

Courtesy of Creative Commons/THE REVIEW

On Friday, May 10, popular YouTube personality and host of “The Rubin Report” podcast, Dave Rubin, visited campus.

BY

Managing News Editor

On Friday, May 10, popular YouTube personality and host of “The Rubin Report” podcast, Dave Rubin, visited campus to discuss how his political viewpoint evolved from modern liberalism or progressivism to classical liberalism.

Rubin began his talk by discussing the presence of discrimination against conservatives and libertarians on tech and media platforms.

“There’s a really fascinating debate and a truly deep, psychological political debate happening right now on what the government should do. Right?” Rubin said. “So what I’m seeing right now is that it seems to me that a lot of the Trump right — so let’s say the ‘conservative right’ at the moment — is doing something a little odd right now. They’re sort of pushing for government involvement in the tech companies.”

Rubin went on to illustrate his point by making an example of Carl Benjamin — a political commentator and owner of a channel on YouTube called “Sargon of Akkad.” Benjamin is currently running for a seat in Parliament in the European Union.

“He was booted off Patreon, and Jordan [Peterson], Sam Harris and I think a few other people decided to leave the platform because we thought this guy, Carl Benjamin, who’s basically a classical liberal, I’d say he’s pretty much a centrist — he’s got some Libertarian leanings,” Rubin said. “If this guy is not allowed on these platforms, then I guarantee you, everyone in this room is about this far away from being booted off these platforms too.”

Rubin said that the world continues to move journalism toward alternative forms of media, including YouTube and podcasts. He argues it will be up to college-age individuals to ensure that those who do not fall into “liberal” political beliefs continue to remain on tech platforms.

“It’s not just conservatives,” Rubin said. “It’s pretty much anyone that doesn’t sort of fall into the postmodern-left-progressive box. We’ve got a target on us at the moment and for you guys that grew up getting your news on YouTube and through podcasts and all these things, this is gonna be your challenge basically to fix this thing.”

Rubin additionally addressed how he tries to “get through” to liberals and posed a question that he poses at each college visit.

“Is there anyone in this room that has it worse than their grandparents?” Rubin asked. “I mean really think about your grandparents for just a sec, whether they were born in this country, whether they’re third-generation in this country, whether you are first generation yourself, your parents came from somewhere else. Your grandparents came from somewhere else.

No one in the audience raised their hand to answer this question.

In this day and age, Rubin sees a change in the right-wing, specifically in its progress and discussion toward a more Libertarian point of view.

“So what’s happening right now on the center-right is you’ve got some Trump people, you’ve got some never-Trump people,” Rubin said. “There’s not many neocons left, but you’ve got neocons, you’ve got classical liberals, you got ex-lefties, that are sort of waking up to what the left has become, and I see something very very rich developing here. The other thing that I really like, which sort of brings it around to where I started is that what I see, as a really sort of healthy bright or healthy conservative group, is one that embraces a little more Libertarians.”

Correction: A previous version of this article read that Carl Benjamin was running for office in the United Kingdom’s Parliament.