Abbey Martin is pretty fringe isn't she?
I suppose she is, and although she is a lefty, she's an ex 911 truther. I wouldn't be picking her to bat for the left in an ideal world, but like the Chomsky, Sanders, and Stewart analogies already brought up, what is the worst-case scenario material harm from what they say? 911 nonsense apart, but that's not a left-wing idea.
This whole issue is about the harm that Rogan's high-profile media presence causes. This conversation has gone all over the place to mitigate that and failed in my opinion. Firstly it was attempted along the lines that he was a good bloke or that criticism was just begrudgery. So how do you mitigate racist speech and medical misinformation? Can it be achieved by letting a millionaire presidential candidate representing one of the largest centre-right political parties on the planet speak? Or an ex 911 Truther with Marxist inclinations? Again, no in my opinion.
Maybe if it was just the content of his overwhelmingly right-wing guests and not his own words. He has invited Gavin McInnes of the proud boys, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos. If you think Abby Martin and Bernie Sanders are from the other end of any spectrum to them then I will need that explained to me. Is it just the former all hate and the others don't? Is that balance? Vitriol v the desire for a more controlled economy? While he may openly espouse the views, giving them unchallenged or unqualified airtime is dangerous as that is what they crave. Joe is not mentioned here but this is good for context
https://time.com/5627494/we-analyze...pread-online-the-trends-reveal-deep-concerns/
I've been aware of Rogan for years and I initially dismissed him as a brash macho chauvinist and all that entails on very little evidence I may add, but I do see the dog whistles quite clearly due to my predilection for equality. Over the years the trickle of Rogan into my sphere did nothing to counter this, his background, his stream of predominantly alt-right guests just reinforced this. Same for the covid nonsense and now the racism. It all seemed a slam dunk.
In the last 24 hours, I've listened to him and read about him and I have to say my gut seems to have been right. And yes he has had a list of what you would describe as lefties by American standards but what does that prove? Life is not a Christmas panto, where characters are one-dimensionally good or bad, every lunatic on the news has some neigbour saying what they did was out of character. Just because Rogan is not a 24/7 Klan activist doesn't prove anything, We are complex animals, and every villain has a day off being a dick or has some redeeming qualities and conversely, also nobody is an angel.
Rogan as I said repeats a lot of the dog whistles of the alt-right. This is from an article in Esquire. "While interviewing comedian Joe List, Rogan went on a tangent about his fear of "woke culture" silencing "straight white men." “You can never be woke enough that’s the problem, it keeps going,” Rogan said. “It keeps going further and further down the line and if you get to the point where you capitulate, where you agree to all these demands, it’ll eventually get to straight white men are not allowed to talk, because it’s your privilege to express yourself when other people of color have been silenced throughout history.” On Twitter, he says ... "If you're a man and you call yourself a feminist I hope you choke to death on vegan pizza while crying over a lady gaga song".
It's not the establishment he hates, it's the tiny section of it that after centuries of struggle is slowly moving towards elements of an equal society. And an equal society is a nightmare for the gender, races and classes that have hitherto held the cards, and they won't let go without a struggle. So that's not anti-establishment, that's uber conservativism and a desire to keep the status quo. His anti-establishment schtick is only against the small section of government that is progressive. Over half of his Government's budget is spent on the military, is he against that? Not that I can see.
If there is an argument to hear what neo-fascists have to say then I think the host has to be more Paxman than Rogan, because otherwise, you are just giving a megaphone to dangerous and often hateful cnuts. That recent episode with Peterson was a festival of stupidity. Peterson made zero sense and Rogan just wowed along. The bit about the poor causing the climate problem that he had just said didn't exist was an early highlight of the utter nonsense. Also neither of them knowing the difference between an accident and the law of unintended consequences as they smugly giggled was beautiful. It was more cutting than any parody could have been.
None of ths is new. When he moved to Spotify two of the episodes featuring that other Canadian loon Stefan Molyneaux were not included because of presumably the content that got Molyneaux booted off Youtube. The Gavin McInnes episode also never made it to Spotify. The Proud Boys are Nazis no? Replacement theory? Southern Poverty Law Centre has them listed as a hate group? Openly misogynistic and anti-LBGTQ Rights? Rogan said of McInnes that He had him on because he knew him and that he didn't even know what the Prouds Boys were. The Trump defence.
Anyone who doesn't know Molyneaux can find out a bit here on this NYT Podcast about the youtube algorithms. Well worth a listen IMO
So do I want to ban him, no, I don't to ban anyone, but the idea that he is a free thinker, objective, balanced etc does my head in so I'll be using my free speech to qualify his whenever possible. When he has episodes from Maoists and Revolutionary Marxists taken of his playlist we can start the conversation about both fringes. Til then it's just obfuscation and not a real argument.