Brian Einstein
 | |
| Era | Tweeter Is Not Real Life (cast) |
|---|---|
| Age | 50-65 |
| Home | Pacific Northwest |
| Demographic | evolutionary biologist, white, anti-establishment |
| Lean | Lean Republican |
| Race | white |
An evolutionary biologist in the Pacific Northwest who lost a university post after a campus dispute and became a podcaster. He was once a liberal, but he now aligns with Republican-leaning sceptics of public health and of the academy.
Who they stand for
He stands for a group that can be called the credentialed defectors. These are professionals and academics who were liberal until the campus protests of 2015 to 2017, then broke with their institutions and found one another on podcasts. The Covid-19 pandemic gave this group its mass. Lockdown sceptics, signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration of 2020, parents of children kept out of school, and people who distrusted the vaccine rollout or resented the mandates of 2021 all gathered around the same podcasts. By 2024 this current of opinion had a political home in the health-sceptic movement, which endorsed Trump that summer. Its members are middle-aged, educated, suburban and exurban, and they vote as a protest against the expertise they once represented themselves.
He differs from Alex James, who reasons from plots and charts he believes rather than from data he distrusts. He differs from Simon Harrisson, his fellow heterodox liberal, because he crossed to the other side of the argument over vaccines. He differs from Elliot Einstein because he cares more about biology than about markets.
Playing to them
A president wins his support by ending public health mandates, publishing the data behind agency decisions, protecting dissenting scientists and academic tenure, breaking the pharmaceutical industry's hold on regulators, and reforming the food supply. A president who stands up to censorship on social media platforms earns as much credit from him as one who takes a health measure. He does not forgive a vaccine mandate, a school closure, government pressure on social media platforms, or a president who treats the public-health agencies as the final word. He also punishes a university bailout or a diversity requirement attached to research grants.
Winning his support costs the support of Simon Harrisson, William Maha, Daniel Tetris and Anna Kasparova, who regard scepticism about vaccines as disqualifying in itself. It also costs the support of Natalie Winner, for whom his academic dispute is the offence that defines him. John Brogan, Alex James and Tucker Carlington tend to support the same things he does on health policy. Elliot Einstein tends to support the same things he does on academic policy.