Dave Rubin is right-wing but just won't admit it

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This video I think shows it pretty well, but what especially stuck out to me was Rubin's softball treatment of Katie Hopkins (which you can see starting at 19:17 on the video) and his failure to give her any rope with which to hang herself (even when there was plenty of material):



Katie Hopkins is a UK far right media activist who published an article in which she dehumanized migrants from North Africa, with no exclusion of women and children in her rhetoric, by comparing them to cockroaches and vermin, and advocated violence against them. In a tweet, she called for a "final solution" with regards to these migrants, the exact same term the Nazis used as a euphemism for the Holocaust. As in the UK hate speech is illegal (whatever your view on that), this naturally prompted UK police to interview her. However, when Rubin brought her on his show to talk about this incident, he enabled her to pass it off as just innocuous mainstream conservative rhetoric and to whine and complain about how supposedly liberals and the authorities are just overreacting. He made no mention of her dehumanizing rhetoric or the violence she advocated, and repeatedly advocated on her behalf. He failed to really challenge her in any way.

Dave Rubin is supposedly concerned about the rise of extremism in recent days, and he gives extremists "enough rope to hang themselves", by having them talk at length about their extreme ideas clearly to the public, so the public would know how crazy and lunatic these people are. And indeed, such dehumanizing rhetoric for decades, from the end of World War II until very recently, was considered out of bounds in mainstream Western politics; neither the left nor the right would entertain such rhetoric and would rightly push people espousing it to the fringes. Groups like Genocide Watch listed such dehumanization as the 4th stage of genocide:

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/t ... ocide.html

If until a few years ago, Katie Hopkins had made such rhetoric, she would rightly have been labeled an extremist.

So where is Dave Rubin? Katie Hopkins is very clearly one of those extremists he says he is so concerned about. Why did he not let Katie Hopkins hang herself on her genocidal rhetoric? Why did he allow her to sanitize it for his "centrist" audience? Was he just having a bad day?

Well, as this video shows, there's a pattern. Dave Rubin gives a pass to the far right, in order to push the Overton window to the right.

I'm guessing he denies being far-right and calls himself an adherent to classical liberalism?

I'm guessing that because I've come across this a few times now.

And then I read a book by a British journalist who worked in Russian media for a while, in which he describes the bizarre landscape the Russian media is creating, in which people blatantly lie about what they are doing or not doing, the corruption that's real is never mentioned, while made-up cases of corruption are discussed at length etc. Etc.
And the British journalist led an interview with a Russian neo-nazi youth group (which apparently was/is sponsored by the Kremlin).
But the neo-nazis deny being far-right or nationalist, and rather answer "we're liberals. That can mean anything".

Dave Rubin, a self-described “classical liberal”.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dav ... s-to-burn/

It seems from my own experience on WP that to hardcore liberals, being right-wing is supposed to be some sort of crime, and those supposedly trying to hide being right-wing / conservative need to be hunted down and exposed.

See what I mean?

So is it mainstream conservatism now to compare migrants to cockroaches and vermin, and call for a "final solution"? If not, then why do you want to enable such extremists on the right to avoid the social consequences of their genocidal rhetoric?

Yeah, it's very disappointing what American conservatives have been doing in the past decade or so. They've become quite fanatical. I find it very alarming that not even supposed "centrist" Ezra can join me in condemning Katie Hopkins's rhetoric. 10-15 years ago, most Republicans, including George W. Bush and John McCain, would have been the first to stand up to condemn such dehumanizing rhetoric. Now, they're trying to make the true center and center-leftists seem extreme for even just seeking to shine a light on such rhetoric. This shows they're reactionaries who are trying to make more and more extreme right-wing policies seem like the "center".

It's about trying to get conservatives viewed as Nazis. "If we can convince enough people to believe that republicans / conservatives are Nazis, then success is ours". It's pretty blatantly obvious that is what's going on. Lots of scheming and duplicity, which is why I am critical of it. Which means that I need to be seen as a Nazi myself or at least be viewed as a Nazi sympathizer.

When you play footsie with people using genocidal rhetoric and at the same time refuse to take a clear stand on what they're saying even when you're aware of it, what do you expect?

On this video, as you can see starting at 43:10, Rubin is less accepting and much more ready to challenge or derail his guests who believe in things like social justice, even when they just mention it as something they think is good, frequently interrupting them to do so:



Rubin has some serious double standards here.

I'm not playing anything with anyone. The brand people as Nazis scheme is hardly limited to Dave Rubin, whoever that is. I figure though, as it has been in many cases, if I examine what he actually said and in what context, I'll probably find that out that it's purposely being misconstrued.
And what I expect is to get accused of being a Nazi (lets face it with hardcore liberals conservative = nazi) one way or another in any way that can possibly be drummed up. Like I said that is the obvious scheme.

Edit: Okay I see that Dave Rubin is a YouTube personality. And and formerly part of The Young Turks Network. I should have known. You seem to be really enmeshed in the world of YouTube shows.

So, OK. You don't even seem to know what Dave Rubin does or what he stands for. Please do some more research on the topic before commenting further. Thank you.

I'm a fairly simple person . I divide things into the following

Socially liberal and economically moderately left wing
Socially liberal and economically very left wing
Socially conservative and economically moderately left wing
Socially conservative and economically very left wing
Socially liberal and economically moderately right wing
Socially liberal and economically very right wing
Socially conservative and economically moderately right wing
Socially conservative and economically very right wing

The majority on the right are not Nazis any more than the majority on the left are Communists .
Having said that extremists on either side probably get more airtime / are more vocal than would be expected based on their numbers .

I agree with this.

Well it was the "right-wing but just won't admit it" part that drew me in since you have been been saying the same thing about me. But I as I'm not interested in YouTubers for the most part, I probably won't spend a lot of time going though a bunch YouTube videos to get to the bottom of it.

Last edited by EzraS on 15 Nov 2019, 6:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Some people may be confused by my agreement here. Because after all, didn't I seem to say that most conservatives were extremists?

Let me go back to Katie Hopkins. Again, she's used genocidal rhetoric, dehumanizing migrants and calling for a "final solution". It is my belief that the vast majority of conservatives would be absolutely disgusted if they were aware of what she said, and would understand how in a UK/European context (where there has been some very ugly history around this sort of thing) why it was the police questioned her about this, as well as why the left called her out on this.

The problem here, is that the news resources conservatives rely on kept that important information from them, and passed off what she said as just some mainstream conservative caution about not accepting immigrants indiscriminately, and that the left was attacking her for that because they were just so "deranged" now. And yeah, they would definitely have a point, IF that was what the left was doing. But that is NOT what the left was doing. The left was calling her out for her genocidal rhetoric, her comparing migrants to vermin and cockroaches, calling for violence and a "final solution". By leaving that important context out, they made the left's criticism seem ridiculous. And not only that, but those news resources were basically coddling and enabling her through out.

THIS is what I meant by "playing footsie". And conservatives really do need to question people like Dave Rubin and Fox News more and stop thinking their opponents are just a bunch of deranged idiots who don't need to be listened to.

He's a 'the party left me' guy but yes, at least to the extent that he's warmer to conservatism he's right of center although I don't know that I could put him to the right of Douglas Murray and Douglas is still in the well-within-the-pail group, it's just that Dave can be light on research and show it in some of his interviews.

I'm listening to a Bret Weinstein and Katie Herzog interview from Thursday that seems to offer some thoughts not just on the political landscape of being a disaffected Democrat but some criticism of Dave's approach of disaffect meaning encourage #WalkAway or switching parties. I would agree that there's no easy solution and with what increasingly looks like a faux two-party system (bible-friendly neoliberal vs. identity-friendly neoliberal) pushing people back and forth between them doesn't get much done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjELREO ... ex=91&t=0s