"Over the last two years, Rogan and his band of politically incorrect merry men in Texas, have grown more openly partisan and more explicitly right-wing. But their brand of politics looks nothing like the WASPy Chamber of Commerce conservatism of old that hates gays and loves austerity.
It’s a bit of a “Don’t Tread on Me,” Bro-style of Ron Paul–adjacent libertarianism that favors free markets, low taxes, and deregulated vices — everyone should be able to do drugs, gamble on sports, watch porn, and trade crypto on demand. They also agree with Democrats on gay marriage and abortions but can’t stand liberals’ sometimes shrill moralism when it comes to matters of top-down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and what they consider the “woke” agenda. It’s what some have branded “Barstool Conservatism” after Barstool Sports and its obnoxious founder, Dave Portnoy. But Rogan’s politics are less Barstool than Portnoy and others in the Manosphere. He sometimes sounds more like a disaffected progressive. “Free health care? Yes!” Rogan once told his Mothership audience. “Education for all? Right on! Men can get pregnant — fuck! I didn’t realize it was a package deal.”
But that disaffection, plus the courting of his big audience among those in MAGAworld has led Rogan to become something during the 2024 election cycle that he wasn’t before — a quirky but relatively garden-variety Republican talking head, like a tattooed Tucker Carlson. Roughly a third of his shows now feature right-leaning pundits and tech CEOs to riff on, say, cancel culture and the joys of dismantling the federal government. Rogan’s now something like the court jester for Big Tech and MAGA’s counterrevolution."
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/joe-rogan-podcast-manosphere-influencer
