What is an Anti-SJW? Around 2015 and 2016, there were a group of Youtubers who gained an audience for criticizing the left. This group wasn’t necessarily “right-leaning” as I’ll get to later, but they all were known for criticizing the left. Some of the big people I’ll reference in this piece, ChrisRayGun(Chris), Shoe0nHead(Shoe), and Dave Rubin(Dave) himself, were all considered part of this group in one way or another.
So why’d I get blocked? Well, Dave tweeted this:
Dave… cmon. I responded with:
I had it coming.
I tweeted that last screenshot and said “Guy’s, I think I’m officially a leftist.” Why? Because I personally found it funny, but also the story of Dave Rubin is one of disillusionment, and for a time, paralleled my journey of where I stand politically today. Dave use to be a part of the Young Turks. He left eventually and started his own thing where he would interview, or facilitate interviews, with people across the political spectrum on his own show. I never knew him as a Turk, but I did come to find his content rather soon after he left. I liked it. I was a huge consumer of Anti-SJW content, and Dave was mingling with many people in that community. I was a huge fan of ChrisRayGun and Shoe0nHead. He interviewed both of them and seemed to be right there with them politically. They and I, all considered dialog on the left to be very flawed around that time but still identified as liberal. This was 2015/2016. Right before the election of Donald Trump.
Everything in the world was affected by Trump and that was very true of the Anti-SJW community. I remember clearly, most people in the community pre-Trump were self-proclaimed liberals. Shoe, Chris, and Dave all claimed that. Some would maybe call themselves classical liberals, but again, liberal was a key part of their identity. Once Trump came around, there was a tipping point. Some Anti-SJWs went Right, but others didn’t. Chris and Shoe specifically never said they were conservatives or Trump fans, but by gaining a large audience who liked them for criticizing the left, many of their fans expected them to like Trump or to be more right-leaning at least. Many didn’t know they identified as liberal. It turns out both Chris and Shoe were Bernie supporters, quite literally, the farthest thing from the Right you’ll get out here in the USA. Dave didn’t turn out that way. This self-proclaimed liberal in the time between 2016 and 2020 started supporting Trump.
I want to paint a picture, so let me tell you about another player in this story, Colin Moriarty. Colin was a video game writer who worked at IGN but then split off with 3 friends to create the company Kinda Funny. I loved everyone in Kinda Funny and have been following them for years. Colin in particular was special to me because he was my first exposure to a conservative who wasn’t a bigot. While I don’t have such a rosy picture of Colin now for various reasons, at the time I saw him as a principled, non-bigoted, conservative. To his credit, I still believe that. Colin left the Republican party when Donald Trump became the nominee. That’s a principled man right there. He gave up his political party’s identity when it switched from what he believed. Why tell you about Colin? Well, he’s a friend of Dave Rubin’s and a clear example of someone with principles. Colin isn’t a follower of trends. He takes a stand when he doesn’t agree and I don’t think anyone could claim Colin is not genuine with his beliefs. I can’t say the same about Dave.
Dave is a gay man. Not your normal Republican obviously, but that makes him extremely valuable to the Right. With Dave’s moving Right came tension with people like Chris and Shoe. He blocked Chris for simply telling him to ignore haters online. Dave blocking Chris isn’t really important, but because of that, it came out in a few of Chris’s videos and episodes of his Podcast the Snark Tank that there were Right-leaning organizations that would contact people like Chris and Shoe to have them speak for them. They turned down such offers but have exposed that others like Candace Owens, obviously did take up deals like that. Candace Owens is a black woman, so she gives an unusual face for the right that helps them fight claims of racism or sexism. Dave also seems to have either signed with some of these people or just has seen where the money is. Dave is a gay man, so he is valuable to the right.
That’s why I called him a grifter. If he’s not, then I sincerely apologize, but with the logical gymnastics needed to justify being gay and a conservative Trump supporter, I’d be truly surprised to find that he actually believes his current views and is not just following the money. So why does it matter if he actually believes what he says he believes? If somehow, other gay people believe the Republican Party, conservatives, and Donald Trump have their best interest, we can be leading more marginalized people to their own harm. Obviously, not all conservatives and republicans hate gay people. I’d be willing to bet Colin Moriarty is a genuine ally to gay people, but remember, he left the republican party when Trump got the nomination. I assume he saw the party start to become an open endorsement of things like homophobia, racism, and a lack of professionalism. Dave willingly went into this version of the party and now he makes fun of a young girl who dares tries to speak up about an issue vital to the survival of our planet.
I don’t care about being blocked by Dave Rubin. I just like to follow the discourse. Dave is a voice in that discourse so it sucks I can’t keep up with him anymore. If anything, it shows how little of a conversation Dave wants to have. Dave doesn’t have much to say beyond making fun of a young girl and how dare anyone call him out on that. Dave is either grifting and getting really rich or optimistically, he is a victim of the anti-SJW pipeline and doesn’t have the critical thinking skills to realize the difference between criticism and policy.
I’ve learned in the last few years that the average person finds it hard to believe two things that on a surface level might seem to contradict. Anti-SJW’s criticized the left, but again, the true liberals in the group would have never voted for Republicans. Some creators did start to lean that way, and many of the viewers did as well. Some people who started more liberal saw the ridiculousness of some left-leaning idea and threw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah, a black girl harassing a white guy on a college campus about having dreadlocks is really dumb and wrong. That doesn’t make racism not a real issue. The left can have an optics problem but also can be on the correct side of the issues. If you can’t comprehend that both of those things can be true, which many people can’t, anti-SJW content can be a pipeline to the right.
I do think the base critiques of anti-SJW’s were correct. Having the optics of an emotional, irrational mob that wants to ruin the fun of people just living their lives is not helping the left. This doesn’t convince anyone. What will convince people are arguments, logic, and science. That’s why people like Ben Shapiro work so well. He presents ideas that aren’t correct as logical. While he doesn’t actually have logical points, his presentation leads people with worse critical thinking skills to believe he is right.
So yeah. I feel like getting blocked by Dave Rubin is a good time to celebrate the fact that I didn’t fall down that pipeline. In fact, after 2020, I’m also very inclined to socialism. I saw our systems fail to function when pressed with a pandemic. We need a more ethical system but that’s a bit far from the point of this. I’m a leftist. While the anti-SJW community was built on sound ideas, it did lead to a lot of people going right. Critique of the left’s discourse is important, especially when you identify with the left. I want my side to convince people. Critique isn’t a denouncing of the core beliefs. I hope you’re making a good living Dave. I hope for your own sake, that your side loses so you can continue to live a prosperous life. I’ll try my best to make that happen.
Bernard Lamar Rice 