on Joe Rogan, and why “economic anxiety” is bullshit

Because we are all dead and live in Hell, the controversy of the weekend was Bernie Sanders’s endorsement by intellectual-dark-web-promotor-cum-shock-jock Joe Rogan. Rogan, famous for bullying Andy Dick and also for appearing in NewsRadio, holds some pretty odious views about trans and Black people and serves as a gateway drug for millions of listeners to alt-right grifters like Jordan Peterson and Milo Yiannopoulis.

In response, way too many leftists spent the weekend either downplaying the political alliance, or outright agreeing with Rogan that, for instance, trans people shouldn’t be allowed to play sports.

The most common arguments have been distilled in this Jacobin (of course) article. Feel free to skip right over the “whatabout Hillary???” stuff, since, if I have my facts straight, Hillary is actually not running for president.

More compelling, though, is the idea that bringing bigots into a diverse, anti-bigotry campaign is a net positive. If we can get bigots to vote for us without sacrificing our ideals, doesn’t that only benefit us?

The logic makes sense! And I disagree with it almost entirely. 

For one thing, the “without sacrificing our ideals” clause is a massive assumption, and requires a huge amount of trust that allying with a transphobe itself undermines. Second, I submit that the act itself is aggression against marginalized communities. A big aspect of social equality is feeling safe in one’s environment. Explicitly welcoming bigots into your tent without even challenging their bigotry necessarily pushes their targets out. You can argue this is outweighed by, say, giving marginalized people access to healthcare. But! That promise is a hypothetical. The damage done by flaunting Rogan’s endorsement is real and tangible, regardless of whether Sanders wins, regardless of whether he manages to pass M4A.

This selective inclusion is a big reason why embracing Rogan is so galling. Are you a gross, unrepentant who might nonetheless vote for a leftist for some reason? Welcome to the Resistance! Are you a supporter of a different progressive candidate, like, god forbid, an older Black person supporting Joe Biden in the hopes that incremental progress is still progress? Well, you’re dead to me, centrist shitlib. Bring out the guillotines.

But this damage goes beyond signaling whose lives and identities are most important in the movement. Even as the campaign tried to distance itself from Rogan’s views (adopting the traditional “we disagree strongly on key issues but we welcome his support and hope we can learn him a thing or two” stance), the floodgates opened for Sanders supporters to not just disagree with Rogan, but to defend — or at the very least, rationalize — his views.

And now we come to the ultimate rationalization of all bad opinions: eCoNoMiC aNxIeTy

“Economic anxiety” has been used as an excuse for bigotry since Trump’s election. Trump voters are deplorable? Nope! They’re simply coal farmers worried about affording healthcare, and grifters redirect their big sadness to hating brown people. Rogan and his listeners hate women? No way, they’re just worn down by thinking about their next paycheck.

It’s a theory that underlies much of Bernie Sanders’s philosophy, and it’s part of the reason many people, myself included, are often frustrated with his candidacy*. Because, while unrestrained capitalism is responsible for a huge number of society ills, it is not even remotely responsible for all of them.

*(As an aside, this shouldn’t be taken as me telling you not to vote for him. Vote for whomever you like! There are things that frustrate me about every Democratic candidate.)

It’s a theory that underlies much of Bernie Sanders’s philosophy, and it’s part of the reason many people, myself included, are often frustrated with his candidacy*. Because, while unrestrained capitalism is responsible for a huge number of society ills, it is not even remotely responsible for all of them.

*(As an aside, this shouldn’t be taken as me telling you not to vote for him. Vote for whomever you like! There are things that frustrate me about every Democratic candidate.)

It’s a theory that underlies much of Bernie Sanders’s philosophy, and it’s part of the reason many people, myself included, are often frustrated with his candidacy*. Because, while unrestrained capitalism is responsible for a huge number of society ills, it is not even remotely responsible for all of them.

*(As an aside, this shouldn’t be taken as me telling you not to vote for him. Vote for whomever you like! There are things that frustrate me about every Democratic candidate.)

A great example of how being overly accepting of bigots tends to snowball came before the weekend had even finished. Peter Coffin, a former target of misogynist hate group GamerGate and a prominent Sanders supporter, tweeted what is, frankly, an absolute mess of revisionist history in an effort to claim that appealing to those with abhorrent views is laudable.

We can start with the jumbled nightmare of a phrase, “neoliberal fetishization of feminism,” which itself feels like it’s something GamerGaters themselves would say. It’s also wrong. GamerGate itself was a neoliberal movement which argued that, because misogyny sells well, it’s totally justified. GamerGaters’ favorite catchphrase, “Get woke, go broke,” is about as succinct a description of neoliberalism as I can imagine.

The sole example of neoliberal feminism given by Coffin and his supporters is an abhorrent Jezebel article making light of woman-on-man partner abuse. This is an example of feminism, you see, because some Jezebel writers identify as feminist, and it’s neoliberal because “neoliberal” means “a bad thing I don’t like.”

But moving away from the weird commentary on feminism, we come to the brunt of the argument: that people are often motivated by economic anxiety, rather than naked bigotry, into joining hate movements. This, too, has very little evidence to support as a universal truth, and yet Coffin stated multiple times in his tweetstorm that it’s such an obvious assertion that it needs no citation. Hot tip for true gamers: when someone asserts something in such a manner, it nearly always means there isn’t actually any supportable citation.

Certainly there are historic examples of fascist movements taking power amidst economic upheavals. The Nazis, most obviously. But there’s no reason to believe this is the only, or even the most common way that hate movements gain momentum. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization dedicated to the intersection of poverty and hate, explicitly denies this is the most common reason that attracts individuals to hate movements such as GamerGate:

“In terms of socioeconomic backgrounds, there’s a common misconception that only people from lower economic backgrounds are attracted to these types of groups. I can say not only from my own research but also that of others like [scholars] Kathleen Blee and James Aho that this is just not the case…”

Furthermore, neither the GamerGate movement, which was driven primarily by middle-class young men with access to high-end gaming console and computers, nor the election of Trump were motivated by economic anxiety.

So Coffin’s assertion that GamerGaters felt justifiably alienated doesn’t pass muster. They may have felt alienated, but if so, that alienation came from the loss of privilege, not from economic oppression.

But let’s go further. Even if economic anxiety is bullshit and doesn’t explain the appearance of hate groups, perhaps economic justice will give us a better platform to extinguish them? Well. Again, while economic justice is absolutely a worthwhile goal in itself, there remains little evidence that it acts as a panacea. 

Look at the UK, a nation with universal healthcare for all residents. A nation that just voted to blow that healthcare up to ensure that foreigners couldn’t access it.

Look at racism and misogyny persisting in socialist countries. See Anders Breivik murdering 77 people in a violent misogynist rage in Norway and tell me what medical debt or student loan bills inspired him.

So, no. I don’t buy your justification that progressive movements can accept any amount of bigotry, because economic issues paper over misogyny, racism and transphobia. Just say that you like your candidate, you like your team, and you’re willing to dismiss the worst of the worst in order to deflect even the smallest amount of criticism for your campaign. It’s an attitude, after all, that is far from unique to Sanders.