Conservative political commentator Dave Rubin, who is scheduled to visit Israel this week, started out as a progressive but became conservative, a path influenced by the hostility of his fellow liberals toward Israel.
He has since created and continues to host The Rubin Report, a YouTube show now closing in on 3 million subscribers that has garnered more than 2 billion views worldwide.
Rubin has spoken around the globe, and joined another influential conservative, Jordan Peterson, on worldwide speaking tours.
In 2019, he founded locals.com, a subscription-based platform for content creators, which he later sold to Rumble to help combat tech censorship.
JNS spoke with Rubin at CPAC Hungary on May 29.
Q: Are you excited to be visiting Israel?
A: I’m very excited to be in Israel this coming week. I’ve been in Israel probably a dozen times in my life. I actually studied at Ben-Gurion University back in 1997; my junior year of college, second semester. My brother-in-law is Israeli. He’s also my co-founder of locals.com, an Israeli start-up. So I have a great connection to Israel. My parents actually met in Israel in the early ’70s. So it’s a wonderful country.
Q: And what will you be doing there?
A: I’m coming to do a whole bunch of interviews, see the country again, and I just want to meet people, and I want to hopefully spread a little bit of good cheer. I have two events. One in Tel Aviv at Bar Giyora on June 2, then I’m at Kikar Hamusica in Jerusalem on June 4. I’ll probably have some Israeli guests, and it’ll be a mix of stand-up and current events.
Q: Have you been to CPAC Hungary before?
A: It’s my second time being in Hungary. It’s my first time being at CPAC. So I did meet the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, when I was here last night, and his political director, Balázs Orbán, who is no relation.
I just find Hungary is very similar to the United States in some sense. There are a lot of parallels to what’s happening in America. Here is a country that wants to defend its border and defend its culture. We have a very different culture in America because we’re far more of a multicultural nation, but we’re trying to defend ourselves and not be governed by people like those in Brussels that Hungary is defending against.
Q: Israel finds itself battling similar opponents to Hungary: international NGOs, supranational organizations, deep states, politicized media and academia. What do you think is the most serious threat?
A: You can look at NGOs, Soros funding, out-of-control courts, the mainstream media—but the tentacles are all connected.
The reason they hate Hungary so much isn’t because they really think Viktor Orbán is Hitler. They hate Hungary because he’s saying, “Hey, Hungary is for the Hungarian people and we’re going to have closed borders.” And here you have by far the safest streets. I’ve seen at least a half-dozen people walking around with yarmulkes. Go to London or Paris and see what’s going on.
Actually, one of the things that grossed me out politically when I was a lefty was the obsessive hatred of Israel, the one place in the Middle East that comes close to the progressive ideal. Once I saw that, I started to see other things.
Q: For a renaissance in conservative politics, how important is it to change the culture to reflect those values? And is it possible to reverse the left’s takeover of Western culture, popular culture?
A: At a values level, there’s an interesting moment happening in the world right now. The left has gone too far. If you say the founding of America is built on racism, you’ve gone too far. But you’ve got to give the left credit: They’re evil, but they’re able to destroy a lot really, really quickly. What we’re seeing now is a reaction against that.
Q: Do you think countries that have allowed in mass numbers of illegal migrants can recover?
A: In the United Kingdom, jihadists take over the streets every single day and no one there seems to know what to do. Practically no one is fighting. Some are. There’s Tommy Robinson. There’s Nigel Farage. There are others, but not nearly enough.
France has a very similar problem to the United Kingdom. I would say Hungary is going to be O.K. So is Poland. Some of the countries in eastern and Central Europe. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands talks a great game but he needs to start doing something.
The irony is that leaders like France’s [President Emmanuel] Macron aren’t bigoted against Jews. The reason they throw Israel under the bus every day is they’re trying to satiate their Muslim populations. They think they’ll buy themselves some time. But they’re just going to get beheaded a little lower on the neck. That’s all. It’s a domestic problem that Macron, along with others, have brought down on their own heads.
I don’t see how Western Europe gets out of it.
I see how Hungary gets out of it. Australia, too. I just sat down with [former Australian Prime Minister] Tony Abbott. They have a better geographic situation; they’re an island. They can kick people out and just not let them back in.
So I’m bullish on America. I’m bullish on Hungary. And I’m bullish on Israel. Israel is tiny but it has a religion and a belief system that goes back 3,000 years. That’s pretty tough to beat. And I’m pretty sure God’s on our side.