Fear Factor

The Joe Rogan Experience: a bridge too far?

The facts speak for themselves

Cicero

There are no facts, only interpretations

Nietzsche

I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Voltaire

Shut the fuck up.

Rogan

One of the most telling features about human nature is our desire to communicate with each other. Communication acts like a bridge: it can bring people together by allowing them to cross from one side to another or it can help keep the separate sides apart.

The path to understanding one another is made possible via the transmission of intentional content. Specifically, all our communications are about something, and aim at or are directed upon an intended object of thought. Nonetheless, to inform (or be informed) is distinct from to know or understand: content is not the same as truth or knowledge and the question remains whether any given communication can survive rational scrutiny.

It isn’t difficult to understand, then, why freedom of speech is amongst our most cherished values. Free speech allows for the possibility of rational debate in the public domain, or a free exchange of ideas that can be openly questioned and evaluated.

The Joe Rogan Experience, however, arguably tests the limits of free speech and raises its own question: to what extent should content creators like Rogan be responsible for what is said to their audience? Given Rogan’s open mic policy - ‘I’m just asking questions’ and ‘I’m just talking to people’ - the fear is two-fold: 1) Rogan gives credence to thoughts that are best left unsaid and 2) Rogan gives voice to people that would ideally remain unheard.

Rogan’s willingness to discuss controversial viewpoints with inexpert or marginalised voices - spreading ‘information’ subject to neither verification, falsification and/or not officially sanctioned by a self-appointed community of experts - speaks for itself.

Conspiracy theories, historical revisionism, medical misinformation, hate speech in various forms and climate change denial (amongst other controversial topics) are all given a sympathetic hearing and amplified on The Joe Rogan Experience.

To be clear: few people would notice or care if no one was listening to his show. It is the podcast’s popularity and overreach that has become the source of dread. The fear, of course, is the bad influence Rogan (amongst other podcasters) have on public discourse and behaviour. The concern is that Rogan’s open mic policy is a bridge too far: the podcast’s use of free speech arguably goes beyond what is rationally justified or socially acceptable.

The naive assumption is that the rational justification for our beliefs can be objectively determined or that we can access an objective world directly (without any intervening thought processes or mediating factors).

The tension between rational motivation (truth seeking) and motivated rationality (interpretive biases), however, throws into question whether it is possible - let alone desirable - to reach a rationally motivated understanding in increasingly polarised media environments. As Pronin et al observe in Understanding Misunderstanding, the bridge to understanding is filled with obstacles that we all place before ourselves.

The recipients of persuasive arguments often prove to be rationalizing rather than rational animals, and as such are influenced less by logical rigor or objective evidence than by the interests and preconceptions that they bring to the task (of interpreting given facts).¹

Witness the heated exchanges on a widely reported edition of The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan recently allowed one of his guests - controversial British neoconservative Douglas Murray - to call him out on air. Murray was ostensibly on the show to promote his new book On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West - but found himself sidelined by more pressing concerns. Rogan’s wingman was another podcaster - comedian Dave Smith - and it is telling that the serious conversation ended up being between Murray and Smith.

If (like me) you were led to believe that someone had finally spoken truth to power without fear or favor, you might have been taken aback by the turn of events.

A supposedly out of his depth comedian revealed Murray to be a longstanding honorary member of his own death cult. Murray’s fear and war mongering were already a matter of public record - which presumably explains why some Western democratic countries have been reluctant to review or sell Murray’s own brand of conspiracy theorising and fascism.

The three-hour conversation can (for arguments sake) be divided into two related parts. In the first part, Murray calls out Rogan for failing to filter information fit for dissemination and consumption. The concern was that Rogan failed to hold many of his speakers to the higher standards of ‘truth’, ‘integrity’ and ‘accountability’. In the second part, Murray indicated that he could not measure up to his own standards, and raised the prospect that his speech acts might be equally unfit for purpose.²

Murray wanted to discuss the podcaster’s responsibility in amplifying “fringe views” that are “beyond the pale”. Murray was particularly - and justifiably - concerned about the platforming of Nazi apologists and counter historical narratives attempting to minimise the Holocaust, vilify Churchill and “libel Israel” in a “post-October 7th world”.

Murray thereby raised the question of who should be given the right to publicly speak (and hear) about given issues, and the podcast’s tendency to frame every public speaker as equally valid or worth hearing.

Rogan would ideally be committed to the principle of gatekeeping instead of opening the floodgates or leaving it to others to close the barn doors after the proverbial horses have bolted and left trails of “horseshit” in their wake.

Murray was of the view that podcasters should know their place - comedian’s (like Rogan and Smith) shouldn’t be having serious conversations about issues beyond their understanding or roles. Conversations ‘mocking’ (mimicking or resembling) rational discourse were the real joke. More expert speakers (like himself) should therefore be given priority and/or the right to counter perceived mischief or social harm. According to Murray, podcasters like Rogan were morally obligated to mitigate undue influence on susceptible and impressionable listeners.

Given Rogan’s and Smith’s libertarianism they were understandably incredulous and found themselves in the unenviable position of defending people (or ideas) they didn’t appear to agree with. They also disagreed with Murray over many things, including simple matters of fact (‘that’s not what he said’, ‘that’s not what he meant’, ‘no one is calling that person an expert’, ‘that’s not what we’re doing’, etc). Rogan and Smith attempted to rationalise (interpret away) Murray’s appeals to authority and credentialism on the grounds that no one has to be an expert to be informed or to share their thoughts on given topics and issues.

Rogan and Smith clearly saw Murray as a thought policeman trying to patrol the borders of social discourse. While William Hocking’s libertarian defence of freedom of the press might not have been directly invoked, it provided the context for their own views (including a rational justification for Murray’s own criticisms of them ). Hocking’s libertarian defence of free speech places a premium on the ethics of dissenus and political pluralism (as opposed to a false (or falsifying) consensus and/or dominant cultural narratives). Specifically,

Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.

Although the three men were talking at cross purposes, there was two recurring themes: 1) that it might be possible to have a rationally motivated discussion with one another and 2) any given understanding of historical events involves an ongoing dialogue with the past and the present. The problem was that motivated reasoning kept obscuring their view of one another’s side: their tendency to interpret information in accord with pre-existing beliefs and values was on full display.

Consequently, their bias in bias recognition remained self-serving: they could see the biased thinking in each other but not in themselves. Their pre-existing belief’s (myside bias) and social stigmas (social biases) can be summed up in the following way.

People tend to believe that they see the world as it is whereas the divergent views of others reflect bias or a lack of objectivity. As a result, people exhibit a blind spot in their assessment of their own bias, viewing the judgments and behaviors of others as more susceptible to various cognitive and motivational biases than those of their own.

It was difficult not to side with Murray’s bias towards objective truth and/or expertise - at first anyway. Platforming Holocaust denier’s (or minimisers) and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is beyond the pale. It was a mistake to claim, however, that these speakers were espousing fringe views - Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are an international phenomenon that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. Rogan is arguably performing a community service when giving these speakers enough rope to hang themselves with on public platforms. At the very least, many previously oblivious people (like myself) can now identify who these information launderers are and what they stand (or fall) for. The best way to counter wilful ignorance and hateful people is not by turning a blind eye, silencing them or pushing them back into the margins - it is by inoculating ourselves against exposure to misinformation or persuasive influence. Building resistance to socially contagious ideas is only possible via exploratory questioning and cognitive empathy.

As if to prove this point, witness the second part of their three hour conversation. By this stage, the other information launderer had introduced the appeal to authority to make the argument for a more rational (or informed) discourse, and took exception to Churchill revisionism. Murray wanted Rogan - and his audience - to falsely think that the prevailing mythology surrounding Churchill was without bias and/or dissent. The truth, however, is much more complicated. ‘History’ is not so much a given (past or over) - it is the horizon in which we all move and remains subject to narrative conventions and counter narratives. As historian James McPherson observes

Revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable “truth” about past events and their meaning. The unending quest of historians for understanding the past—that is, “revisionism”—is what makes history vital and meaningful.

Churchill revisionism has therefore become a legitimate branch of historical inquiry, and Murray’s recent contributions to the annals of “true history” is a false (or falsifying) narrative. The concept of expertise - historical or otherwise - remains an open question amongst the experts themselves and cannot be used as a shield to deflect questioning. The American Historical Association’s Code of Conduct states the situation in the following way

We all interpret and narrate the past, which is to say that we all participate in making history. It is among our most fundamental tools for understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Multiple, conflicting perspectives are among the truths of history. Everyone who comes to the study of history brings with them a host of identities, experiences, and interests that cannot help but affect the questions they ask of the past and the sources they consult to answer those questions. No single objective or universal account could ever put an end to this endless creative dialogue within and between the past and the present.

For this reason, historians often disagree and argue with each other. That historians can sometimes differ quite vehemently not just about interpretations but even about the basic facts of what happened in the past is sometimes troubling to non-historians, especially if they imagine that history consists of a universally agreed-upon accounting of stable facts and known certainties. But universal agreement is not a condition to which historians typically aspire. Instead, we understand that interpretive disagreements are vital to the creative ferment of our profession, and can in fact contribute to some of our most original and valuable insights.

Disagreements and uncertainties enrich our discipline and are the source of its liveliness and its scholarly improvement. In contesting each other’s interpretations, professional historians recognize that the resulting disagreements can deepen and enrich historical understanding by generating new questions, new arguments, and new lines of investigation.

Murray’s attempt to (re)write history in real time was the conversation’s turning point. Murray clearly subscribes to the clash of the civilisations worldview, and attempted to enlist support for Ukraine and Israel in their respective wars with Russia (Eastern Europe and North Asia) and Palestinians (Middle East). The amateur historian’s goal was to future proof the human cost and/or moral justification of horrifying wars.

Murray puts on a brave front in the West’s media - he has assumed the role of its attack dog - but he is, in reality, an overcompensating scaredy cat who has taken the white man's burden upon himself. The spread and/or defence of Western civilisation is his blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Douglas Murray afraid of social change, and of any (perceived) challenges to white Western hegemony.

The joke is that Murray has also been accused of espousing fringe views in the UK and the BBC was recently criticised for platforming a speaker beyond a whiter shade of pale. Murray has been arguing for years that white Westerner’s are destined to become a racial minority in their own country. The UK’s most recent demographics, however, speak more eloquently than Murray’s endorsement of ‘the great replacement’ conspiracy theory.

The ‘not fit for consumption’ BBC interview is not available so we found another one by GB News.

Murray also made little attempt to conceal his myside and/or social biases during the Rogan interview: he viewed geopolitics as a clash between distinct cultural and religious identities (as opposed to nation states with their own territorial claims or regional concerns). Although the Russia/Ukraine and Israeli/Palestinian wars might be culturally distinct conflicts, Murray wants us to see them similarly – as proxy wars between clashing civilisations of unequal worth.

Murray’s ahistorical view of history argues as if the East and West have always been (and should remain) culturally distinct entities. The history of Western and Eastern civilisations, however, have typically involved cross-cultural interactions and exchanges. British archaeologist and historian Naoíse Sweeney observes

For most of us, it seems normal—even natural—to think of Western history in these (factually incorrect and ideologically motivated) terms. Unthinkingly, we assume that the modern West is the custodian of a privileged inheritance, passed down through a kind of cultural genealogy that we usually refer to as “Western Civilization.”

Put simply, the real history of the West is much richer and much more complex than the traditional grand narrative of Western Civilization acknowledges. It is not a golden thread but a golden tapestry—in which strands of diverse peoples, cultures, and ideas have been woven together over the centuries.

Nonetheless, there does not appear to be a war that this cultural warrior won’t support or have a personal stake in. Murray will continue to defend the 2003 Iraq invasion waged under false pretences whilst arguing that Western civilisation is imperilled by social justice warriors and Muslims migrating (or fleeing) from war torn countries in the Middle East. Murray advocates an origin myth and wants ‘us’ all to live in a constant state of fear: he sees threats to Western civilisation coming from within and without his mythologized West.

As British historian Jo Quinn notes in How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History, there are no historical or culturally discrete borders (within or without) as such. The moral compass supposedly guiding the ‘The West’ (freedom, rationality, justice, tolerance, rights, etc) is the direct result of cross-pollination between different societies and periods. Cross-cultural interactions and exchanges didn’t just occur, of course, along trade routes or via colonial conquest. The possibility of free speech and civic engagement in the marketplace of ideas theoretically promotes competition over what (say) ideals like freedom, rationality and rights might actually mean or cost.

The white Brit’s refusal to acknowledge – let alone address – colonial Britain’s role in the ongoing catastrophe between Israel and Palestinians therefore spoke volumes. Given Murray’s conspicuous (or complicit) silence, he was able to displace the issue of culpability onto an already displaced people, and invert the power dynamic between oppressor (occupier) and oppressed (occupied). Murray was also conspicuously silent about the role ‘The West’ has played in destabilising the Middle East , contributing to the immigration and refugee crisis threatening a defenceless Europe.

Murray, however, was more than willing to talk about Russian ‘expansionism’ into Europe without wanting to talk about the West’s own designs to expand eastward after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Consequently, he made no attempt to provide the historical context or geopolitical reasons for perceived provocations : that the West arguably provoked Russia into attacking Ukraine when attempting to expand NATO's membership and make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Murray’s need to see complex issues in black and white terms – good versus evil, us versus them, peace versus war – similarly extended to very different conflicts and regions.

It was nonetheless astonishing to see the Jewish comedian call out the alleged journalist for his lack of objectivity and empathy. Smith invoked the idea of strategic empathy to try and see conflicts from the perspective of the other side. He appeared to do this for two reasons – to establish a common ground between them and to try and understand the rationale (beliefs, fears, desires) of the West’s perceived enemies. Murray made it very clear, however, that he could not see the other side from where he was standing – perspective taking was beyond his purview.

The term strategic empathy comes from historian’s Zachary Shore’s A Sense of the Enemy: The High-Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind, and its study of international conflicts is an attempt to make an understanding of historical and cultural differences the foundation of foreign policy and national security.

The empathy here is strategic – perspective taking here serves the purpose of bringing conflicting values and goals into greater alignment. It is not to take the enemies side – it is to see that there might be equally valid (or rational) reasons for conflicts and requires partisans to confront their own biases and assumptions in order to better understand and manage conflict situations in the first place.

While Shore is talking about a different historical conflict (the 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan between US-led forces against the Taliban), he describes the process in the following way

What NATO and U.S. officials lacked was strategic empathy: the ability to think like their opponent. Strategic empathy is the skill of stepping out of our own heads and into the minds of others. It is what allows us to pinpoint what truly drives and constrains the other side. Unlike stereotypes, which lump people into simplistic categories, strategic empathy distinguishes what is unique about individuals and their situation. To achieve strategic empathy, you must first identify the information that matters most (p.8).

Smith also accused Murray of selective empathy, or of only wanting ‘The West’ to be concerned about the suffering of ‘myside’ (Jews living in a Western liberal democracy). Selective empathy is like selective reasoning: it selects which information or persons are worth considering, and exhibits a bias towards the perspective and emotions of members of groups we already identify (or side) with.

Smith was particularly concerned about the scale of devastation and suffering amongst Palestinian women and children. He urged that Israel was waging a war against non combatants via wanton slaughter and destruction. Smith also couldn’t understand why Murray only wanted us to care about what happens to Jews living and dying in Israel.

The accusation of selective empathy was particularly damning coming from an American Jewish comedian arguing about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with a British journalist. The third generation Holocaust survivor urged that individuals or groups (supposedly) unlike ourselves deserved our moral consideration and concern too.

Murray’s lack of empathy – strategic or emotional – made it possible for him to talk about historical conflicts in terms of ground zeroes. Selective history was the only context or information needed to understand February 22^nd, 2022 (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) and October 7th, 2023 (Hamas-led massacre of Israelis). It was the horrific, indefensible events of October 7 – and the resulting Israeli/Palestinian conflict – that was the main source of conflict between Rogan, Smith and Murray. To be pro human life and rights was apparently to be part of the pro Hamas death cult.

Particularly offensive was Murray’s suggestion that a two state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict already existed or had peacefully resolved itself via conquest and occupation. The Palestinians were therefore (presumably) ingrates for the 'the catastrophe' that had befallen them from 1948 onwards.

Consequently, Murray did all he could to minimise and sanitise the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza whilst dehumanising members of the human race subject to periodic ethnic cleansing. Murray apparently thinks that all Palestinians are potential Hamas members and that the distinction between ‘Palestinian terrorist organisation’ and ‘Palestinian civilian’ is a historical illusion. If Hamas were holding its own population hostage or was using Palestinian civilians as human shields , there was no deflecting a historical truth : the distinction between ‘peace and war’ or ‘combatant and non combatant’ is illusory on either side of the divide.

The unpalatable truth is that the death cult is able to recruit volunteers from its civilian populace while the freedom loving democracy imposes a mandatory term of service on civilians living in ‘peace’. In an ideal world, a two-state solution would help resolve or remediate the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The extremists on both sides, however, remain committed to armed conflict and play into each others hands when similarly killing defenceless people. The moderates on both sides will invariably find themselves caught in the middle (or crossfire), and remain at risk of being pushed to extremes in turn.

As Amnesty International indicates, there is a clear and present danger for radicalising Palestinians: living in constant fear and humiliation. The power imbalance has merely created a culture of adversity and grievance. Indeed, 50 plus years of dispossession and human rights violations has been the order of the day.

Since the occupation first began in June 1967, Israel’s ruthless policies of land confiscation, illegal settlement and dispossession, coupled with rampant discrimination, have inflicted immense suffering on Palestinians, depriving them of their basic rights.

Israel’s military rule disrupts every aspect of daily life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It continues to affect whether, when and how Palestinians can travel to work or school, go abroad, visit their relatives, earn a living, attend a protest, access their farmland, or even access electricity or a clean water supply. It means daily humiliation, fear and oppression. People’s entire lives are effectively held hostage by Israel.

We don’t have to be on the side of the Palestinians - or feign neutrality - to see that Israel’s response to the horrific events of October 7 has resulted in overkill.

People from within Israel have been urging that its disproportionate response is threatening to become a catastrophe for Israelis too: morally, diplomatically and strategically.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert recently urged

The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success.

What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians.

We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit — but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, viciously, maliciously, recklessly…Yes, we are committing war crimes.

When Smith repeatedly called out Murray for his lack of empathy or perspective, Murray attempted to seize the moral high ground on Gaza’s scorched earth. Unlike Rogan and Smith, he was an unimpeachable pedigreed expert: a Western journalist subject to codes and practices.

Given the fact that he was a journalist - and not a podcaster or comedian - he had the virtue of visiting the war torn places they were arguing about. In other words, the renowned Islamophobe knew what he was talking about and they were just mouthing off or coming from a position of ignorance and manipulation. Murray appealed to journalistic authority or expertise grounded in his own first hand experiences. Murray also seemed to want to contradictorily claim that other Western journalists and health workers (the podcaster’s primary source of information) were somehow less authoritative or more biased (presumed anti-Semites).

It is worth stressing that an appeal to authority (however problematic) is the source of most of our claims to knowledge. Indeed, second hand knowledge or information is how we typically navigate the world of experience. If we believe in (say) the existence of gravity or dinosaurs, the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables, the occurrence of the Holocaust or September 11, we usually take such second hand knowledge as given. Most of us cannot directly prove either of these things - our knowledge is mediated and/or acquired through (say) media outlets, the education system or cultural tradition. Our claims to knowledge are therefore grounded elsewhere - within a cognitive division of labor. Specifically, we are all dependent upon self-selected communities of inquiry and interpretation (scientists, historians, journalists, etc), and their claims to knowledge are cognitively distributed throughout other communities.

The problem, of course, is that the acquisition and/or sharing of knowledge develops out of particular socio-historical circumstances and remains subject to various social biases and/or pressures. The problem is particularly acute in an era of increasingly polarised and fragmented media environments that similarly constrain (select, restrict) access to information. Our bias towards self-selection (or selective exposure) informs the way we encounter - and process - potentially available information.

Murray’s appeal to journalist expertise, then, was a strategy designed to silence Rogan and Smith’s moral objections. As many of us know, however, journalists are not without bias and it is possible to map out the media terrain accordingly. Perhaps most notoriously, Western journalists were amongst the first to conscript citizens into the coalition of the willing. A complicit free press subsequently embedded itself in military units when the US-led multi-national force illegally invaded another sovereign country. The mutually beneficial spread of misinformation resulted in increased revenues for weapons manufacturers and news outlets at the expense of lives on both sides. Murray has continued on the fine tradition of ‘objectively’ reporting on an otherwise justifiable war.

Whilst it is true that Murray has visited Gaza to report on an increasingly intractable conflict, he neglected to mention that he was in bed with the Israeli Defence Forces. He saw what the IDF was prepared to show him - a kinder, gentler war of extermination - and his view of the conflict was invariably obscured by the ideological lens predisposing them towards a close mutually beneficial relationship in the first place.

Through a glass darkly.

Murray overseeing Britain’s anti immigration policy from Gaza.

All said and done, the three hour conversation failed to reach mutual agreement and understanding. The bridge of communication kept them far apart and collapsed under the weight of selective thinking and partisan support. If the conversation did manage to achieve one goal, it was that Douglas Murray was the bigger threat to free speech and truth than many of the other information launderers sharing Rogan’s platform. Unlike (say) Ian Carrol and Darryl Cooper, Murray has ready access to multiple media outlets and speaks power to truth in a condescending way.

Whatever you thought of their conversation, we leave the final word to Pronin et al to comment on the problem of finding a common ground between people opposed to each other from the outset.

Opposing partisans exposed to the same set of objective facts interpret these facts differently as they fill in details of context and content, infer connections, and use idiosyncratic scripts and schemas in search for meaning. Cognitive biases lead them to see and remember a reality that is consistent with their beliefs and expectations, while motivational biases cause them to see what is consistent with their needs, wishes and self-interest. Through such information processing biases, opposing partisans who encounter the same facts, historical accounts and scientific evidence - or even witness the same events - can find additional support for their preconceptions (pp.648-649)

Steven Aoun is the host of the podcast Shut the Fuck Up

Bias Statement

None found.

1. Pronin, Emily, Carolyn, Puccio and Lee Ross. "Understanding Misunderstanding: Social Psychological Perspectives" in Gilovich, Thomas, Griffin, Dale and Kahneman, Daniel (eds.) Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.636

2. Our speech acts typically perform a number of related functions, including

1. We attempt to transfer our beliefs, fears and desires to other people by speaking to one another.

2. We are potentially interested in hearing what others might have to say to us.

3. We often try to influence others to think and act like us, or will allow ourselves to be influenced by what others might have to say.

4. Being susceptible to someone’s ‘influence’ doesn’t necessarily mean we agree with what is being said or done: it simply means that person has the power to sway or affect us in distinct ways (acceptance, opposition, bemusement, etc).