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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

He's had plenty of prominent leftist guests like Bernie Sanders, and most of his comedian and artist friends are left-leaning, and he leans left himself. How is this a gateway to the alt-right? At some point these accusations just become meaningless.

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The claim isn't that he was a gateway to the alt-right _by having only a certain kind of guest_, or anything like that, so that's not really a counterargument.

Yeah, you can be so open-minded that every piece of drivel just slides easily through your mind. That isn't being well informed. You actually need good filters and know what they're based upon.

Props to Bernie for taking the battle to the middle ground though and not preaching only to the choir. He kind of got shit on for that as well.

Joe will be the first to say he isn't well informed at all and that's yet another reason why he likes having long conversations with all kinds of people. He's incredibly transparent and authentic, and that's what people seek more than anything. It's the reason for his rise along with many others building independent followings now.

Whether you like him or not, or agree with his views, is entirely subjective. But it's interesting to see how much control people want over others by the topics and conversation they want to prevent and suppress, and those actions speak far louder than words.

I said him and his friends lean left too, so what else makes it a gateway? These claims are always vague and unfounded.

The claim was that what made him a gateway was his literally acting as a gateway:

> When you have extremists on and don't challenge what they're saying, that _is_ pushing a narrative.

This is in spite of his politics.

By that logic, he's a gateway to the entire political spectrum based on thousands of episodes over a decade.

There are plenty of people who are exposed to (far)left perspectives from his show - do you take issue with that?

No, that's fine, it's probably true, but that's not a bad thing that we're condemning.

You are evidently very unwilling to accept the claim, so I don't think anything said here will convince you otherwise, but perhaps it is meaningful that so many people are convinced of it.

The point is that he exposes the entire spectrum and even leans left himself, however the original commenter only mentioned the alt-right. Clearly they're implying one side is worse and somehow going to unleash terrible things, however these claims are vague, misleading, and usually made by those who just happen to be on the other extreme.

Very few people have such trouble with his massive variety of guests, topics and politics; otherwise it wouldn't be the most popular podcast in the world.

It's pretty straight-forward. The left can't stand Rogan because he allows the non-left (not just the alt-right; the non-left) to have a platform. They don't actually care what the material is, what the issue is, they can't tolerate anything that isn't their own bubble, their own world views. The left controls ~95% of all media and it still isn't enough. Any platform that gives a voice to anything other than their own views, is fundamentally bad and is not to be tolerated. That's why most of the censorship push is coming from the left today, they're the party of intolerance and it's not just about the alt-right or far-right. Comedians broadly are terrified of the left's crazy censorship push, they're speaking out about it on a constant basis; comedians are almost always the canaries in the speech coal mine.

An obvious example of this in action, is Jordan Peterson, who the left almost universally detests. He's neither alt-right nor far-right, and yet the left tries to slander and control him with that label constantly (bury him under fake labels). If you're not in total agreement with them, you're the enemy; that's widely the ethos of the intolerant left today. Rogan has given people like Peterson a large platform to speak through. That's the sort of thing the left hates Rogan for.

> The left controls ~95% of all media and it still isn't enough

The biggest social media site is Facebook. Facebook is very right leaning.

The biggest cable news/punditry channel is Fox. Fox is _very_ right leaning.

The rest of cable news is mostly centrist, certainly not left. MSNBC is vaguely left, that's about it.

Radio is dominated by right-wing blowhards.

Where is my 95% exactly?

Joe Rogan leans left in the same way someone that starts their sentences with “I’m not rasist, but …” aren’t racists. It’s just a rhetorical device to convince you that they don’t believe in labels, and then they immediately use their actions and words to demonstrate that they fit the textbook description of the label.

> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.

It's the labels that are the problem, used by unreasonable people to create even more division. Most do not identify with a single side across all issues, or even all facets of a single issue.

so if someone is left but isnt as left as you then they arent left, right?

would you consider biden left?

By the standards of most of the world, no, he's firmly right wing, along with basically every other politician in the US.

By US standards, he's a moderate. So no, still not left. And that's why he got elected.

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