the reason you never find leftists grifting by cosplaying as right-wingers but there's a huge market in right-wingers cosplaying as contrarian leftists is bc the latter are parasites too cowardly to openly come out with their politics, which is uncool in their elite social circle

dave rubin, jordan peterson, ayishat akanbi: all they're doing is going "it's ok, it's ok, I know *it looks like* I'm saying the exact things maga republicans are saying thinly veiled in pseudo-left rhetoric, but your eyes are actually deceiving you. I'm neither left nor right!"

as their brand becomes oversaturated the grift runs its course and they have to go full mask-off. rubin/peterson hit that a while back. akanbi will go full candace owens too once that stage is reached. but they have to squeeze every drop out the grift first

to be clear, by pretending to be leftist I'm using that in the broader sense, not exclusively socialist/marxist. so rubin/peterson pretended to be "real liberals" for a while, then moved to a vague "classical liberalism", before going full mask-off conservative right-winger

brett weinstein branded himself as a "berniecrat" for a long time before also glomming onto "classical liberal" where he's still trying to market himself today. he'll go mask-off once that mine is exhausted

the stages of the grift:

"I'm the *real* liberal/leftist/marxist/socialist, all others are evil posers who are destroying civilization"



"actually, I'm neither left nor right. I have no ideology. I'm politically neutral, hence objective"



"yeah ok I'm a conservative"