The Revolution has come for Joe Rogan
There is no forgiveness because they seek destruction, not restoration.
The Taliban took back Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021, shortly after the Americans withdrew, tired and weary and broke after nearly 20 years of fighting. They seized control of the country in the broad and particular sense: setting up command in the presidential palace in Kabul and targeting the individuals who criticized the new government. By December 2021, regular Afghans and the members of the Afghan press who had expressed critical views of their new rulers had “been subjected to months of intimidation and fear.”
The Biden Administration has adopted these same tactics, calling for their critics to be silenced by the Administration’s corporate and media allies. After 20 years of trying to export Western values to Afghanistan, they ended up importing Taliban-style repression to the United States. And it only cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
Now, the Regime and its comrades target Joe Rogan, an inquisitive comedian with a podcast. He is accused of spreading “misinformation” by those that illegally spy on their citizens and lies without remorse. In reality, this isn’t about misinformation. It’s that Rogan’s crimes are those of words and thought. They prosecute on behalf of the god they have created, searching to eradicate those guilty of the sin of blasphemy. The Taliban would be proud.
We can be certain that the Regime is not concerned with the truth. Have you seen them struggle to explain the “evidence” that Russia was planning a false-flag in Ukraine to justify an invasion?
Or, consider how the COVID-19 misinformation originated from the U.S. government and its bureaucratic arms. In early 2020, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were both presented with arguments that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered. Instead of investigating this issue, they saw to it that this theory was killed off. Despite – or perhaps because of – these lies, Fauci and Collins remain dear sons of the Regime. Reminders that “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” (The Christians of the Left – such as David French – even go so far as to say that you have a “spiritual problem” if you don’t trust Fauci and Collins. Both the left and the right make their idols.)
They killed the truth before. Who is to say they’re not trying to do that with Rogan?
Those are the easy observations.
Then we get to the deeper and more consequential truths that are manipulated and deformed and remade for political purposes. Patterns emerge - and maybe they’re repeating. The institution of marriage, and the definition of marriage, is subjected to social – meaning political – evolution. Mothers are redefined as “birthing people.” Words are even disappeared by the U.S. government for threat that they are stigmatizing, dare someone have a negative opinion of an ex-convict or prisoner.
To put it more bluntly, the people who believe men can give birth are now in charge of what is true. The only authority they have is political power. Such power isn’t necessarily definitive, but it gives them the strength to set definitions and enforce the rules, to declare guilt and issue punishment. Conflicts of interest be damned. Power over language is power over the people: “the primary purpose of language – which is to describe reality – is replaced by the rival purpose of asserting power over it.”1
In their eyes, this public lynching is justified because these are revolutionary times and removing Rogan is a revolutionary act. There is no forgiveness because they seek destruction, not restoration.
There is some limitation to their enforcement power, those means by which they achieve their ends, necessitating the Biden Administration in July 2021 to order social media companies to ban those who disagree with the official line of thinking. The U.S. government went so far as to flag the objectionable content itself, helping corporate America snuff out inconvenient voices. Supposedly devout Christian Francis Collins has been silent on the government’s campaign to punish dissent, having been part of the cover-up. As Collins uses his faith to promote COVID-19 vaccines, perhaps he needs a reminder that Christianity does not give the civil government jurisdiction over your thoughts or words. Or a refresher of the evils of abortion.
Anyway, the censorship encouraged by the Biden Administration was effective – to an extent.
Alex Berenson was banned from Twitter in August 2021 for correctly labeling the COVID-19 vaccines as “therapeutics.” Dr. Robert Malone, “who has been credited with inventing the mRNA technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 immunizations,” was also been banned from Twitter. These suspensions came after Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and other members of the Biden Administration called for stronger measures to stop the spread of misinformation.
Yet Joe Rogan thrived, in large part because he provided an alternative platform to the voices that were being suppressed. The public yearned for this information and it was delivered through his podcast. It’s reported that Rogan has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. It’s also estimated that his interviews with Dr. Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough brought in millions more.
In response, the Biden White House demanded Spotify do more to censor the discussions of Rogan and his guests. At the same time, the liberal mob – encouraged by their leadership – aimed at Rogan, hurling disgusting and false allegations of “racism.” CNN, eager to shift the focus off the network’s own problems, is asking Spotify to give Rogan the proverbial death sentence:
This is the same network that lied about Rogan’s use of Ivermectin, calling it “horse dewormer.” It is the same network that ran an altered video of Rogan, making him seem sicker with COVID-19 than he really was.
No surprise that it’s CNN’s Brian Stelter leading the way against Rogan. How do I describe Stelter? (For starters, I do so with pleasure.) He is a humorless fat man. A dedicated media believer pretending to be a media reporter. He is as dumb as he sounds and as arrogant as he looks. He oozes the sadism of a hall monitor and the false confidence of an impostor. He is Kim Jong-un without the hair or the country or the charisma.
Prior to Rogan, Stelter’s favorite targets were enemies of the Regime: Tucker Carlson and Fox News. For being a “media reporter,” he typically has a curious focus to target one journalist and one network. CNN tolerates this well enough, excusing Stelter’s poor ratings because he attacks the network’s adversaries and defends the network without question.
Put Stelter on the offense against critics and he’ll call a Jihad against “right wing” media from his CNN studio. He’s the zealot that will behead you for drawing a cartoon of the wrong left-wing figure (whether it’s Joe Biden or Don Lemon) – and then blame you for inciting violence on “Reliable Sources” the next day. He will demand the unvaccinated be treated as second-class citizens, relegated to the margins of society until they comply with his favored health policies, just as he continues on his own adventure of finding out what comes after “morbid obesity.”
And in the presence of his preferred State power, masochist Stelter emerges to flatter and grovel. When he had the chance to interview Biden’s press secretary, he lobbed the softball of his dreams: “What does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda?”
But back to Rogan.
One could say that Rogan is under attack for speaking truth to power. But that’s not quite true. As Christopher Hitchens observed, that cliché is looking in the wrong direction because power already knows the truth. More importantly, Rogan – and his guests – speak truth to the powerless. That’s what they’re scared of. And that’s why we see these campaigns against Tucker and Rogan and anyone else who dare tell dangerous truths.
To put it another way, President Biden and his corporate allies, and their mob of supporters, seek to obliterate the relationship between the writer and the reader, the speaker and the listener.
Thus, this is about more than Joe Rogan. It is about you and it is about me. It is about gatekeeping and limiting what we can watch and read and hear. And they achieve that end through the destruction of Rogan the individual.2
Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands.
“Human individuals are the most important of those real things, the obstacles that all revolutionary systems must overcome, and which all ideologies must destroy.” Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands.
I just recently started listening to Rogan's podcast - have only listened to a few episodes thus far - and here are a few things about it that I find astonishing:
1. He allows his guests to talk for long periods without interrupting.
2. He says things like, "I don't know." "I didn't know that," "Are you sure?," etc.
3. He fact-checks in real time.
4. He doesn't seem to have an agenda.
5. He seems truly curious and is willing to let the conversation go wherever it leads. (For example, his podcast with Jordan Peterson is about 4 hours long).
Truly frightening stuff. Should Spotify decide to drop Rogan, I will happily cancel my subscription.
How appropriate to compare the actions of this administration to that of the Taliban. Squashing dissent, destroying symbols of freedom and terrorizing those who speak up against it.