So Last Friday, the progressive website Mother Jones included me in an article about a quote
"new extremist media industry that is further to the right than Breitbart."
In the piece, the author referred to me as "far right", citing interviews I've done with
Mike Cernovich, Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren Southern to back up his accusation.
He cherry picked these guests to fit his narrative, yet somehow missing the endless amount of
liberals I've had on and the progressives I've hosted, including Margaret Cho, Hillary
Rosen, Mark Duplass, John Fugelsang and Michael Ian Black.
The article also attacked Patreon, the crowdfunding platform of which myself and my team's livelihood
depends on, for being tolerant of people with far right views such as mine, though of course,
nowhere did it include any of my purported "far right" views.
Earlier in the week, Forbes called The Rubin Report a "conservative talk show", but immediately
retracted the statement when I contacted them.
Ironically, I've been saying for awhile defending my liberal beliefs is becoming a conservative
position.
Although I don't think being called a conservative is somehow bad, it clearly isn't a proper
descriptor for this show in which I've hosted people from across the political divide.
For Mother Jones to accuse me of being an extremist, further to the right of Breitbart,
is obviously an inflammatory and demonstrably dishonest statement.
I've been around many people who over the last few years have been unfairly maligned,
and I'm all to familiar with how this all goes.
Whether it's Sam Harris, Jordan Petersen, Colin Moriarty or Brett Weinstein -- each
attack is virtually never based on what these people have said, but are instead crafted
out of straw man arguments with the words racist and bigot tossed around like candy.
Suddenly, the onus is on people who aren't racists or bigots to disprove this accusation,
usually slung by a misguided celebrity, or a malicious newspaper or website.
The move, then, is on the accused -- should they spend time and energy defending themselves
from accusations which aren't true, only to bring more attention to the accusations themselves?
Or should they ignore ignore them, hoping the false claims will go away over time.
I think there are solid arguments to be made for either tactic, and it truly depends on
the situation at hand and the person involved.
In this case, though, I went on the attack.
I decided this case was too egregious to ignore, contacting the article's author via Twitter,
screenshotting pieces of his article and asking him to defend them.
Of course, he couldn't defend his own words...that's the thing with truth, it's hard to work around...and
eventually he made slight changes to the article, like including a tweet of mine in which I
defended myself from his claims, and he removing the word "far" in front of the word "right"
before referencing me in the article.
Putting aside the specifics of this article itself, I was happy to get a strong defense
in public from many friends all over the political map.
People like Joe Rogan, Colin Moriarty, Faisal Saeed al Mutar, Bret Weinstein, Eric Weinstein,
Michael Shermer, Peter Boghossian and many others offered strong defenses of me, just
as I've offered for others when I've seen them unfairly attacked.
I even got a public defense from Donald Trump Jr.
Putting my friends and public allies aside though, it's incredibly inspiring and humbling
to see literally 10's of thousands of people offer their voice when they feel you've been
unjustly attacked.
And that's the key to this whole thing.
It's not me, or Sam, or Jordan or Bret that they fear, what they really fear is that all
of you will starting saying what you think ... because There's strength in numbers.
By Monday, I wanted to put the whole story behind me.
My dog has a health emergency, which helped put everything in perspective, but I admit,
I did get sucked back into the attack very briefly.
Over the course of a Twitter exchange, I got the writer of the piece, Josh Harkinson, to
publicly admit I am NOT further right than Breitbart, though of course, he didn't change
the title or have Mother Jones issue any sort of public correction.
One other interesting piece to all this, is that the writer, John Harkinson, is one of
the 40 people that James Hodgkinson, the shooter of the Republican baseball team last week,
followed on Twitter.
Now I can't draw a direct link there, but we know that Hodgkinson was a far lefty who
obviously was driven to political extremes.
So, when this very same writer does a hatchet job on me calling me further right than Breitbart,
which is clearly code for racist, I cannot sit back there and take it.
This is exactly why I've been saying you can't punch Nazi's.
Call everyone you oppose a Nazi and a racist and then eventually you will see violence
as the next logical step.
It's not a crazy exercise to think that this is partially what drove James Hodgkinson.
In hindsight his attack on me was the next obvious step in where this whole collectivist
movement is going.
I've talked for a long time about how if you can't debate ideas, you use lies and buzzwords.
Having it turned on me shouldn't have been a surprise, especially from a Leftist site
like Mother Jones, yet it still did surprise me somehow.
Make no mistake, there is a Thinkquisition going on here, and it can come for anyone
at any time.
If you ally yourself with people who value the movement, in this case a political one,
over you as an individual, then eventually it is inevitable that they will come for you.
And if they don't come for you, you're probably the one coming for them.
This Thinkquisition will come after anyone who bucks the trend and the stereotypes and
dares think for themselves.
It's why they come accuse Ayaan Hirsi Ali of being anti muslim, it's why they slander
Bill Maher as a being racist, it's why they call Larry Elder an uncle tom, and it's why
I can be branded a far right extremist.
Those who are a part of this Thinkquisition fear you thinking for yourself, that you won't
bow to their collectivist demands, more than anything else.
The way to beat this witch hunt is to be yourself, and fight for what you believe.
You are the antidote they fear most.
I hope that next time you see me fighting back and getting some cover from my allies,
it will inspire you to fight back... specifically with words, not violence...
as well.
Joining me on the show this week is one of my aforementioned allies and friends, author
and professor Peter Boghossian, who will help me dissect the madness of 2017 and much more.