Dave Rubin was everything the left wanted. He was articulate, intellectual, and, likely most importantly for them in this day and age, gay. He was the host on The Young Turks channel on YouTube and followed the party line pretty closely.

After a while, Rubin splintered off and began to host his own show, The Rubin Report. It was there that one day he had on a guest that would begin his journey away from the left and toward the right.

According to Rubin, radio show host Larry Elder of the Larry Elder Show beat him over the head with one fact after another, which jolted Rubin. As he tells Reason’s John Stossel, “I woke up.”

After that, with every right-of-center guest, Rubin learned a little more and before he knew it, he was no longer a leftist. Rubin began expressing opinions that ran afoul of his former fandom, causing even those friends he had at The Young Turks to turn against him and insult him on their show.

“I lost friends. I still lose friends now,” Rubin told Stossel.

Rubin noted, however, that this is the way things go with the left.

“This goes to the laziness of the argument of the left. They believe that if you disagree with them, you’re evil,” said Rubin.

And Rubin is correct. Despite being a member of the LGBT community, the leftist members of the community hold that he no longer belongs in it. Students at college campuses go out of their way to disrupt his campus talks.

But it doesn’t just stop at angry social justice warriors on campus. Rubin has, on many occasions, found himself being punished by YouTube for stepping out of line. Very recently, Rubin sat down with Parkland shooting survivor Cameron Kasky, who spoke about his regrets about how he participated in the demonizing of pro-gun Americans, and the way he was used by the March for Our Lives coordinators, a movement he has now left.

YouTube demonetized Rubin’s interview with Kasky, deeming it unfit for advertisers. How or why was not discussed.

This wasn’t the first time this has happened, however. Rubin’s videos are often demonetized for odd reasons, and one day Rubin decided to conduct an experiment to see if the demonetizations were due to YouTube’s blatantly left-leaning bias. He created two videos, one simply titled “Socialism Isn’t Cool,” and the other titled “Capitalism Isn’t Cool.”

Within moments of his anti-socialism video going up, YouTube hit it with demonetization. The fake anti-capitalist video, however, stayed monetized without interruption.

Rubin’s observation that the left punishes for ideological waywardness has been reinforced time and again by everything from his campus tours to YouTube’s money system.

It’s odd that Rubin faces so much backlash. First for simply listening to what the other side has to say, and further for taking facts into account and altering his viewpoint to suit these facts. For the left, even opening up to listen is a step too far, but agreeing isn’t permissible. They’re making sure Rubin understands that.

But Rubin’s is a story that is important in this day and age. It shows what could happen to someone if they’re exposed to ideas outside the leftist bubble, and are willing enough to not only listen but analyze and consider. Rubin was a leftist’s leftist. Now he shuns the bubble he used to reside in, proving that even when the person seems completely lost, they can still be broken free from the ideological prison the left insists keeping people locked inside.