The Left are going all out to cancel Joe Rogan.
They can’t stand that he has the most popular podcast in the world.
Now “woke” liberals are ganging up on Rogan for a ridiculous reason.
Despite his left-leaning politics, Joe Rogan has become an archvillain to the Left.
He’s been heavily critical of “wokeness” and the excesses of the Democratic Party, but his newest “sin” is having discussions with people who present a counter-narrative perspective on COVID.
Only establishment-approved voices like Dr. Anthony Fauci are allowed to speak in public.
For that reason, leftists have been attempting to get Rogan booted from Spotify, the streaming service that exclusively hosts his show.
For example, folk rocker Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: dump Rogan, or pull his music.
Young wrote in a statement through his management team:
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Labeling counter-narrative voices as “disinformation” has become the new strategy of leftists.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, banning “hate speech” was the excuse for banning people who questioned the establishment.
Now disinformation is the new hate speech.
Having a different perspective on COVID has become perceived as “dangerous.”
The entire community must be in utter lockstep, or else everyone dies.
In reality, diversity of opinion—especially in the midst of a novel coronavirus where there is no authoritative voice—should be encouraged.
But leftists are doing the opposite.
Musician Joni Mitchell joined Young in his censorious campaign against Rogan.
Even Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got in on the virtue-signaling act.
The couple said in a statement:
“Since the inception of Archewell, we have worked to address the real-time global misinformation crisis. Hundreds of millions of people are affected by the serious harms of rampant mis- and disinformation every day. Last April, our co-founders [Meghan and Harry] began expressing concerns to our partners at Spotify about the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform.”
The gambit from the Left is quite clear; they are going to attack Spotify until the company caves.
Thus far, Spotify has stood by Rogan, who draws 11 million viewers and listeners per episode, but executives at the company have shown some weakness.
They agreed to put the equivalent of a 1990s “parental advisory” label on the podcast and direct people to a COVID information hub.
But that won’t do anything.
People couldn’t care less about some meaningless label slapped on the podcast.
Rogan’s audience largely consists of people who do not trust the so-called mainstream media.
And the more leftists attempt to censor Rogan, the less his audience will trust the establishment.
Legacy media institutions are desperate to regain legitimacy.
They think censoring people will help them achieve their goals, but they are sorely mistaken.
