No, The Regressive Left IS NOT Mainstream And We ARE NOT Conservative
No, The Regressive Left IS NOT Mainstream And We ARE NOT Conservative. Story after story from far left digital media tries to paint the regressive left as the mainstream left, but this is not true. According to data from Gallup and Pew the best you could say is that the left is split down the middle with 54% of Democrats wanting more moderate policy and the majority of voters oppose identity politics. But the social justice left keeps pushing this narrative and today gained a surprising ally, Quillette. Quillette is a publication often associated with the intellectual Dark Web. Today they published an article arguing that Dave Rubin and people like me a re "new right" which is just absolutely wrong and could be stretched to imply that Nancy Pelosi is "new right" because of how often she criticizes Ocasio-Cortez.The reality is that the left is in a state of civil war and many former liberals are walking away ceding ground to the fringe regressives.That doesn't make me or anyone else on the left conservative, it just means that eventually we will be politically homeless, assuming we aren't already.
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There are many people in media that are trying to legitimize what we would call the regressive left as the mainstream left.
But that's wrong, because polls from Gallup and Pew show us that most Democrats want moderate policy, and the Hidden Tribes report shows us that progressives are only around 8% of this country.
Yet in response to the criticisms that I or others will have about this group, we're often called conservative or reactionary right-wingers.
And the reason is, they're trying to legitimize the regressive left as the mainstream.
So it was surprising to see Quillette, a publication often associated with the intellectual dark web, making this exact argument.
That the intellectual dark web, as well as people like me, are part of a new right challenging a new left.
But that's not true.
We do have liberals and conservatives who are willing to engage with each other, who are both critical of the regressive left, and that's because this regressive group is a chaotic, destabilizing force that targets itself so often.
Barack Obama and people like Bill Maher have criticized them for it.
Today, I want to take a look at this story from Quillette and challenge the argument that there's a new right as well as address criticism of me and others within this new group.
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The controversial story published by Quillette Today is The Intellectual Dark Web Politically Diverse by Yuri Harris.
It starts by saying, Earlier this month, popular author and podcaster Sam Harris tweeted out a graph titled, A Visual Breakdown of Intellectual Dark Web Positions.
The graph purports to compare the political positions of six prominent members of the IDW on main issues that supposedly divide liberals and conservatives.
The graph shows us many political positions, and we can see that basically everyone supports the liberal position, and in fact Ben Shapiro An outright conservative actually supports several of the positions as well.
The Quillette article goes on to say, the tweet links to a blog post by cybersecurity expert and writer Daniel Meisler, where he explains his motive for producing the graph.
Meisler was frustrated that members of the IDW often are labeled conservative or even alt-right.
So we set out to gather information on the positions of six prominent members, Harris, Eric Weinstein, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro, on some important political issues.
The resulting graph indicates that all these people, with the partial exception of Ben Shapiro, are far more aligned with liberals than with conservatives on the issues that Meisler believes divide liberals and conservatives.
The IDW members are not conservatives, Meisler argues, but mostly a collection of disillusioned liberals looking for a place to have an honest conversation.
Uri Harris says that he tweeted in response to this.
This is misleading.
Just take a look at Rubin Report's timeline.
He relentlessly attacks Democrats, retweets Trump Jr., and hangs out with Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk.
Proof is in the pudding.
Some of the other people are debatable, but clearly the chart is missing something.
He then goes on to cite Vox.com, when Ezra Klein used a fictitious report to try and claim, yes, people like me and Dave Rubin are the new reactionary right, which is absolutely incorrect.
In my personal opinion, I believe Ezra Klein is trying to force the Overton window as far left as possible so that mainstream conservatives will be far right and actual liberals will be considered conservative.
This actually won't work, it makes no sense, but let's read on.
Yuri says, in a long article published last year, Vox's Ezra Klein describes how a political realignment has taken place on YouTube in which disparate groups of people have coalesced around an opposition to the social justice left.
He goes on to say that Klein draws on a report by data and society researcher Rebecca Lewis titled Alternative Influence, Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube.
He adds, which it should be noted was strongly criticized by several IDW members when it was released last year.
In fact, it wasn't just strongly criticized, it was outright debunked.
While there are many opinions in the piece which may be legitimate, it used false data and included people who don't even have YouTube channels.
The report was more of an opinion piece.
But ultimately, the point of the story is that he says a new right has indeed been forming online, especially on YouTube, and it includes many people who don't think of themselves as being on the right, but who nevertheless find common ground with conservatives in opposition to the new left, with its focus on identity and structural oppression.
As Klein points out, what constitutes left and right changes over time.
And this particular division is the basis of the main political and cultural tensions on YouTube.
So in the YouTube world of politics and culture war, it's largely irrelevant that Dave Rubin is gay, married, and pro-choice.
What matters...
It's an interesting argument, and you could argue that it's true, but I'm actually going to argue the opposite.
I don't see the regressive left or the social justice warriors as the new left.
I see them as a chaotic and aimless force.
They often protest themselves.
For the past several years, Black Lives Matter has been protesting gay pride parades, demanding the police be removed, and recently in Edmonton, Canada, left-wing pride groups protested themselves and got their own pride event shut down.
Just last week, this was reported.
Directors vote to cancel 2019 Edmonton Pride Festival.
It was a left-wing, identitarian group that made several demands resulting in the cancellation of the pride event, saying things such as they must advocate for QTIB POC rights.
This doesn't mean anything to the average person.
This assortment of letters to the average person in the United States or Canada is just meaningless.
This is a fringe group making demands on the left and forcing the cancellation of a left-wing event.
Conservatives would probably not support this.
In fact, Ben Shapiro has argued with Dave Rubin about whether or not he would go to Dave Rubin's anniversary because Dave Rubin is gay married.
What we're actually seeing is that there's a willingness between liberals and conservatives to come together to stop a chaotic, destabilizing force that is so aimless.
Barack Obama has had to criticize them, saying they were in a circular firing squad, where Bill Maher has repeatedly called them out on television.
Certainly you wouldn't argue Barack Obama or Bill Maher are conservatives, or New Right.
That literally makes no sense.
If Gallup and Pew are saying Democrats want more moderate policy, and Hidden Tribes is saying it's 8% of the population, you can't really argue they're a New Left.
But that's exactly what's happening.
Dave Rubin tweeted a criticism to Quillette, saying, OMG.
I took a pic with Tucker.
I've appeared on stage with Candace Owens.
I've debated issues with Charlie.
Sad turn here, Quillette.
This guy wants me to pay the price for being genuinely tolerant.
I talk differences with all of them, and referencing data in society?
What a joke.
Lauren Chen responded by saying, This article complains that you and Ben don't discuss the differences between the left and the right like gay marriage and abortion, but instead just unite against the new left.
The problem with that?
You guys have literally sat down and discussed both gay marriage and abortion.
I pointed out this graph yesterday, where it divides the economic dimension versus the social identity dimension.
We can see that Trump-based voters are actually divided between liberals and conservatives.
And in fact, Trump voters are more likely to be socialist than for an absolute free market, which was absolutely surprising to me.
But what we can see is, What really does separate Trump's base and Clinton is identity issues.
So in that sense, I think it would be fair to argue maybe this is the new left.
However, I actually think it's more important to point out this is a regressive reactionary group.
And we can see that when it comes to varying issues, you actually have socialists and conservatives on Trump's side.
In response to one of the critiques, Claire Lehman, the publisher of Quillette, tweeted, Does RubinReport still consider himself to be left politically?
Really?
One Twitter user, EMcDonald, summed it up absolutely perfectly, saying, I couldn't have said it better myself.
I have no critique of actual social justice activists.
around the dogmatic ideological fundamentalism and its authoritarian application.
To say that makes someone new right is to normalize this dangerous authoritarian fundamentalism.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I have no critique of actual social justice activists.
In fact, in almost all of my videos on the issue, I've praised the idea of social justice.
I've made documentaries about the need for new social policies.
But I detest the authoritarians who would target someone based on their race and would demand that other people bend the knee.
It's not an issue of their political ideology necessarily.
It's the application through authoritarian means.
That doesn't make you new left.
Otherwise, the argument they're presenting is that if you're an authoritarian and repressive individual who supports segregation and opposes interracial dating, that makes you left-wing?
I seriously don't think so.
I think that argument is kind of wrong.
We can see this reflected in the New York Times.
I broke up with her because she's white.
When it comes to dating, I'd rather not think about race, but that's been hard to avoid.
Or this story from the Huffington Post.
I'm an Asian woman engaged to a white man, and honestly, I'm struggling with that.
Is the argument that mainstream liberals oppose interracial dating and support segregated spaces?
At various protests and riots, I've seen spaces set up for colored people only.
I certainly don't believe that is a mainstream position.
In reality, I think what we're seeing is the regressive left is growing more and more powerful thanks to allies in media who keep trying to legitimize them, and you end up with social liberals like me, conservatives, and classical liberals like Dave Rubin saying, we're not going to have any of that.
In the end, you'll end up with real progressives like the Weinsteins having a real conversation with Dave Rubin or Ben Shapiro.
You'll end up seeing someone like Andrew Yang, a Democrat, sitting down for a real conversation with Ben Shapiro.
I don't think you can argue that Tulsi Gabbard, who recently said in an interview, That identity politics is dividing people.
You can't say she's conservative.
You wouldn't argue that Andrew Yang is conservative because he also sat down with Ben Shapiro.
Simply because we criticize the authoritarians of the extreme factions, which includes the far right and the far left, doesn't mean that there is a new left or right.
Looking back at this graph, I could probably say, you know, maybe they are right.
Or maybe in reality, they're actually wrong.
Because look at Clinton voters.
You actually have many people who voted for Clinton who are here alongside Trump voters.
Meaning, there's a wide range of people who agree and disagree who chose to vote one way or another.
But what we can see from Trump's base is that it's more ideologically diverse.
The Democrat voters for Clinton are clustered heavily in the identitarian and socialist space, meaning most people, be it Clinton voters or Trump voters, do not exist here.
This may be the new defining group, or it could be a group spiraling out of control and leaving the mainstream behind.
I would probably fall around here.
I didn't vote for Clinton or Trump, so I'm probably one of the other dots.
But I am more socially liberal on economic policy, as well as identity issues.
I've made documentaries about social justice, and I've spoken favorably about it.
But I oppose the regressive identitarians that make up this weird cultist cluster.
These people in this corner are a small percentage compared to the entirety of the group.
I would argue, between Clinton's voters and Trump, we can actually see most people range from left to right, and most people in this graph oppose these fringe identity issues.
You are not the new left, and we are not the new right.
We are still on the left, but you are falling into a fringe corner of extremists that I think will eventually implode.
And that's one of the arguments I've made.
That over time, the left has started becoming more and more concentrated and spun faster and faster and faster.
The rhetoric is escalating to extreme point where they've even claimed Bernie Sanders is a right-wing nationalist.
Eventually, it'll implode on itself, and it can't sustain itself.
And they're rejecting liberals.
In fact, this chart shows us exactly why Trump won.
Because people like Dave Rubin, who were always traditionally liberal Democrat voters, were pushed out by this ever-tightening small group of fringe leftists.
They're not the new left.
They're a weird left that's going to die off, in my opinion.
I don't think they'll survive.
Because Democrats are already learning they have to be more moderate.
The polls are showing us this.
But who knows?
Maybe someone associated with the regressive left will win.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I'm not the smartest person in the world.
My prediction?
Trump's gonna landslide 2020.
I'm liberal on policy.
I won't vote for a conservative, but I certainly won't vote for a regressive identitarian.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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