The Futile Quest to Build a “Liberal Joe Rogan” 

For months pundits have decried the absence of a Joe Rogan of the left an online media figure who can galvanize young men to help Democrats in the way that popular right-wing creators like Rogan Adin Ross and the NELK Boys have done for President Donald Trump Now it appears that Democratic operatives have a million plan to build such a figure The proposal titled Speaking With American Men A Strategic Plan from Ilyse Hogue the former president of the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America and John Della Volpe polling director for the Harvard Kennedy School s Institute of Politics is one of several pitches floating around in Democratic framework spaces aimed at making up ground with demographics the party lost in The plan was forthwith panned online by critics who argued that young men would view this type of approach as inauthentic In the last poll young white men swung aggressively in the direction of Trump voting for him by a -point margin after supporting Joe Biden in the last voting Online media has largely been credited with the shift particularly among young white men In an analysis of of the majority of popular online shows across platforms such as Youtube Rumble and TikTok Media Matters detected that right-leaning shows were significantly more popular accounting for roughly percent of the total following of online shows analyzed It also identified that out of of the majority followed online shows were right-leaning Evidence suggests that young men are absorbing what these far-right streamers are sharing A survey ahead of the polling from the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice unveiled that more than percent of young men trust one or more misogynistic voices online The plan would raise million from Democratic donors which the project s leadership has reportedly already begun to collect to assessment the syntax language and content that s popular among young men in online spaces then develop content that spreads an aspirational vision of manhood that aligns with Democratic values without alienating other core constituencies and partner with influencers Experts on masculinity and gender in politics argue that while it s good to research why young men left the party investing millions to recreate a Joe Rogan of the left fundamentally misunderstands why young men moved so rapidly to the right and misses an opportunity to woo them back To try to create the next Joe Rogan it s misguided mentioned Gary Barker president and CEO of Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice Because it s going to come across as preaching and a kind of lab-designed android Last year Barker and Equimundo issued a assessment on the Manosphere tracking how young men engage in online communities and why Barker s research suggests that young men are attracted to these spaces out of a desire for area and for someone to speak directly to them about their social political and economic anxieties Right-wing influencers and Republicans fill that void stoking those anxieties and creating a useful scapegoat in women minorities and immigrants They ve talked to men about their feeling of anxiety and commented You re right to feel anxious You re not the trouble Tear it all down commented Barker However Barker mentioned that Democrats shouldn t be trying to recreate that strategy even if it would work for them You don t want a Democratic Mr Beast he announced It s horribly manipulative It s exploitative of people I m not sure if we can get something so big online that doesn t follow a playbook that s either exploitative exaggerated or harm-inducing And if we do I think it s going to feel like it s preaching to you If Democrats want to win back young men they ll have to prove to them that their economic and social issues matter to them reported Melissa Deckman CEO of the General Religion Research Institute and author of The Politics of Gen Z How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy Deckman s research determined that young men s political shift toward Republicans was heavily influenced by the market system A lot of young men feel that the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for them And the Democratic Party certainly didn t have an answer for how their policies or their vision might help them get a better paying job she commented While Deckman s research suggests that young men felt chided by the Democratic Party instead of helped nostalgia for the economic activity under Trump was a substantial factor in their shift For a lot of young men especially those that don t pay a lot of attention to politics they remember the market system being better under the first Trump administration she explained Related Take Out the Trash A Proposal to Clean Up the Democratic Party A more populist economic message could resonate with this group of voters argued Deckman There s an economic blueprint that can emerge that is less elitist and less about giving tax breaks to billionaires I think that has a broader reach but for whatever reasons I think a lot of young men aren t hearing that message from Democrats and I kind of struggle with it Is it a messenger issue or is it they re just not receptive to it she explained Barker argues that the real concern is that Democrats have been trying to sell a piecemeal approach to economic issues that feels automatically inadequate for the issues we re facing Piecemeal compensatory social policies don t work I mean they work for certain segments of the population but they don t take on the root of what s driving so much of the inequality which is leading to white men s death of despair and has inevitably been part of people of color s economic challenges explained Barker Nina Smith a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Stacey Abrams stated instead of propping up a creator who checks the perfect ideological boxes Democrats should embrace the online spaces for young men that already exist For example creators like Hasan Piker a left-leaning creator with over million subscribers on Twitch and broad popularity among young men has largely been ignored by the Democratic establishment Piker s political content leans farther left sharing a populist economic message paired with strong criticism of U S foreign framework in Israel There is a tendency to shy away from those spaces because our favorite thing to do in the Democratic Party is to pardon my language shit on the left disclosed Smith Aside from entering authentic online spaces that already connect with men both Smith and Barker revealed the most of critical way to reach young voters is in person We get the best out of young men when we genuinely go and see them face to face mentioned Barker Smith pointed toward the success of youth conservative movements like Turning Point USA as an example of how ground championship can make a huge difference with the groups Democrats are trying to win back Related Marco Rubio Is Attacking American Instruction International Students Are His Pawns I honestly believe it would be better for us to have a bus tour than to spend a bunch of money on research that is cold she disclosed Turning Point did that sort of stake where they did a tour to different college campuses and that s how they got in contact with these young people Republicans have created a space for young men to blow off steam Barker noted Now Democrats need to find a way to offer them something better Trump did not offer men anything that will make their life better he declared What he did is he offered them a place to yell at the wind for a little while It doesn t seem like it should be that tough for us on the left to at least pull them in out of a space where they re just yelling at the wind The post The Futile Quest to Build a Liberal Joe Rogan appeared first on The Intercept