The Joe Rogan controversy revealed something important about the American left

Comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders — and the subsequent outrage in gay, trans, and other communities over Sanders’s embrace of the endorsement — is one of the most intricate and multifaceted political controversies of recent months.

Rogan is known for his stints on the NBC shows NewsRadio and Fear Factor but more recently for The Joe Rogan Experience, an astonishingly popular podcast featuring hours-long interviews with comedians, politicians, journalists, and others — including an interview with Sanders that has racked up 11 million views on YouTube alone.

But Rogan’s popularity is owed in part for his vocal rejection of “political correctness,” which can take the form of transphobia (he once called trans woman mixed martial artist Fallon Fox “a fucking man”), Islamophobia (hosting guests like the far-right Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, who used his appearance to argue that Muslims are too inbred for the US to accept as immigrants), and racism (he once compared a black neighborhood to Planet of the Apes).

On one level, as Zack Beauchamp explains in his piece on the controversy, the fight is about primary politics: Sanders’s presidential campaign is surging, he has plenty of critics in the Democratic coalition (particularly ones who doubt his commitment to people marginalized for their racial, sexual, or gender identities), and this is a battlefield on which that fight can play out.