Joe Rogan fails the Bernie Bro purity test that anti-Semites and sexists pass

Rogan rests at a unique intersection of pop culture. He cut his teeth in stand-up and, after a number of other television gigs, became the host of Fear Factor and then a UFC commentator. As a result of his well-known and affable persona, as well as his refusal to take himself too seriously, his podcast earns hundreds of millions of downloads per month and features guests ranging from Mel Gibson and Alex Jones to Edward Snowden and Richard Dawkins. His politics have ranged from libertarian on issues like guns and drugs to outright left-wing on universal healthcare and foreign policy, and he’s hosted just three candidates on his podcast this election cycle, all outsiders: Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, and Sanders.

Rogan is the exact cultural figure whom a candidate like Sanders needs in order to win the Democratic nomination. He’s a bellwether of young people alienated by establishment politics and not terribly in touch with the concentrated cesspool of very online identity politics — to which most voters do not subscribe, by the way.

So of course, the most insufferable of the Bernie Bros went positively apoplectic.

Here’s Eli Valley, the anti-Zionist “cartoonist” famous for depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raping President Barack Obama and deeming Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss of the New York Times “Nazi-friendly Jews.”

Here’s Carlos Maza, the self-described “Marxist pig” who curiously and quietly left Vox after deciding to wage war against YouTube for refusing to censor conservative comedian Steven Crowder and Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Here’s Brianna Wu of Gamergate fame.

Other avid Sanders backers, such as Elizabeth Bruenig, Ryan Grim, and Krystal Ball, rightly noted that it would be moronic for Sanders to reject the endorsement of a figure as widely popular as Rogan. Meanwhile, opportunistic non-Sanders supporters on the Left, including an allegedly objective news reporter, clutched their pearls at the Rogan endorsement.

Here’s Rolling Stone’s Jamil Smith.

Here’s gun-grabbing wannabe Shannon Watts.

And here’s the Daily Beast’s Sam Stein.

The notion that Rogan is some sort of bigot is sheer lunacy. He routinely grills conservatives and liberals alike on his show, but his own views are quite left-wing, especially on social issues. He’s supported gay rights for the entirety of his career, and he is broadly supportive of transgender rights as well. As a professional MMA commentator, the only bones he has ever picked with the contemporary transgender movement (or part of it, anyway) have been the push to put biological males who identify as women into women’s contact sports (Rogan rightly notes that this poses severe risks) and the transitioning of young children.

But the worst people here are those who fail Rogan on their purity test while passing bigots who are backing or campaigning with Sanders.

Eli Valley has proudly defended both Linda Sarsour, the Louis Farrakhan buddy who found herself ousted from the Women’s March for anti-Semitism, and Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman who can’t go a month without accusing American Jews of dual loyalties to Israel or running cover for terrorism. Shannon Watts has also defended Sarsour, and Maza and Wu have repeatedly stuck their necks out for Omar. Smith and Stein, both respected journalists covering national politics, weighed in on a tweet about a popular podcast co-host yet did not utter a peep about Sanders bringing credibly accused domestic abuser Keith Ellison on the campaign trail, nor did they call on Sanders to reject the endorsement of flagrant misogynist Cenk Uygur.

Only Rogan failed the left-wing purity test, and it wasn’t with all Bernie Bros or just Bernie Bros. The intersectional fissures in the Left’s facade are deepening, and Rogan just marked the divide.