posit that this is extremely unhelpful and always has been. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that.
Moreover, this is what drives people away. Because I’m describing is not a set of beliefs, a creed, a philosophy or a party platform. It is an orthodoxy, from which variation is heresy punishable by excommunication. It is an ugly look on anyone and we are no exception.
Nothing I've seen from Rogan on trans people would be avant garde in the 90s let alone now. Many of his guests most certainly aren't. Not when you have Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson on the list. Nor does most of the thread arguments have anything to do with that.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
This information is super easy to find any time, by the way. Bernie got Joe some subs and a huge spike of views for about a week and probably a few thousand extra people who are now gonna see Ben Shapiro treated as a rational good guy and buy into the bullshit.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
There was a time not long ago where Joe’s position on Trans folk would have been avant-garde. Naturally, we seek progress and that’s good. What was great in the past is no longer great. However, there seems to be no gradient. The prevailing opinion seems to be that either you are a 100% full and true believer of all the most cutting edge and controversial liberal opinions or Fuck You, Go Away. I posit that this is extremely unhelpful and always has been. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that.
Moreover, this is what drives people away. Because I’m describing is not a set of beliefs, a creed, a philosophy or a party platform. It is an orthodoxy, from which variation is heresy punishable by excommunication. It is an ugly look on anyone and we are no exception.
If treating humans with dignity and allowing them to truly be themselves is a cutting edge, controversial liberal opinion... I guess I'm on the bleeding edge on not being a dick to people to make myself feel more comfortable.
This information is super easy to find any time, by the way. Bernie got Joe some subs and a huge spike of views for about a week and probably a few thousand extra people who are now gonna see Ben Shapiro treated as a rational good guy and buy into the bullshit.
This a huge assumption that just gets made over and over here.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
This information is super easy to find any time, by the way. Bernie got Joe some subs and a huge spike of views for about a week and probably a few thousand extra people who are now gonna see Ben Shapiro treated as a rational good guy and buy into the bullshit.
This a huge assumption that just gets made over and over here.
I watched quite a few of the interviews.
I don't appreciate being gaslit over what is actually being shown on the JRE.
This information is super easy to find any time, by the way. Bernie got Joe some subs and a huge spike of views for about a week and probably a few thousand extra people who are now gonna see Ben Shapiro treated as a rational good guy and buy into the bullshit.
This a huge assumption that just gets made over and over here.
I watched quite a few of the interviews.
I don't appreciate being gaslit over what is actually being shown on the JRE.
No one is gaslighting you jfc. The assumption is that this will win anyone, let alone significant numbers of people, over to a given random guest at the polar opposite end of the political spectrum from the guest that got them watching.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
To add to that, if we close ranks to that extent where exactly can we go?
CNN recently literally platformed Richard Spencer. So CNN interviews and debates are out, right? They also blasted trump speeches into millions of living rooms throughout 2015.
I guess that leaves msnbc for mass cable news reach, I'm sure they have plenty to own up to being a corporate media entity but I don't know off the top of my head. I'm sure having a third of the exposure won't limit anyones reach at all.
Subs are better info than views, but what's actually going on in the minds of the people behind those subs and views is still a black box.
I think Abbalah has been getting the short shrift about the idea that both the harms and benefits of the interview are proportional to the change in viewership. I happen to think that is true than the individual theories and testimonials put forth to refute the idea.
The problem is that there is a clear missing link involving what people actually do with the information. We can know that the Bernie Interview made Joe Rogan more popular or didn't, but the reasons for this popularity cannot be adequately expressed by these numbers.
Like, a Bernie fan naive to Rogan could be one of those views or subs. Or someone passing by familiar with Joe Rogan who doesn't sub or religiously watch his podcast (much like I don't watch every Epic Rap Battle) could peripherally be interested in a presidential candidate going through the internet talk radio format. We just don't know. We will know, though, if it works or if it doesn't.
That is, unless you guys make this super complicated and meta it up.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
And CNNs trashyness has little to do with whatever bothsidesing they're doing.
If news stations were like law firms, CNN would be some personal injury firm with a lead attorney that had "The Jackhammer" as a middle name on his business card.
Learn Rogan exists, listen to Shapiro, shoot up a wal-mart? Feels truthy, lacks data.
I feel like people don't just fail to grasp who Rogan is... They also fail to grasp who Jones is. Dude is a grifter who used to be on local AM radio in Austin, I've heard him interviewed by the FM morning shows off and on for 20 years. Back in the day he was anti-GHW Bush and raging about the New World Order and world government conspiracies... then it was the Clintons, then 9/11 Trutherism and anti-Bush again, now it's gay frogs I guess? Anyhow it's a grift. It's all a grift. If there stopped being money in the alt-right, he'd just pivot to leftist conspiracy instead.
I mean, Austin is not a hotbed of rightwing sentiment and white nationalism. After 20 years of daily exposure to Jones on the radio station named after LBJ, it's still lefty af. I feel like we might be getting the causal relationship in this correlation backwards.
Ok, so noone hears the liberal message outside of our echo chamber because everyone outside of it has let themselves be tainted, base does not grow, we risk losing the election, and having Trump get another 4 years to ruin the country and probably the planet too.
But we never had to once compromise on our ideals by engaging with them, and that's the important part, right?
Learn Rogan exists, listen to Shapiro, shoot up a wal-mart? Feels truthy, lacks data.
I feel like people don't just fail to grasp who Rogan is... They also fail to grasp who Jones is. Dude is a grifter who used to be on local AM radio in Austin, I've heard him interviewed by the FM morning shows off and on for 20 years. Back in the day he was anti-GHW Bush and raging about the New World Order and world government conspiracies... then it was the Clintons, then 9/11 Trutherism and anti-Bush again, now it's gay frogs I guess? Anyhow it's a grift. It's all a grift. If there stopped being money in the alt-right, he'd just pivot to leftist conspiracy instead.
I mean, Austin is not a hotbed of rightwing sentiment and white nationalism. After 20 years of daily exposure to Jones on the radio station named after LBJ, it's still lefty af. I feel like we might be getting the causal relationship in this correlation backwards.
Whether or not he's grifting or genuine doesn't much matter to the people who believe him, and of things like hound the families of shooting victims out of their homes because they're "lying about their non existent children and are false flag actors"
Y'all get that some of us, who have in fact been watching this phenomenon for years already, have in fact watched people fall down the funnel right? Like I'm not making stuff up cause I read about it somewhere. I'm not making up a story I think is playing out. I have literally watched people go down this particular hole.
A lot of these "but what if they so much as hear Shapiro" arguments rely on an assumption that we fundamentally cant be more appealing than them which is p. depressing because have you ever heard that guy talk?
In what way do you believe Rogan prevented Sanders from getting his message out?
Well, by first priming his audience with a bunch of rhetoric about 'SJWs' and 'science religions' and conspiracy theories about the government until they became broadly less amenable to liberal ideas, but that's not really the point. He doesn't have to prevent Sanders from getting his message out. Sanders can stump to Rogan's 1-2 million average viewership all he wants for all the good it'll do him. What Rogan got in exchange was an audience five times as big to talk to, which he'll have a much easier time messaging to because it's his fucking show in the first place, as well as an easy whatabout anytime someone takes him to task for hosting alt-right personalities and acting as a gateway to their Hell Dimension - "I can't be an alt-right gateway, I had Bernie Sanders on that one time! You just don't like that I talk to both sides!"
It's a net loss. Sanders going on the show scored one point for Bernie Sanders and five points for Neonazi Recruitment and Sanders' supporters are trying to argue that doing so was a good trade because the one point for Bernie Sanders is the only thing that matters. It is, charitably, a deeply myopic stance to take.
It doesn't particularly matter what Rogan said in that interview. A source they trusted (Sanders) indicated to them that Rogan was a legitimate venue who interviewed trustworthy people. Now that they've tried this new podcast that they've been shown interviews people worth listening to, some portion those millions of people are going to go look at his other interviews, including his most popular ones, where he credulously interviews people like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and assists them in presenting themselves as reasonable people who have a useful perspective and make some good points, and some portion of those are going to get sucked into thinking that maybe this Ben Shapiro guy is right about Israel/Palestine and maybe he's right about other stuff too and that's how radicalization happens.
Moreover, there's a whole ecosystem of people already going through that process and now they and Bernie supporters are both gonna respond to any attempt to call it out as an alt-right recruitment path by saying 'nu uh, he talks to both sides! remember when he interviewed Sanders?' and it's going to be harder to interrupt all the recruitment that was already happening independently of Bernie's audience because this interview has helped legitimize him.
I feel like I've explained this point several times and you keep trying to circle back to the fallacious idea that if Rogan didn't actually say "Nazis are great and minorities are bad! Join Gab!" during this specific interview then everything must be fine, which is missing the point by a mile and then some.
I reject the idea that Bernie's followers started listening Rogan's other interviews. If that had happened, we would see a spike of viewership for Rogan after the one Sanders did. We don't.
Finally, you can't tip-toe your way around bad faith arguments. "Oh gee" you say"If only Bernie Sanders had never gone on Joe Rogan, then the people who refused to listen to me tell them that Alex Jones is a shithead would listen to me".
The person who you are describing doesn't exist.
It doesn't matter if you reject it when he got a pretty significant bump in subs and views for about a week. And for the matter of the viewership spike, yes we absolutely do:
You are just highlighting the people who watched the Bernie interview a day or two later.
I might be wrong here but without any like labels it is really hard to tell.
Learn Rogan exists, listen to Shapiro, shoot up a wal-mart? Feels truthy, lacks data.
I feel like people don't just fail to grasp who Rogan is... They also fail to grasp who Jones is. Dude is a grifter who used to be on local AM radio in Austin, I've heard him interviewed by the FM morning shows off and on for 20 years. Back in the day he was anti-GHW Bush and raging about the New World Order and world government conspiracies... then it was the Clintons, then 9/11 Trutherism and anti-Bush again, now it's gay frogs I guess? Anyhow it's a grift. It's all a grift. If there stopped being money in the alt-right, he'd just pivot to leftist conspiracy instead.
I mean, Austin is not a hotbed of rightwing sentiment and white nationalism. After 20 years of daily exposure to Jones on the radio station named after LBJ, it's still lefty af. I feel like we might be getting the causal relationship in this correlation backwards.
Whether or not he's grifting or genuine doesn't much matter to the people who believe him, and of things like hound the families of shooting victims out of their homes because they're "lying about their non existent children and are false flag actors"
There's no getting around how much of a silly goose the guy is and has always been. I'm just saying, if you have Alex Jones on your show, in my experience, it's because you want to laugh at the nutbar while being absolutely dead certain that he will never break character on air. It's like his greatest skill.
It's not because you believe a damn thing he says, it's because everybody's already in on the joke.
A lot of these "but what if they so much as hear Shapiro" arguments rely on an assumption that we fundamentally cant be more appealing than them which is p. depressing because have you ever heard that guy talk?
Sharpiro's specialty is the "drown them in bullshit" variety. It works quite well on a fair number of people because he spits out so much bullshit it's impossible to refute it all, therefore he must "have done good points" in their minds.
It's a bit harder to appeal when you can't just make shit up.
Learn Rogan exists, listen to Shapiro, shoot up a wal-mart? Feels truthy, lacks data.
I feel like people don't just fail to grasp who Rogan is... They also fail to grasp who Jones is. Dude is a grifter who used to be on local AM radio in Austin, I've heard him interviewed by the FM morning shows off and on for 20 years. Back in the day he was anti-GHW Bush and raging about the New World Order and world government conspiracies... then it was the Clintons, then 9/11 Trutherism and anti-Bush again, now it's gay frogs I guess? Anyhow it's a grift. It's all a grift. If there stopped being money in the alt-right, he'd just pivot to leftist conspiracy instead.
I mean, Austin is not a hotbed of rightwing sentiment and white nationalism. After 20 years of daily exposure to Jones on the radio station named after LBJ, it's still lefty af. I feel like we might be getting the causal relationship in this correlation backwards.
Whether or not he's grifting or genuine doesn't much matter to the people who believe him, and of things like hound the families of shooting victims out of their homes because they're "lying about their non existent children and are false flag actors"
There's no getting around how much of a silly goose the guy is and has always been. I'm just saying, if you have Alex Jones on your show, in my experience, it's because you want to laugh at the nutbar while being absolutely dead certain that he will never break character on air. It's like his greatest skill.
It's not because you believe a damn thing he says, it's because everybody's already in on the joke.
And yet there are people who are actually in hiding for their own safety because of Jones and his actions. I doubt they think that he's a joke.
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I depute the idea that Breitbart can deliver an uninterrupted hour of Bernie. That doesn't seem like a thing that can happen.
I'm not even going to talk about the idea that a Klan Rally would have him come and speak.
You could say the same shit about the Iowa State Fair.
The Iowa State Fair glorifies and normalizes the imprisonment and murder of animals- it not just their guests the entire event celebrates it. They actively auction off slaves there. People cheer when someone puts in a new high bid for the right to murder and consume someone. Why would any liberal attend that event, or support any other liberal attending it?
If you were a meat is murder vegetarian then it would indeed not make sense to attend the event or support people who did... Unless you were attending in a manner explicitly to bring to like the practice for which you had significant disagreements with the fair(like a protest...)
So I don't understand what you're trying to say.
It doesn't make sense if your goal out of the political process is anything more than value signaling. Say I'm whatever confluence of beliefs we are treating as the One True Liberal, plus meat is murder vegetarianism. I should refuse to support any of the democratic candidates? Any candidate I support shouldn't appear on any TV broadcast with a non-vegan cooking segment?
Jill Stein 2020 Here We GO!
You guys can wail and gnash teeth, but two things are certain:
1. He isn't some alt-right succubus (no matter how bad you really want him to be)
2. Keeping left leaning folks from going on his show is LITERALLY leaving votes on the table. And a lot of those votes are in states the democrats LOST last election.
1)Every argument doesn't have to be equally convincing for my claim to hold. The audience for this interview consisted of significantly more Sanders supporters than Rogan listeners (as evidenced by all the viewership stuff earlier). Since you can't convert your own audience, that means that Rogan earned a much larger pool of possible converts than Sanders did, because Sanders was proselytizing to Rogan's usual 1.2-1.8m listeners while Rogan had access to the 6m+ that Sanders brought to the table. If they were equally convincing, then Rogan made way more headway than Sanders did, but even if Sanders was four times as effective as Rogan that would just make it a wash which is still a bad trade because you're trading alt-right introductions 1 for 1 with Bernie introductions (which, again, aren't even 'progressive introductions' or 'democrat introductions', they're just Bernie introductions, which don't translate frictionlessly into progressive support because you're dealing with an audience that if flipped at all is predisposed to flip to a position along the lines of 'I like Bernie and I've never liked the Democrats and they rigged the primary against him and Clinton killed a guy so I'd support Bernie but not any other Democrat' - which as has been mentioned is great for Bernie but not necessarily great for the left at large).
Maybe Bernie wasn't just four or five times as effective a recruiter, maybe he was ten times as effective at flipping the audience, but A)you'd still have to make the argument that trading two Sanders introductions for 1 alt-right introduction is a good trade, which is an easier but still non-zero lift and
2)If there is any audience for whom every argument is equally convincing regardless of content or presentation, it's the sort of credulous disengaged conspiracy-theory-prone both-sides-bad populist stoner bro that is overrepresented in both Sanders' and Rogan's audiences - the exact sort of person most prone to thinking 'Bernie's gonna go on the show where Elon Musk smoked weed on camera and talked about how reality is a simulation? I definitely gotta see that! I wonder what other cool shit is on this show - maybe I'll check out the other most popular episodes, like all these ones with this Jordan Peterson guy.'
You must have missed my answer when you asked this question yesterday.
It doesn't particularly matter what Rogan said in that interview. A source they trusted (Sanders) indicated to them that Rogan was a legitimate venue who interviewed trustworthy people. Now that they've tried this new podcast that they've been shown interviews people worth listening to, some portion those millions of people are going to go look at his other interviews, including his most popular ones, where he credulously interviews people like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and assists them in presenting themselves as reasonable people who have a useful perspective and make some good points, and some portion of those are going to get sucked into thinking that maybe this Ben Shapiro guy is right about Israel/Palestine and maybe he's right about other stuff too and that's how radicalization happens.
Moreover, there's a whole ecosystem of people already going through that process and now they and Bernie supporters are both gonna respond to any attempt to call it out as an alt-right recruitment path by saying 'nu uh, he talks to both sides! remember when he interviewed Sanders?' and it's going to be harder to interrupt all the recruitment that was already happening independently of Bernie's audience because this interview has helped legitimize him.
I feel like I've explained this point several times and you keep trying to circle back to the fallacious idea that if Rogan didn't actually say "Nazis are great and minorities are bad! Join Gab!" during this specific interview then everything must be fine, which is missing the point by a mile and then some.
No one has said Rogan said anything alt right in the Bernie interview
He has said transphobic stuff, he's friend with Alex Jones. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Steve Crowder have been guests and are absolutely bigots
Pretty sure "everything must be fine" is a position that nobody has actually expressed in this thread.
I reject the idea that Bernie's followers started listening Rogan's other interviews. If that had happened, we would see a spike of viewership for Rogan after the one Sanders did. We don't.
Finally, you can't tip-toe your way around bad faith arguments. "Oh gee" you say"If only Bernie Sanders had never gone on Joe Rogan, then the people who refused to listen to me tell them that Alex Jones is a shithead would listen to me".
The person who you are describing doesn't exist.
Question before I respond:
Are we assuming that this one show completely and irreversibly flipped some Bernie Bros into Alt-righters and via versa, or are we acknowledging that changing one's ideals is a process that can stop at any point well short of that?
And if we agree to the second, are we also saying anyone who isn't any longer a full-fledged Bernie Bro or alt-righter "lost to the cause" or simply no longer adhering to the full dogma? And is there any difference between the two when they become lost or not?
I have to ask because several in the thread give the impression that the fall to alt-right happens immediately with any change or questioning of beliefs yet an alt-righter is one until they embrace every single tenat of whatever they hold as the Liberal Truth.
There exist opinions that should disqualify people from polite society. Supporting racism or fascism are two examples, even if the people who support them believe they have good reasons for doing so. I'm honestly aghast that you implied wanting nothing to do with anyone who partakes in racism is intolerant and have multiple people agreeing with you. There's been too much suffering already at the hands of racists and fascists, and treating them with kids' gloves because it's uncomfortable to confront is not only what's led us to this point, but an out available only to those who are not currently their targets.
This idea that we can't tell the difference between a moral, immoral, or neutral point of view or action, and that by vehemently condemning and shunning those that support the immoral ones we are really priming ourselves to paint anyone with different opinions on *anything* with the same brush is frankly stunning. I, and assume most people in these threads, base my political beliefs on my morality. I don't pick my stances based on who I vote for, I vote for the people who most closely align with the beliefs I already have.
Anyone still voting Republican at this point I can only assume is pro racism, pro authoritarianism, pro sexism, anti LGBTQI, and anti social welfare, to the point where they're actively harming themselves and their communities in service to those ideals. If you read about the concentration camps on the border, their history of violence and oppression against people of color and the queer community, and their contemporary attempts at dismantling our country for their pocket books and feel the need to defend them when we point out that their vision looks a lot like the Weimar Republic, you are AT BEST enabling them. Because those are really the only consistent values the GOP hold at this point, and not only are we expected to drag them kicking and screaming into a survivable future, we're expected to turn the other cheek when they continue to hate us for making their lives better. It's like Charlie Brown and the bloody football, but we keep being told that we just need to try harder or somehow trick them into voting for things that might help them instead of for their prejudices.
We know the kind of harm people like Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Gavin McInnes cause, and calling them your friends or having them on your show for a polite chat is unacceptable. I don't care how many other non-awful people you like talking to if you're repeatedly inviting them back to hang out. Because actions, and yes, even words, have consequences, as we've seen over and over and over. When you keep hosting parties with racists and non-racists, eventually the non-racists are going to catch on and stop coming.
Yeah but, did the viewers Sanders brought hear or see any of those things? Or does Joe had a come-hither stare he uses to turn people Alt-right while they are listening to arguments for leftist policy?
Yeah it's silly because the way this kind of system works, whether we're talking about political campaigning, advertising or doing interviews on late night shows, is by definition asymmetrical. The guest promotes medicare4all or their latest movie to the entire audience, and the host may get a tiny percentage of new viewers to stick around. When Idris Elba goes on Hot Ones to promote his latest project a bunch of new viewers might tune in because of him which is great for Sean, but the far larger audience of all the regular viewers of Hot Ones are made aware of Elba's new project.
It's ridiculous to ignore the obvious and argue over whether audiences are hard to convert or not. Even ignoring the asymmetry, Bernie Sanders is not some podcast host. His goal isn't to get people to listen to his show or whatever, it is to get across a political message to as large an audience as possible. Rogan viewers aren't meant to seek out Sander's other content, they're meant to consider his ideas for the upcoming elections.
As I said, saying you don't want to have anything to do with anyone who deals in racism is fine.
However, when someone points out that your absolute position might turn away people, possibly even to those very ideologies, and you respond with "they were already racists to begin with," that is the kind of Post-hoc justification that has given us such wonderful things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Reign of Terror.
Someone disagreeing with you on one point does not mean they oppose all your beliefs, someone questioning your methods does not mean they do not believe in the idea or urgency behind those methods. No one has the omniscience to know that absolute correct way to solve any problem, and noone is ever going to fully 100% agree with you on all points, and anyone who says they do is lying to you, probably because they are too afraid of what might happen if you found out.
Yet half the people on this thread have been talking like every statement from the above is absolutely false.
EDIT: added an important bit that will hopefully not be ignored because it wouldn't fit their argument. Didn't notice it until almost 30 minutes later. :bigfrown:
Moreover, this is what drives people away. Because I’m describing is not a set of beliefs, a creed, a philosophy or a party platform. It is an orthodoxy, from which variation is heresy punishable by excommunication. It is an ugly look on anyone and we are no exception.
if you cannot tell the difference between going to someone else's platform to spread your message to their viewers and having them come on your platform...
if you don't understand that evein -if- rogan was literally the same as shapiro and was literally the same as spencer, that he has many listeners who simply aren't, there's no discussion to be had. that being said if rogan actually was on the level of Spencer I'd have a problem with bernie in any way being supportive of his project, or bringing eyes to it or getting clicks.
persona non grata the nazis. debate the faux intellectuals (or ignore them, I think they're the absolute least important people in this puzzle and get way more attention than warranted from everyone). get interviewed by the people too ignorant and "open minded" to stop talking to the faux intellectuals and batshit conspiracy nuts.
it's like you have no conception of who you reach by going on rogan. if you think everyone that lisens to rogan is a fascist you legit just have no notion of how big his podcast is. very few people can spend hours a day or week knowing everything ben shapiro has tweeted. they might agree or disagree with what they heard him say on rogan, or maybe they missed the episode.
the left has a LOT to say to a LOT of people. closing it off as strictly as you're proposing is death. I am NOT saying you have to go on everyone's show at all. but fox isn't tucker, rogan isn't the fucking daily shoah.
some perspective would do wonders.
It doesn't matter if you reject it when he got a pretty significant bump in subs and views for about a week. And for the matter of the viewership spike, yes we absolutely do:
Nothing I've seen from Rogan on trans people would be avant garde in the 90s let alone now. Many of his guests most certainly aren't. Not when you have Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson on the list. Nor does most of the thread arguments have anything to do with that.
If treating humans with dignity and allowing them to truly be themselves is a cutting edge, controversial liberal opinion... I guess I'm on the bleeding edge on not being a dick to people to make myself feel more comfortable.
This a huge assumption that just gets made over and over here.
I watched quite a few of the interviews.
I don't appreciate being gaslit over what is actually being shown on the JRE.
No one is gaslighting you jfc. The assumption is that this will win anyone, let alone significant numbers of people, over to a given random guest at the polar opposite end of the political spectrum from the guest that got them watching.
CNN recently literally platformed Richard Spencer. So CNN interviews and debates are out, right? They also blasted trump speeches into millions of living rooms throughout 2015.
I guess that leaves msnbc for mass cable news reach, I'm sure they have plenty to own up to being a corporate media entity but I don't know off the top of my head. I'm sure having a third of the exposure won't limit anyones reach at all.
I think Abbalah has been getting the short shrift about the idea that both the harms and benefits of the interview are proportional to the change in viewership. I happen to think that is true than the individual theories and testimonials put forth to refute the idea.
The problem is that there is a clear missing link involving what people actually do with the information. We can know that the Bernie Interview made Joe Rogan more popular or didn't, but the reasons for this popularity cannot be adequately expressed by these numbers.
Like, a Bernie fan naive to Rogan could be one of those views or subs. Or someone passing by familiar with Joe Rogan who doesn't sub or religiously watch his podcast (much like I don't watch every Epic Rap Battle) could peripherally be interested in a presidential candidate going through the internet talk radio format. We just don't know. We will know, though, if it works or if it doesn't.
That is, unless you guys make this super complicated and meta it up.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
If news stations were like law firms, CNN would be some personal injury firm with a lead attorney that had "The Jackhammer" as a middle name on his business card.
I feel like people don't just fail to grasp who Rogan is... They also fail to grasp who Jones is. Dude is a grifter who used to be on local AM radio in Austin, I've heard him interviewed by the FM morning shows off and on for 20 years. Back in the day he was anti-GHW Bush and raging about the New World Order and world government conspiracies... then it was the Clintons, then 9/11 Trutherism and anti-Bush again, now it's gay frogs I guess? Anyhow it's a grift. It's all a grift. If there stopped being money in the alt-right, he'd just pivot to leftist conspiracy instead.
I mean, Austin is not a hotbed of rightwing sentiment and white nationalism. After 20 years of daily exposure to Jones on the radio station named after LBJ, it's still lefty af. I feel like we might be getting the causal relationship in this correlation backwards.
Ok, so noone hears the liberal message outside of our echo chamber because everyone outside of it has let themselves be tainted, base does not grow, we risk losing the election, and having Trump get another 4 years to ruin the country and probably the planet too.
But we never had to once compromise on our ideals by engaging with them, and that's the important part, right?
Whether or not he's grifting or genuine doesn't much matter to the people who believe him, and of things like hound the families of shooting victims out of their homes because they're "lying about their non existent children and are false flag actors"
You are just highlighting the people who watched the Bernie interview a day or two later.
I might be wrong here but without any like labels it is really hard to tell.
There's no getting around how much of a silly goose the guy is and has always been. I'm just saying, if you have Alex Jones on your show, in my experience, it's because you want to laugh at the nutbar while being absolutely dead certain that he will never break character on air. It's like his greatest skill.
It's not because you believe a damn thing he says, it's because everybody's already in on the joke.
Sharpiro's specialty is the "drown them in bullshit" variety. It works quite well on a fair number of people because he spits out so much bullshit it's impossible to refute it all, therefore he must "have done good points" in their minds.
It's a bit harder to appeal when you can't just make shit up.
And yet there are people who are actually in hiding for their own safety because of Jones and his actions. I doubt they think that he's a joke.