Podcaster Joe Rogan and standup comedian-turned commentator Russell Brand blasted modern culture for demonizing free thought as "right-wing" Thursday.
Rogan spoke to Brand on "The Joe Rogan Experience" about his shift from mainstream platforms like YouTube to newer ones like Rumble that advocate for free speech. Social media sites like YouTube have come under fire in recent years both for removing content in order to please advertisers as well as for woke political reasons. This has led to many content creators who want free speech migrating to new platforms in order to have uncensored conversations about major political topics.
Talking about YouTube, Rogan said, "They do things to get people to self-censor."
Brand agreed, saying of his own program, "When YouTube was our primary problem - we would look at your content, all right, ‘that’s the title of this Rogan video, this is the content. Okay. Well, we can try that.’ And then we would get demonetized. And it becomes like a weird algebra. You change this word, you change that word. You have to alter it, you have certain things you just know that you can’t say."
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"[Rumble] gave me a good deal and the assurance that ‘we’re not going to censor you,’" Brand recounted. "Now, obviously, coming from where I come from politically and in terms of my background, even as a person that’s been in the public for a while, I know how Rumble is being portrayed. It’s being portrayed as a right-wing, far-right place, conspiracy theorists."
Rogan mocked such labels, mentioning another content creator who is politically left but has more recently been condemned for questioning some progressive orthodoxy, "Yeah, you and Glenn Greenwald, super far-right."
Brand joined in on the joke and described Greenwald, "Married, gay, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist."
The host retorted with another sarcastic example, a former Democratic presidential primary candidate who has since left the party, "Tulsi Gabbard? Super right-wing, like it’s nuts… anything alternative to the censorship model they’ll talk of as right-wing."
Rogan has commented multiple times about mainstream concepts being condemned as right-wing.
In mid-February, after talking about how the very idea of freedom has been derided by some on the American left as a far-right concept, writer and standup comedian Bridget Phetasy asked, "Aren't they connecting being healthy to the far-right now?" She continued, "I’ve seen so many articles that are like ‘oh the far-right obsession with being in shape,’ like it’s a bad thing somehow."
Rogan agreed and observed, "There's a giant percentage of our population that is really lazy and fat, and if you want those people on your team you have to say, 'There's nothing wrong with being lazy and fat, in fact; not being lazy and fat is actually connected to misogyny, racism, and fascism, and the far right' - so people are like, 'Great, let's just eat donuts and just f***ing vote blue.'"
