Commentary
Joe Rogan grew up in the average peasant hell so he knows the system isn’t fair. Now he’s become part of the system and his job is to keep the peasants stuck in their peasant hell. Instead of using his money and status to assemble a small team of experts to choose relevant guests for the show and prepare notes, it’s just him and his “Jamie” who pushes the buttons and googles things. Most of the program has been entertainment of which exists already more than enough on the web to waste people’s time. Sprinkled on top is some pseudo-rebellious and self-help material: Do some steroids and cold plunge baths and listen to weird guests to become some type of activist and develop the hope that you may one day get out of peasant hell.
Joe seems to spend more mental energy on speccing his next Porsche or Landcruiser than reasearching serious topics and picking guests.
British commentator and journalist Douglas Murray recently criticized Rogan directly during a podcast recording for having invited stereotypical conspiracy and revisionist figures like Ian Carroll and Darryl Cooper. Rogan’s reaction was the stereotypical and lame disclaimer-disassociation:
I brought him on because I wanted to find out how does one get involved in the entire conspiracy theory business?” Rogan said. “Because his whole thing is just conspiracies.”
There was also the embarrassing attempt of avoiding responsibility by claiming things were not all meant to be serious but somewhat funny. Topics like Israel, Muslim imperialism, WWII or the Ukraine war are obviously not funny and require experts with precision.
Is Rogan just too cheap and lazy to assemble a small staff of experts to help with picking guests and preparing notes? Joe has explained he hates “corporate” proceedings, like organizing staff and tasks, having work meetings. If he is allergic to that he should stick with ad-hoc discussions about martial arts and pure entertainment topics.
Yet somehow Rogan wants to be involved with the serious things, wars and ideologies. For the longest time he freely admitted to having baseline Marxist ideas and he feels at home in the cultural sphere of the 1960s with the fancy music and the whining against the US involvement in the Vietnam war. The pseudo-rebellion against the “rich” who are part of a fascist international conspiracy. Rogan grew up with the impression its primarily the wealthy powerful conservatives want to push around and control the peasants. Bored with standard marxism and enjoying the money from big corporations, Rogan got into the conspiracy wave of the 2000s after 9/11 like so many others. Being a baseline lefty pseudo-rebel never got people anywhere but after the attacks of 9/11 and the Bush admin initiating the “war on terror” there was a new trend to latch on to: Re-packaged classic conspiracy lore minus the antisemitism and fascism, plus some actual relevant content about intelligence networks and operations. This was the golden era of Alex Jones who was critical of Democrats and Republicans alike, who would even invite leftist guests and avoid the rightwing extremists. Obviously, Rogan would watch Jones’ VHS tapes or his pixelated web videos while stoned and seek contact, inviting Jones to UFC events.
When the trendy conspiracy wave subsided after George W. Bush was gone, Rogan became disillusioned with most conspiracy activists whom he considered to be mostly unsuccessful frustrated white dudes who can’t attract women.
Before the 2024 presidential election a fresh wave of rightwing conspiracy activism was in full swing. Joe and his buddy Elon Musk decided to use this wave to help the GOP. Before election day you could find the most absurd material on X that sounded like the German wave of the 1930s. This may have contributed to a certain number of crazies to vote Republican and push the party over the finish line. After election day Elon concluded there was too much “negativity” on X and the algorithm soon slowed down the most explicit content. Not eliminating all of it. Elon could always use the same “free-speech-people-just-asking-questions”-argument that Joe uses. It’s built-in plausible deniability because Joe never was a fascist and neither was Elon. The fanatics out there are not into science like Elon, they don’t condone work visas for qualified foreigners like Elon, they are not masonic. Elon gave a Roman salute, not a German-fascist salute. It’s enough to keep the crazies voting GOP but never enough to pinpoint Elon as a fascist.
Rogan has tested relatively high with his IQ. I don’t think we have a public realiable number for Elon but he seems fairly high as well. Smart people get frustrated with lower IQ people and vice versa. The likelyhood is high that Joe and Elon have decided to play a radcical segment of the audience. Just like the new FBI director Kash Patel had released a semi-conspiracy book to placate the crazies so they don’t hate the federal government as much.
The GOP has been doing this for a very long time. During the Cold War the John Birch Society (JBS) received money from big industrialists to rapackage traditional conspiracy lore about the little Rothschild family taking over the British Empire and weave it in with baseline anticommunism. Millions of copies of books and booklets were sold to get the really frustrated rightwingers to vote. Soon, the plan went off the rails. The audience could not determine who in the establishment was a friend and who an enemy. Some JBS-followers in the US military sold high-level secrets to the Soviets because they believed anything was better than America. JBS leaders started attacking the most relevant GOP politicians. The party then put the breaks on the JBS which then lost steam and is now largely forgotten.
When Joe Rogan uses his platform to play a radical voter segment, people pay a high price for that. Ukrainians hate Rogan for his recent pro-Russian statements and guests like Tucker Carlson. High-Level military and intelligence officers must hate Rogan as well. The Israelis must hate him too by now. Same as many leftists. This uneccessary friction divides people when we need common ground more than ever. Rogan wanted to be a rebel and a hero for the peasants but he is now working the peasants from an establishment position.
