How the Left Can Connect with Young Men

[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Ever since Kamala Harris lost the election to Donald Trump last November, the political sphere of our country has been attempting to diagnose where things went wrong. One group has been singled out as a swing target. Democrats missed last year, as you've heard a thousand times already, young men. We're going to have a different kind of conversation about that today. Why don't Democrats have a Joe Rogan of the left? You've heard that question?

Well, Andrew Marantz, staff writer at The New Yorker, flew out to California to meet with somebody who might meet that criteria, the leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who's not nearly as well-known as Joe Rogan. Andrew joins us now to talk about his time with Piker, who does have many, many followers, the broader manosphere and more from his latest piece, The Battle for the Bros. We have a number of what I think are going to be very interesting clips to play in this segment. Andrew Marantz, welcome back to WNYC.

Andrew Marantz: Thank you, Brian. It's always good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Just by way of background, after 2024 was dubbed "The Podcast Election" as Trump seemed to reach young men by appearing for interviews with Joe Rogan. That's the best-known name. There's also Theo Von, Adin Ross on their platforms. What do they represent as a group?

Andrew Marantz: Yes, it's a very diffuse group if you can even call it a group. That's why it's sometimes referred to as a manosphere or an ecosystem. It's not an organization really. Adin Ross is an extremely, at this point, far-right Twitch streamer. Whereas someone like Theo Von or Joe Rogan, their brand is really much more being curious and open-minded and having no preconceived notions at all.

Someone like Rogan, as of 2020, he declared that he wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders. He's very open-minded on libertarian issues around sex and guns and drugs and rock and roll. Then sometime between 2020 and 2024, he and apparently millions of young men who listen to him became converted into the MAGA-sphere. Some of this is ideological. Some of it is more vibe-based.

I think it's always a little bit of both. Yes, it's an emergent effect of many different things more than a kind of organized political strategy. In fact, a lot of the appeal of these shows is that they mostly don't talk about politics. When you have someone like Trump or one of his surrogates drop in there, they're more performing their chill, approachable version of a performance of authenticity or "authenticity" rather than necessarily talking about policy all that much.

Brian Lehrer: Here's our first clip. This is what you might call manosphere star Andrew Tate, who you describe as a Bugatti-driving hustler who has been charged with human trafficking, doling out life advice in this clip to Adin Ross, one of those manosphere podcasters and Trump interviewers, back in 2022. This is just to give listeners a taste of what this content sounds like. This is 17 seconds.

Andrew Tate: This is one big video game. You get to upgrade your character. You're not born with any value. All these women that you just put me on with are born with value. They're pretty already. They're gorgeous already. They're good-looking enough even if they're a 5. Someone's going to give [bleep sound] they exist because someone wants to [bleep sound] them. As a man, if you don't make yourself valuable, you have no value.

Brian Lehrer: All right, sample number one. You also spoke with a manosphere comedian named Andrew Schulz. Here he is speaking with Joe Rogan about their issues with the Democratic Party. This one's a minute and a half.

Andrew Schulz: There's this Ivy League pretentiousness in the Democratic Party, I feel, where they're like, "We know better. You must be stupid if you don't agree with us." It's like, "All right. Well, I'm stupid. I'm dumb. I'm dumb then." Why doesn't somebody meet me where I'm stupid and start at least making me feel like I'm not an [bleep sound] for my, I guess you could say, political leanings now? Yes, I feel like they need to meet and it's a very simple thing. Make it a class issue and I think they win. Say what you want about America, but I think it's better if we have two presidents or two people running for president that we're stoked about. It's a really hard decision.

Joe Rogan: Oh yes, that would be wonderful. Yes, that's not what we had. We had one group of people that legitimately wanted to change things and then we're going to see what happens if they do. You're seeing weird stuff today that you never see before, which is a real adjustment to the age of the internet. One of the things you're seeing is, I don't know if you saw the 22 different Congress people who were all saying the exact same line with the word [bleep sound] in it.

Andrew Schulz: What was the line?

Joe Rogan: It's like it's this speech. They're reading it verbatim. They're all reading it and doing it to a microphone as if it's a rant, but they're all doing from the same script. The [bleep sound] ain't right. The [bleep sound] ain't right is the beginning of it. When in the history of the United States as a politician said [bleep sound], and not just one but 22 of them--

Brian Lehrer: There's an example of Joe Rogan as he was converting from Bernie Sanders, open-minded, to what wound up being leaning more Trump. Here's one more clip for this set and then we have more later because you flew out to California to meet with the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Here's a taste of what Piker's stream sounds like. Remember, he's a streamer from the left now. He's reacting to an interview of House Speaker Mike Johnson. This is a clip that recently got him banned from the platform, but he's been reinstated since. 45 seconds of Hasan Piker.

Speaker Mike Johnson: We're not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. What we are going to do is go into those programs and carve out the fraud, waste, and abuse and find efficiencies. Couple of examples. There's about $50 billion estimated that are lost every year in Medicaid just in fraud alone.

Hasan Piker: That fraud is not coming from individuals. It's coming from providers. They not tackling providers. They're not actually going after false billing. They are trying to cut recipients. If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott. The reason why I'm saying, "If you cared about Medicare or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott," and not make him a prominent part of the Republican Party is because he to this day is still known as committing the largest Medicare fraud in US history.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that's an allegation. That certainly was never brought to court. The first voice that we heard there was obviously Speaker Mike Johnson. Andrew Marantz from The New Yorker, do you want to talk about that clip first? Why did that get Hasan Piker banned from Twitch temporarily and what's the context there?

Andrew Marantz: Well, there's so much here that I want to get into. It's really interesting hearing these clips back to back, especially how much of them has to be bleeped. That's part of the point. The Rick Scott thing, I think that actually maybe was brought to court or maybe was settled out of court, but there is a real history there of Medicare fraud. The issue, though, is that Hasan Piker, who is this very vociferously leftist streamer, crossed a line by using the word "kill" in that context, which Twitch banned him for.

What you're hearing there is someone like Hasan Piker, who has very, very strong convictions, very to the left of the Democratic Party convictions. His job is to rant all day in front of a camera. When I say "all day," I mean I didn't really get how all day it was until I went out there. It is eight to ten hours a day of him just broadcasting about the news with 30,000 to 40,000 people watching him live. Anything he says can then be clipped later.

For instance, I was there on the day that Luigi Mangione was arrested, the suspect in the UnitedHealthCare assassination. All day, Hasan Piker was walking this line between not overtly glorifying murder but also not finger-wagging and coming off as a scold, which I think ties into the clip you played before that of Andrew Schulz talking to Joe Rogan. Both Hasan Piker from the left and people like Andrew Schulz and Joe Rogan, they would say not from the right but from the apolitical, open-minded, silent majority, let's say.

Both of them are pointing toward a feeling that feels very real to people. We can discuss rational arguments and counter-arguments about how true it is, but there is a feeling out there and there certainly was leading up to the November election last year that the Democrats are snobs. They're the party of coastal elites. They don't care about you. They don't materially improve your life.

Both from the left and from the ambient right, you're getting this critique of, "Look, all I care about is making my life better and improving my material conditions and also feeling like I have a home. From the Democrats, I'm not feeling that." Even though these people really have very little in common ideologically, there's something tonally or vibe-based that they have in common. Then you go all the way out to the end of the spectrum with someone like Andrew Tate, who, personally, I find completely unappealing and frankly terrifying.

To me, what that suggests is that because we are so post-monoculture and we're in such a post-broadcasting age and in such a narrow-casting age, the political and cultural strategy that one needs to use if you want to dominate the airwaves has to be a very catholic one with a small C. You have to go everywhere. That was something that Trump did because he has no boundaries. He will talk to someone as odious as Andrew Tate. He'll talk to someone as charming but rudderless as a Joe Rogan or a Theo Von. That was a winning political strategy for him.

Brian Lehrer: To talk about two particular details from that Hasan Piker, was that clip after the Luigi Mangione assassination of the healthcare CEO, insurance company CEO?

Andrew Marantz: It was, yes, and that, I think, put Twitch on high alert.

Brian Lehrer: That's why. When he said that line, "If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott," it could have been taken as, "Do that you would do the kind of thing that Luigi Mangione did." There was a context there for it not to just be taken as politically kill Rick Scott. That's why he was banned. That is really questionable.

Andrew Marantz: Yes, there was no need for him to use that word. His point would have been made if he'd said, "You should fire Rick Scott," or, "You should jail Rick Scott." That would have made the same point. I think the generous read on that is he's talking for 10 hours a day. He's trying to be edgy and funny and ramp up his audience. If he speaks like a milquetoast mainstream broadcaster, he loses his comparative advantage.

I saw this over and over again when I was there and throughout his career, him flirting with that line. This isn't in the piece actually. The first time I really saw this up close was at the DNC in Chicago. At the Democratic National Convention last summer, I was there reporting and Hasan Piker was there too. He was an invited guest of the DNC. This very important prominent Twitch streamer with millions of followers.

I think it's worth emphasizing, he's really the only leftist on Twitch. Platforms like this have become very thoroughly MAGA-fied. They invited him and gave him this very prominent credential broadcasting from the heart of the arena. Then he said some very, very provocative things about Gaza on Twitter and they revoked his credential. He's constantly walking this line. Sometimes to certain people's minds, he crosses it.

Brian Lehrer: To that assertion that to this day, Rick Scott is still known as committing the largest Medicare fraud in US history. I just looked that up. Sure enough, from a Miami Herald article from last year about Scott generally in the political context, it says he once ran a healthcare company that was slapped with the largest Medicare fraud fine in US history, that last year from the Miami Herald for context on that. Now, California Governor Gavin Newsom, as we and many others have been talking about recently, has gone the podcast route in an attempt to break into the manosphere. Here's Hasan Piker explaining why he doesn't agree with Newsom's strategy.

Hasan Piker: Gavin Newsom started his own podcast. It feels like the Democrats kept asking the question like, "Who's the Joe Rogan of the left?" Then instead of hearing my answer to it, which was, "You can't podcast your way out of this problem," they decided, "Oh, shut the [bleep sound] up. We just need to be the Joe Rogan of the left ourselves." The solution to the Democratic Party's crisis right now is not to flood the market with more social media. The solution to the Democratic Party's problem right now is to change its policies.

Brian Lehrer: That line in the middle of that clip, Andrew, "You can't podcast your way out of this problem," I've heard that before. People are talking about that line. Did that originate with Hasan Piker?

Andrew Marantz: Yes, he's been saying that for a while. He said a version of it to me as well. I understand his point. I think this is both a blessing and a curse for him in terms of building an audience. He really is an ideologue first. His clothing brand is called Ideologie. He is a very committed socialist, frankly, and he cares about that above all else. The other people we're talking about in the Joe Rogan-Andrew Schulz world, they are not ideologues first. They are comedians first. That makes them much more flexible.

If you're Hasan Piker and you really care primarily about ideology, I think it stands to reason that you would say, "Okay, I don't want to just hear more from Gavin Newsom. I want Gavin Newsom to be a different kind of politician." I will also say on the Gavin Newsom podcast, specifically, even leaving ideology out of it, the vibe is not a manosphere vibe. Gavin Newsom, he still speaks in this very polished, market-tested way.

He's always talking about, "Look, I just really want to stress-test all the deliverables on that front." He does not talk the way that a guy in this world would talk. Now, it may seem petty to bring that up because, to Piker's point, policy, in some sense, matters more. I just don't want to lose sight of the fact that to many voters, it's the other way around. Politics is downstream from culture. Who you trust comes down to who you parasocially feel a connection to.

The fact that somebody could hear Bernie Sanders and then hear Donald Trump and go, "I like both of these guys. I'm going to flip a coin and decide who to vote for," from a policy perspective, you could say that makes no sense, but it happens in our world all the time. If you want to understand the electorate, I think you have to understand some of that as well as understanding policy.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have two more clips to play and then we can take some phone calls. Your reactions to what Andrew Marantz from The New Yorker is saying about his piece on podcasters and streamers and the manosphere and the 2024 election. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. This next clip is strange bedfellows. On one podcast, Hasan Piker, who we've just been talking about, appearing on Theo Von's podcast, that more right-wing podcaster. A few weeks ago, you'll recall that Von had Trump on his show as well. Here's a minute and a half of those two in conversation with each other. Theo Von speaks first.

Theo Von: Man, it's interesting. I never really heard it put like that like, "What do I want my life to be like day to day? Do I want it to be this constant or do I want to not think about those things and think that some of that is the government's responsibility? I do my best to elect and vote in a way that I think is meaningful and vote for the best person. Then I try to enjoy my life and take care of my family and my neighbor." I don't know. That's how, I think, maybe I start to break it down in my head.

Hasan Piker: What you were describing right there is basically the heart of-- I wouldn't say the problem necessarily, but that is why a lot of people just tune out because they feel just powerless at the end of the day. You got your protest, you vote, and then these guys do whatever the [bleep sound] they want to do. What am I supposed to do is like the attitude that the average citizen has in this country.

That's why things slowly but surely seemingly get worse year over year. Maybe not for you and I because we're relatively successful. For average people, for everyday people, [bleep sound] up. They recognize it, but they don't know who is responsible for it. They become so malleable and so open to responding to anybody that will recognize their frustration and say, "It's actually because of this and that." I think Trump tapped into that so perfectly and that's why he won.

That's why he defeated the Democrats so handily because he was like, "Yes, you're angry. I'm angry too." Why are you angry? Because woke libtards, because DEI, because trans people, because undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants aren't your [bleep sound] landlord. They're not the one who's raising the price of rent. They don't own the mega-corporations. They're not sitting at the board of BlackRock. You know what I mean? It's not a Guatemalan migrant that's sitting at the board of BlackRock.

Brian Lehrer: Hasan Piker with Theo Von. Andrew, that was really interesting because we're hearing in that clip two influencers who different groups of young men idolize. These voted for different candidates. In a way, they sound like they're communicating from the same mindset.

Andrew Marantz: They're definitely communicating well. I think it's important to be clear with someone like Theo Von. They really are radically open-minded first and only Trump-affiliated second.

Brian Lehrer: Right, so if I characterized him as more from the right, it deserves a correction?

Andrew Marantz: Well, it's also just to get a sense of how they're able to communicate so well because it's not like if it were Charlie Kirk or Tucker Carlson or something, it would be much more of a debate, a right versus left debate. When it's someone like Theo Von, it's more of a conversation. That's fundamental to the form, to the genre that we're talking about. We call them interviews, for lack of a better word, but they're really not interviews. They're really just bowl sessions.

The whole point is to find common ground, which is why, in retrospect, I think it seems silly, this notion that the Kamala Harris campaign was reportedly really hemming and hawing about whether to go on Joe Rogan. They didn't send Tim Walz onto a lot of these podcasts, which I think a lot of people were expecting would have been a natural move. If Tim Walz had gone on to Theo Von's show, he would not have gotten tough questions.

You mentioned that Theo Von interviewed Trump. A week before he interviewed Trump, he also interviewed Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders didn't have any gaffes or difficult moments. To get to what I think you're saying, which is I think really true about why these guys are able to communicate though specifically, it's that they are coming from this common perspective of alienation or something is messed up and I need to identify what it is.

If you talk to some social scientist who tells you it's 20 different things and it has to do with global trade routes and globalization and all that stuff, there may be truth to that, but it's not a very narratively satisfying answer. If you have a clear answer, a kind of organizing principle that tells you what's wrong with the world and how to fix it, there is immediate appeal to that. For someone like Hasan Piker, the answer is capitalism. "That is what's wrong with the world and here's how I think we should fix it."

Other guests that might go on Theo Von's show or Joe Rogan's show, the answer might be the illuminati or the Jewish Kabbalah or Jeffrey Epstein. You know what I mean? Answers that I think have less empirical basis, but they have an answer. I think that we underestimate the appeal that that has. If you can have a clear view of the world and express it in a compelling way that feels authentic to an audience for three hours without editing, that has immense appeal whether you're carefully fact-checking that or not.

Brian Lehrer: Paulie in Queens, you're on WNYC with Andrew Marantz from The New Yorker. Hi, Paulie.

Paulie: Hey, how's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Paulie: Yes, I'm listening to you, guys. I listen to you all the time, by the way, but I'm listening to you, guys. I'm somebody who's been voting Democrat since I started voting 20 years ago. I'm really disenchanted. I came really close to voting for Trump. It's really because Democrats have lost us. They're not talking to us. When Kamala Harris had an opportunity to speak to us men, she didn't go to Joe Rogan. She went to call her daddy. Call her daddy. What does that mean? It's contrary. She fouled that up. Her hampers fouled that up. They had an opportunity.

Brian Lehrer: What would you have wanted to hear? Paulie, what would you have wanted to hear from Kamala Harris that would have made you less close to voting for Donald Trump?

Paulie: I did vote for Harris, by the way. I did. I thought to myself, "If I could just shut up Trump, if he could just slow away. We'll have Kamala. We'll make do with her for four years," but there was really nothing exciting about Kamala Harris. All I know is that the direction that the country's been going in. We live in New York. We know all the migrant situation here in New York. It's not good. Unfortunately, a young child was brutally assaulted here in Queens just this past summer. It was by a migrant. Shouldn't have been here. Now, I'm an immigrant, or my parents were. I have sympathy, but I don't have that much sympathy where we have to close our eyes. What's going on?

Brian Lehrer: Paulie, thank you very much. We appreciate your, I guess, first-time call. Don't be a stranger. Call us again. Derek in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hello, Derek.

Derek: Brian, thanks for taking my call. I don't listen to Hasan Piker, but I listen to Chapo Trap House and socialist-oriented podcasts of various sorts. One element I want to bring up is just the Democrats and the liberal establishment uses identity politics pretty cynically. I think that's generated a lot of this backlash. They will scold people for not using the right terms, which somebody wants to be called a certain thing. I'll call you whatever you want to be called.

They cynically use these things. Then meanwhile, they're supporting wars. They're kneeling in ethnic [unintelligible 00:25:14] and they're not changing any fundamental policy that actually impacts the economic lives of these marginalized communities. They say they're feminists, but they're supporting wars. Their policies are crushing women and children to death in dusty buildings in Gaza right now.

Today, their policies and even on this station, I hear it. You'll say all these platitudes, but then you'll draw, "Oh, some people would argue what's happening isn't that," and you won't do that with other issues. There's just so much rage about all these weird double standards that are hidden. I think the liberal establishment might not even realize they're doing it, but it's just driving people away. It's creepy and it feels weird. Thanks a lot, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Derek. Andrew, thoughts about those two callers real quick as it relates to the manosphere and left-right politics.

Andrew Marantz: Yes, those are two amazing calls. I think they're both speaking to something very, very real. I think the convergence for me is that they both speak to these very real grievances coming from totally different places and they both blame the liberal establishment. I see where that's coming from. I think what stands out to me, and this is from a messaging perspective, is all the sins that both callers talked about apply at least as much to the Trump Republicans, bombing people in Gaza, not dealing with the crises that are affecting people's material lives.

The Trump brand doesn't get tarnished by it. It's the Democrat brand that gets tarnished by it. I think there's many, many reasons we could discuss for why that is, but I think at least part of it has to do with the messaging. Both of them said it just feels creepy, it feels off, it feels scoldy, it feels weird. I don't want to reduce everything to messaging. I think Hasan Piker is right when he says, "You can't podcast your way out of this." I do think that there is something about the current Democratic coalition. This has been a long-standing trend since the '90s where it is built around educated elites and not necessarily around the concerns of the working class. I think people feel it.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew Marantz, staff writer at The New Yorker, where he wrote this article recently about podcasters and streamers and the so-called manosphere. He's also the author of the book, Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, which was published back in 2019 but was prescient for what we're living through right now. Andrew, thanks for coming on with us today.

Andrew Marantz: Thanks, Brian. It's always great to talk.

 

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.