Dave Rubin, a self-described “classical liberal” who has become a crowd favorite among right-wing audiences, told Turning Point USA Communications Director Candace Owens that the political left in America was beyond repair and “needs to burn.”
Rubin says he supports the social equality elements of the political left in America but believes that progressive politics lost its way as the American culture war escalated. Rubin and other “classical liberal” commentators are popular with elements of the political right because their “classical liberal” critiques against left-of-center politics help further a broader-reaching right-wing media narrative that seeks to paint the Democratic Party as having been hijacked by radical causes.
Rubin is perhaps one of the highest profile figures filling this niche, with his own YouTube channel reaching nearly one million subscribers. His own show pitches itself as a civil conversation between people who disagree, but more often than not it is merely a place where right-wing guests (and some very far-right guests) can air out their talking points without pushback and under the premise of having a civil political conversation.
During a podcast recorded for Dennis Prager’s "PragerU" and released yesterday, Rubin exemplified what has become his defining trait as a media personality: posture himself as liberal and then take that position to paint modern left-of-center politics in America as radical, cruel and unhinged. Rubin has been the subject of two PragerU videos: one in which he shares the reasons he separated himself from the left and another critiquing what he says is the standard for what is considered tolerant on the left. He told Owens that he believes that modern progressive politics “needs to burn” because it is beyond reform.
“The thing is, it needs to burn. I used to think you could reform it, and that’s why I was like, ‘OK, if I stay in this thing, we can fix this.’ But what I’ve realized is that every time there’s been a chance where they should look in the mirror—‘Trump got elected president, maybe you should look in the mirror. The Mueller thing, maybe you should look in the mirror,” Rubin said. “They double-down, they triple-down and they keep going.”
Rubin went on to assert that in the end, those on the progressive left supporting Bernie Sanders in his bid for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination for president will turn on Sanders because he is an “old white man.”
