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Alex's avatar

Good article but a couple quibbles.

While no one wants to get into trans issues a few thoughts: trans or gender ideology has not been particularly well scrutinized within the mainstream media. Looking at what the actual data is or doing research can land you in hot water quick (Singal, Herzog, Littman, etc.).

So it's not just that there is an ideological monoculture. It's that the ideological monoculture is required for the suppositions of the ideology because they couldn't stand to scrutiny within the framework of liberal discourse.

Rogan is beloved in part because he has a platform to puncture these ideas, because again they only need a small amount of scrutiny to be called into serious question. A trans woman MMA fighter will create doubts about core precepts of gender ideology. It's that simple.

This is stand in for (and easily illustration of the fact that) when you get into issues of social contagion, data on criteria for medical management and outcomes, and some other basic things, huge questions arise related to gender identity.

Rogan points in the right direction with easy to understand examples. The issue isn't that Rogan is 'platforming bigots,' it's that these ideas are so fragile that someone like Rogan can easily call them into question.

Regarding the vaccine/ivermectin stuff, there have been a number of public health missteps by elites that should have had more scrutiny and more discussion. Generally there should be robust open discussion about the vaccine that I think would have led to more people feeling comfortable getting it (examples include myocarditis signal for young/men teens and whether 2nd rna vaccine should be given - UK decided not to give 2nd dose, lack of meaningful clinical outcomes for a booster shot, overexaggerating risk to children from delta given we have good data from UK, etc. etc. etc.) The elision of evidence and institutional authority and experts and politics has not been a good thing.

OK, now regarding Marxism, I think only a tiny number of elites are truly interested in Marxism in 2021. What they are interested in is materialist critiques that have been transmogrified by the Frankfurt School and Gramsci and then given strange postmodern appendages by 90s critical theorists. So, you get a shorthand ('Marxists!') that's used by Rogan. But I think the popular explanation of this ideology by Pluckrose/Lindsay and how it has been translated into praxis in institutions and culture by Yang and Rufo is pretty good. In fact, these figures will give you a better account of these intellectual developments in an accessible way than anyone on the Left. So again, Rogan is pointing in the right direction.

I'm not a huge Rogan enthusiast (I listen to maybe 1/10 of his content and I don't follow MMA at all) but I do think some of it is pretty good: specifically I like deep interviews with rock climbers and extreme athletes and hunters et al. as well as some of the comedians.

But it's easy to understand why his political stuff is appealing - it's because he generally points in the direction of what are credible issues that other people are terrified to address and makes you feel sane in the process. This includes even technical issues where I am sure I know much more than he does.

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Freddie deBoer's avatar

perhaps, for some, open-mindedness and a willingness to entertain any idea function more as a cudgel with which to beat their opponents than an actual commitment to entertaining ideas that are superficially unattractive to them

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