What Is the Lesson Being Taught by Vilifying Joe Rogan?

            The cancel culture in America has gotten out of line and has been for years. Conservatives have been cancelled and made “unpersons” for numerous years. Since Whoopi Goldberg made her statement about the holocaust not being about race and was suspended for two weeks, the Left has noticed that cancel culture is a bad idea. However, the Left operates on the principle that conservatives deserve to be cancelled, but liberals do not. In fact, people do not have to be conservatives to deserve to be cancelled. They just have to fail to toe the liberal line.

Case in point is Joe Rogan, whose great sin was “misinformation” about COVID-19. I do not listen to him, but Rogan does podcasts with millions of listeners. Liberals, such as rocker Neil Young and CNN’s Brian Stelter, say that Spotify should cancel Rogan’s contract for having diverse voices on his program. They state that conservatives – and Jews – should accept Whoopi Goldberg’s apology for saying that the holocaust was not about race, but they refuse to accept Rogan’s statement that he would have guests with more diverse opinions about COVID-19. They simply continue to Rogan’s hole deeper by digging for his statements from past podcasts. The latest complaint is that Rogan said too many racist things many years ago.

Ben Shapiro thinks that the charge of “misinformation” is “rather vague” considering all that we have been told about the coronavirus over the past three years by public health officials. He listed the following statements given by public health authorities: “lockdowns were effective, cloth masks worked, masking of children was necessary, vaccines prevented transmission, natural immunity was inferior to vaccine immunity, and the virus could not have originated with a Chinese lab leak.” We know that all these statements have been reversed. Are they “misinformation”? However, the problem is much bigger than Rogan or “misinformation,” according to Shapiro. 

When Spotify didn’t deplatform Rogan over that charge, the rationale for his demanded deplatforming morphed: Now Rogan was a racist for saying the N-word while quoting rap lyrics years ago. After a left-wing activist group promoted a compendium video of Rogan using such language, Rogan apologized again.

But apologies aren’t the point. No one actually thinks Rogan is a racist. For the radical left, you either become a tool in their arsenal or you become an object lesson. And Rogan has now become an object lesson.

He has become an object lesson for two main reasons. First, Rogan has steadfastly refused to toe the party line with regard to President Joe Biden; ire broke out against Rogan in 2020 for the crime of noting that Biden appeared “mentally compromised” in the middle of an election that the media had declared a turning point in the future of democracy.

Second, Rogan has hosted guests who do not simply repeat the nostrums of the left on a wide variety of issues. That’s why the left has demanded that Spotify remove old episodes of his show entirely: Alternative voices must not be herd, and Rogan has the unfortunate habit of talking to such voices for hours at a time and letting them say their piece.

            Shapiro found “several takeaways from the Rogan dust-up.” “First, corporate overlords are absolutely gutless…. Second, the media are not interested in freedom of speech as a principle. They’re interested in freedom of speech for themselves and no one else…. Third, apologizing to insincere radical-left alligators is always a mistake. Their goal is not a conversation. Their goal is destruction….”

            In conclusion, Shapiro stated, “Rogan will survive all of this.” Spotify may pay “him a bag of cash to leave, and he takes his audience and goes elsewhere, tanking Spotify’s stock price on his way out the door.” Shapiro said that this is what Spotify deserves. However, the lesson is not meant for Rogan. It “will be learned by those who don’t have Rogan’s audience: Shut up or face the whirlwind. And most will shut up.”

            The freedom to speak as we wish as Americans is in danger. Cancel culture comes for anyone who speaks anything other than the Democrat Party line. Questions or diverse opinions are unwanted. Just shut up or repeat the party line – sounds like communism to me.