Stop Saying We Need a Leftist Joe Rogan!

Since authoritarianism has really kicked off in the US, every few weeks, one particular media take has been making the rounds.

“The Left needs a Joe Rogan.” 

Joe Rogan, for those of you unaware, is a former MMA commentator who used to sell vitamins and now has one of the most listened-to podcasts in the world — who, over the course of a decade, went from a “just asking questions” pseudo centrist to a anti-trans, MAGA supporting influencer type that has recently jumped to anti-semitism. I’m sorry that you know this now if you didn’t already, and if you DID know this, I’m sorry we had to talk about it.

At any rate, occasionally since — you know, November — there has been a mention of Joe Rogan and the need for more of them, but like, in a leftist way.

This take, presumably fueled by the fact it’s clearer than ever that we live in an algorithmic hellscape that makes it impossible to counter the narrative of fascists, is wrong, and I hate it — I hate so much.

The Right doesn’t win the media war because it has one charismatic podcaster—it wins because it has an entire machine designed to sustain and amplify its voices. It funds media infrastructure at every level, from anonymous Twitter accounts to national cable networks.

And — the Left doesn’t lose the media war because we don’t have smart, compelling voices. The Left loses because we don’t have an ecosystem that makes those voices matter at scale.

A good example Hard Reset Media pointed out this week, is Hasan Piker, one of the most successful progressive media figures online. He has millions of followers, massive engagement, and a reach most political figures would kill for. Hasan is successful because he makes politics entertaining, accessible, and engaging. But he isn’t a media infrastructure. He proves that strong left-wing media personalities can exist — but they’re on their own.

Narrative power isn’t about having one big guy—it’s about coordination, incentives, and a system that actually rewards participation. And right now, the Left has none of that.

But, increasingly, I’ve begun to even hate the arguments countering this hot take, even when they’re right — because they still misunderstand the key reason why we are stuck in the right-wing misinformation cycle to begin with.

Real narrative power comes from volume, clarity, and coordination. Most people already know this. So why isn’t there any more volume, clarity, or coordination happening—not just in Chicago, but nationally?

Why is the Left still asking where our Joe Rogan is instead of fixing the incentives that make narrative power possible?

This email is part of a longer series about narrative, where I hope we can get really specific about one key question: Where can we actually build leverage with narrative? 

Future posts will break this down by sector—journalists, organizing groups, media outlets, and conversations with people who know way more than I do.

This week, we’re starting with one big question: what’s in the way of the Left building media power — especially in Chicago?

🔴 Chicago Shows How the Media War is Fought—And How the Left Keeps Losing It

Today for obvious reasons, with the Board of Education meeting, I’ve been thinking about how this shows up in practice as the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) continues to organize to land a final contract that actually serves students. And as news about CTU and the Board of Education continues to develop, we’re already seeing headlines that focus on everything — except the actual fight, in the same playbook we see nationally.

Instead of meaningful coverage of how the budget affects schools, classrooms, and students, the focus is on:
📌 Clicky, drama-fueled X threads speculating about who said what behind closed doors (instead of the actual contract details).
📌 Misinformation about what’s actually holding up bargaining, designed to make prep time look like teachers being unreasonable.
📌 Illinois Policy and other right-wing media figures preemptively framing CTU as the villain. Austin Berg’s thread is the perfect example. 

This isn’t just bad press or a biased media market. It’s a strategic, coordinated narrative attack. I wrote more about how right-wing media keeps baiting Chicago last week, but if you’ve ever logged onto X, you’ve probably already seen this in action.

The right-wing media machine has sold Chicago as the nation’s cautionary tale on crime, budgets, and unions. Every crisis gets chewed up and spit back out through the same machine:
1️⃣ Right-wing outlets frame the story first.
2️⃣ Local journalists launder that framing into legitimacy.
3️⃣ Progressives scramble to respond—too late, on the defensive, and on someone else’s terms.

It really doesn’t have to be like this. But meaningfully countering this strategy requires actually engaging with how it works. And if there was even a fraction of the coordination and amplification behind their fight that the Right gives to its pet issues, the conversation would look completely different.

📌 Right-Wing Narrative Power Isn’t a Glitch. It’s a Business Model.

Right-wing media exists to serve power, thriving on drama, grift, and loyalty. It doesn’t just push ideology—it’s a fully functional machine that sustains itself by benefiting everyone inside it. As Garbage Day put it, right-wing media isn’t just about Fox and talk radio anymore—it’s about how the internet itself has been restructured to reward reactionary engagement.

It serves three core interests at the same time:
🔹 It moves policy. (Conservative billionaires fund media to push deregulation, privatization, and culture war fights that protect their wealth.)
🔹 It creates careers. (If you’re a prolific right-wing operative, you’ll always have a job—because the network rewards loyalty and content volume. Even D-list streamers, podcasters, and Twitter grifters get a boost.)
🔹 It makes money. (There is no real benefit in this model when it comes to fact-checking, journalistic integrity, or ‘objectivity.’ Grifters thrive because right-wing media is a product built to enrage and engage.)

With these core interests serving everyone involved, there is real coordination. Media Matters has tracked this for years: Conservative media figures dominate YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts not because they’re winning arguments, but because their content is everywhere first, which is part of that coordination.

Right now, the Left has no equivalent. There is no progressive media ecosystem—nationally or locally—that can even attempt to counter this playbook. There are so many small, unglamorous tactics that could actually build power—what’s in the way of using them?

🟢 The Left Can Win — If Narrative Power Is a Shared Interest

Since I wrote about what’s happening in Chicago’s narrative, I’ve had multiple conversations with many organizers and journalists who have expressed disgust at how effective these right-wing tactics are. But the most common reaction isn’t “How do we fight back?”—it’s “That sounds miserable.”

And honestly? They’re not wrong. There’s no funding. There’s no structural support. There’s no clear benefit. And… the process itself of creating an outrage machine is draining, painful, and feels worse (and is more addictive) than… actually organizing.

Unlike the Right, which has monetized message discipline and loyalty, the Left is… doing its own thing. No progressive journalist — or even organizer or activist group — wants to look like a DNC shill or a schill of any kind—so instead of coordination, we get 500 versions of the same take, all competing for the same small audience, while right-wing media floods every corner of the internet with unified, repeatable narratives.

And as Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba talked about in their conversation on Truthout today, when there’s limited resources and energy, it’s draining and reductive for us as people to try to take on the algorithm on our own: "I don’t want to waste my anger, or its potential, and wind up spiraling when I could be learning or building something. And if I scroll too much, all of those things can potentially happen.”

This is one of the biggest reasons the Left struggles to build narrative power. Too much energy is wasted on internal fights, discourse battles, and reaction cycles that don’t build anything. Right-wing media isn’t interested in being “right”—it’s interested in flooding every channel with its worldview.

Which means the problem isn’t that we don’t know what works—it’s that there’s no incentive to do it.

So What Actually Needs to Change?

The Left doesn’t need one big figurehead. It needs infrastructure that makes coordinated participation sustainable. What’s stopping the Left from doing the same thing as the Right is that it sucks—and that we suck at coordination.

Right-wing media doesn’t get caught up in existential purity debates over coordination. It just moves in sync, because everyone inside the machine benefits from participation.

Meanwhile, the Left treats media like a competitive ecosystem instead of a coordinated one.

• Journalists pride themselves on being independent.

• Organizing groups worry about losing control of their messaging.

• Streamers and indie media figures rely on personal brands, not networks.

So instead of a self-sustaining machine, we have a bunch of individual players competing for the same oxygen.

And a bunch of individual players can’t fight an entire coordinated ecosystem.

A Leftist Joe Rogan wouldn’t help.

How Do We Fix It?

Everything is actively horrifying right now.

Trump is invoking the Alien Enemies Act to mass detain and deport people. He’s gutting the Department of Education so that future generations are easier to control. The news cycle isn’t just letting it happen—it’s actively making it harder to talk about.

We are stuck reacting to right-wing framing in the middle of an actual fascist takeover. It’s not just frustrating—it’s disorienting. It’s exhausting. It’s making people check out completely.

And this is exactly why we have to figure out how to coordinate—together.

How do we find a way to support and sustain different types of narrative work so people actually want to participate — even worse, to participate together?

More on this soon.

Who’s already doing this work? Who should we be learning from, amplifying, and supporting?

Let me know who I should make sure to coordinate with as we try to figure this out…

• H

PS: I know I owe you a Rahm Emanuel piece. But after writing a full list of at least 40 things he’s done that I despise (the entirety of the Laquan McDonald cover-up, closing schools + mental health clinics, the level of anti-trans grossness he went with in his centrist bid for media attention) and/or can’t believe actually happened (steak knife story) I’m taking a break until he makes another move for attention… (it won’t be long).