The Cancel Culture thread! WOO!

[Sengoku Strider]

Rogan is a stand-in for a lot of things to a lot of people. His 'agnostic centrist' act is a wonderful caper which simultaneously signals rebelliousness and reasonableness, while carefully crafted so as not to rupture the sports bro weltanschauung of All Lives Matter takes as thoughtful and moderate discourse.

I understand why people would feel the need to defend him; from one standpoint he's just a regular guy saying regular guy stuff to a regular guy audience. Then here comes the hyper-sensitive social media KGB goose-stepping in to declare that the terms of the cultural conversation belong to them and them alone. All who care to disagree are to be sent off to the frozen GAB and Parler gulags of social media Siberia, never to be heard from by sane or triple digit IQ adults again.

On the other hand, he is a guy with a massive audience and influence, and his agnostic centrist act is maintained by providing a credulous platform for voices like professional evil fucking liar and school shooting parent torturer Alex Jones (who he calls a good friend), quasi-human social media attention vampire Milo Yiannopolous, guy who monetized his schoolyard bully skills rather than growing up Steven Crowder, and sadly devolved (former) academic fraud Jordan Peterson.

In the grand scheme of let's-take-a-step-back-here, on one side we've got people mad that Rogan has been surfing the anti-vax movement for clicks as nearly 1 million people lay dead in the US and winging the N-word around when every white guy in the anglosphere knows it's a third rail and never about context unless you're giving a lecture on philology.

On the other, in the public conversation (not calling out anyone here) we've got the usual mob of bearded Oakley-wearing conservative free speech advocates and their blow-dried besuited enablers who are batting 1.000 on only ever surfacing when someone's trying to stop a white guy from saying something shitty.

I get the frustration with narcissistic leftists who think their every discomfort is their own personal holocaust, use the "it's all connected" argument as a quasi-philosophical angle to connect said discomforts to literal holocausts, and peremptorily demand that all accede to their morally righteous ultimatums. Nobody seems to be able to effectively call them out on it frequently just being a manipulative emotional cheat in the age old social hierarchy thumb war.

On the other hand, defending vaccine denial and some guy throwing the n-word around as part of his rugged individual podcaster persona seems like kind of a lame civil rights hill to die on to this reader.

[Blinge]

sorry, who here is defending vaccine denial and dying on the hill?

I think people just like to comment their fucking opinions,
like i'm doing, and you've done.

I'm sorry if it seems i'm insulting your verbose and clever-looking post (i'm not) but really it's a lot simpler than all that.

credulous platform for alex jones? I think he brought jones on there because he's fucking nuts, and it's for entertainment.. is that not clear to the casual observer?

[Sengoku Strider]

sorry, who here is defending vaccine denial and dying on the hill?

Those are the things Rogan's being called out for. I don't think those are the opinions people here hold, just what they're ending up defending by proxy. This isn't really a free speech thing, in that he's still not only just as allowed to say what he wants as anyone else is (and moreso given the reach of his voice). It's ultimately about whether he should face criticism or suffer any sort of commercial blowback for what he says.

credulous platform for alex jones? I think he brought jones on there because he's fucking nuts, and it's for entertainment.. is that not clear to the casual observer?

No, I don't think it is. This is the interview I saw with him, where Rogan leads off with the line "I was hesitant to have you back on, not because I don't want to talk to you, but because of the amount of bullshit that I get from people who are angry that you and I are friends."

[BIL]

winging the N-word around when every white guy in the anglosphere knows it's a third rail and never about context unless you're giving a lecture on philology.

Mainstream discourse having become so infantilised that mere utterances are themselves treated like unsayable blasphemies is not a convincing argument for the restriction of language. Quite the opposite.

I get that the word is indelibly hideous. If there were words that could so easily conjure a Croat forced to bite his countryman's testicles off at gunpoint, or a Russian infant's skull being dashed across a tree trunk, or a five-year old Chinese girl getting gang-raped to death, the way "nigger" can conjure the stinking, choking, shit-filled hold of a slave ship, and other horrors, I'd regard them similarly (there undoubtedly are such words, across the span of human history, but I'm regrettably monolingual).

This particular takedown of Rogan is nothing but laughably grotesque pantomime masquerading as social conscience. It's rotten, reeks to high heaven. Even a bemused bystander who values his speech (sup) can't help but retch.

On the other, in the public conversation (not calling out anyone here) we've got the usual mob of bearded Oakley-wearing conservative free speech advocates and their blow-dried besuited enablers who are batting 1.000 on only ever surfacing when someone's trying to stop a white guy from saying something shitty.

Or a "white" guy, like Larry Elder or Dave Chappelle or Morgan Freeman!

Nobody seems to be able to effectively call them out on it frequently just being a manipulative emotional cheat in the age old social hierarchy thumb war.

Effective criticism is easy. The problem is that these con artists and their base have a fanatic's disregard for critique.

I stopped yukking it up about John Walker Flynt a while back, after Cenk what's-his-name gulped down a bucket of his jizz live on-air, likening him to black victims of the KKK. The joke got old. They know we know, and they don't care. Weep for the cyber security of John's district, should one of his congressional runs ever succeed.

defending... some guy throwing the n-word around as part of his rugged individual podcaster persona seems like kind of a lame civil rights hill to die on to this reader.

Dying is a slightly unfortunate metaphor here, given the atrocious state of much of the West with regards to black life expectancy. I'll live on my hill just fine, and thousands of darker-skinned, less fortunate people will continue dying on theirs, and some stoner jock podcaster will never have had an iota of culpability in the matter, no matter how his more extreme detractors huff and puff and stitch together "n-word compilations" like some kind of curiously white voodoo congregation.

[Blinge]

just what they're ending up defending by proxy.

No.

[BIL]

Oh, was still typing when you posted.

sorry, who here is defending vaccine denial and dying on the hill?

Those are the things Rogan's being called out for. I don't think those are the opinions people here hold, just what they're ending up defending by proxy.

I see. I can't criticise a smear attack, unless I'm willing to defend its target's politics by proxy.

What if someone kidnaps Rogan's family, threatening to murder them if he doesn't cancel his show? Can I object? Or do I need to tender my endorsement of his opinion on socialised medicine, first?

This isn't really a free speech thing, in that he's still not only just as allowed to say what he wants as anyone else is (and moreso given the reach of his voice). It's ultimately about whether he should face criticism or suffer any sort of commercial blowback for what he says.

"For what he says" indeed, in the most literal sense imaginable.

Some desperate soul stitched together soundbites of Rogan saying the word 'nigger' over thousands of hours of broadcasting, then chucked it at him like so much rhetorical acid. Zero context, maximum damage.

Like an acid attack, it's crude and easy to do. That's why the immediate reprisal from Rogan's defenders (NB: I am not defending Rogan, I am wiping my ass with this sham) was a highlight reel of The Young Turks and Joe Biden bustin out hard Rs at 9000MPH. No shit. Humans communicate with words.

The only thing I'm defending by proxy here is the right to context.

[BulletMagnet]

I love you bulletmagnet but by repeatedly stating that you know nothing of Rogan and don't listen to his podcast, well..

The situation being what it is I like to think I'm giving Rogan a fair shake here; unlike a lot of others who have come under similar scrutiny he has been willing to admit fault and promise to improve, and hopefully he'll make good on that. As I mentioned I have my doubts much of genuine subtance will end up happening, not even so much due to Rogan himself but how loath the people signing his paychecks are to slow the gravy train down, but again, he isn't going anywhere so we'll be getting an answer one way or the other. If there's some vital element of this whole situation that I'm somehow overlooking feel free to clue me in.

That all being said, however, what I am very hesitant to believe is the notion that the initial criticism he received over giving an incredibly popular platform to - and frequently openly endorsing - Covid cranks was nothing more than a shallow precursor by bad actors to get the race stuff in there by any means necessary; mind you, I don't deny that there are shysters out there who do try to make everything about race and profit accordingly, but considering that the racial slur stuff only reveals shortcomings about Rogan as an individual while the quackery can and surely has led people to behave in ways that put both themselves and others at physical risk, color me very skeptical that the latter exists only in service to the former and that the people concerned about it have all been well and truly duped.

[BIL]

That all being said, however, what I am very hesitant to believe is the notion that the initial criticism he received over giving an incredibly popular platform to - and frequently openly endorsing - Covid cranks was nothing more than a shallow precursor by bad actors to get the race stuff in there by any means necessary

It's the diametric opposite. The Covid stuff was the inciting incident. Even after Neil Young and the Fousands Of Doctors letter, he still wasn't shitcanned. So they chucked in a would-be nuke via good ol' "HE WACIST."

Which, again if you're familiar with Rogan, is fucking hilarious. I can only imagine a racist watching in boiling rage at this DRUGGIE WOP and all the darkies, spics, kikes, WHORES and DANG DIRTY HOMOS he's always RAMMIN DOWN MURICAS THROAT!

GIT THESE GAWD-DAMN BLACK PEOPLES OFFA MUH SCREEN!!!

Absolute farce. What a tragedy that TYT and Joe Biden were also obliterated in the immediate counterattack. MAD doctrine a thing yo 3;

[BulletMagnet]

It's the diametric opposite.

I'm having trouble following you here; in my initial post on Rogan I stated that the racial slur controversy was merely a side effect of the previous attention he'd gotten for Covid misinformation (and he apparently has really run the gamut, from rewriting DNA to ivermectin to microchip implants; tell me that he actually believes any of that), and your response was that the notion was "wishful thinking".

I then reply that I have trouble believing that the racial stuff is what's really front and center here, and your answer this time is that I've got it backwards.

What did I miss?

[BIL]

By wishful thinking, I meant your suggestion that Rogan getting a Best Racial Hits: KKK's Perfect Selection ~ The CRACKER vs KOKUJIN compilation was an organic process. The natural result of his being under greater scrutiny due to platforming Covid skeptics/deniers/etc.

In any event, let's get two things straight: one, the increased scrutiny that prefaced the discovery of his use of "racially-charged" language is merely a side effect of what originally put Rogan on so many people's radars, namely his willingness to give raving cranks equal billing with credentialed experts, even (especially) on matters of significant importance, most notably the coronavirus pandemic

I concur wholeheartedly that the pandemic stuff was the inciting incident here. The race thing being a "side effect," though? Again, if you're at all familiar with Rogan and the company he keeps, the notion of someone seeing him on the news, tuning in, then assembling a highlight reel spanning 10+ years and thousands of hours of broadcasts, out of mere citizenly concern at the scary podcaster man?

Yeah, no. Pull the other one, it's actually me cock. It's a hatchet job. To make up for the previous failures (Neil Young, "Doctors' Letter," etc) to silence him.

That's the sequence of events here. Nobody would've smeared the dopey stoner BJJ bro with a conspicuously long history of platforming and celebrating [insert group despised by alt-right here], otherwise.

What I find notable, hatchet jobs being passe in our world, is the naked cynicism of it. Again, the reprisal comps say it all. Timmy said a bad word! Wait - so did Tommy and Jimmy! Kill 'em all! Oh, hang on, they're on our side. Just Timmy, then.

The kids walking out in protest at uncensored Mark Twain et al don't know any better, but the adults encouraging that are duplicitous creeps, too. You know the one good thing about Al Sharpton, these days he looks as parasitic as he acts - like the accursed protagonist of Thinner. Shame he's managed to sire a whole new generation of frauds.

[Mischief Maker]

I love you bulletmagnet but by repeatedly stating that you know nothing of Rogan and don't listen to his podcast, well..

Well then let me pull rank here as someone who used to watch the Rogan podcast religiously. In fact I'd argue I'm the biggest Rogan head around since when I linked this pitch-perfect satire of The Joe Rogan Experience last Thanksgiving all you posers responded like this:



Anyway, fun fact! This is not the first time someone dredged up Rogan's old "Planet of the Apes" clip on social media for the purpose of cancelling him. It happened before in 2019.

Was it an angry neon-haired feminazi? A vengeful glitter-bearded enby? A smug virtue-signaling SJW???

No, it was Alex Jones!

[emphatic]

I love you bulletmagnet but by repeatedly stating that you know nothing of Rogan and don't listen to his podcast, well..

I guess you are the target audience of the hitpiece, and it's done exactly as intended

This. Also, good show as per usual, BIL, good sir.

[BulletMagnet]

It's a hatchet job. To make up for the previous failures (Neil Young, "Doctors' Letter," etc) to silence him.

I'm also not sure I'm reading this correctly; you've made it clear that you don't think Rogan deserves the flack he's been getting for his use of racial slurs, and that said criticism is being put forth in bad faith. By referring to Neil Young et al, which arose in direct and exclusive response to his proliferation of Covid misinformation (and I'm attempting to be generous here by referring to it as "misinformation") as "previous failures to silence him", does this mean that you also believe criticism of his cheerleading for blatantly false pandemic rhetoric is also just a big, cynical pile of nothing, and that he's completely innocent in this realm as well? Moreover, if you do believe this, why do you think he, who, once again, will likely come out of this better than unscathed, apologized for it?

This.

I'll ask you the same question I asked Blinge - in my comments on Rogan so far, how am I being unfair to him, or else remaining ignorant of some major factor that should change my entire perspective on the issue?

[BIL]

It's a hatchet job. To make up for the previous failures (Neil Young, "Doctors' Letter," etc) to silence him.

I'm also not sure I'm reading this correctly; you've made it clear that you don't think Rogan deserves the flack he's been getting for his use of racial slurs,

I don't think he's racist in the least, and so I don't think he's slurred anyone.

and that said criticism is being put forth in bad faith. By referring to Neil Young et al, which arose in direct and exclusive response to his proliferation of Covid misinformation (and I'm attempting to be generous here by referring to it as "misinformation") as "previous failures to silence him", does this mean that you also believe criticism of his cheerleading for blatantly false pandemic rhetoric is also just a big, cynical pile of nothing, and that he's completely innocent in this realm as well?

No. I'm sure there's plenty to criticise him on re: Covid.

The sizzle reel isn't criticism, it's character assassination. Whether the same parties are responsible, I've no way of knowing. Strictly on conjecture, I'd imagine plenty of Rogan's most ardent critics are dismayed at the hitjob, too.

Moreover, if you do believe this, why do you think he, who, once again, will likely come out of this better than unscathed, apologized for it?

That's the kind of hippy-dippy leftist Rogan is, by his own admission. I'm sure he's mortified at the image the highlight reel paints of him. This is also why he'd apologise when he'll almost certainly see no real damage of any sort.

[Blinge]

I'll ask you the same question I asked Blinge - in my comments on Rogan so far, how am I being unfair to him, or else remaining ignorant of some major factor that should change my entire perspective on the issue?

No one ever watched JRE for Rogan himself.. he rose to prominence cause he had interesting guests, a very eclectic mix over the years.. and they often had 3 hour long unedited, undirected discussions.
He had James Hetfield on once and they just talked about beekeeping for a fucking hour

The only information you have about the man is from third- hand hit pieces, news outrage and controversy.
Or the 'general' impression you could get of a person without viewing his work. Which is fine, this is all fine.
the thing is.. why should anyone attempt to change your perspective?

I've never listened to a Kanye West song, not one.
If i have an opinion about the man, that he's an egotistic fuck and his music probably isn't worth listening to, say..
why should anyone care? and why would I ask them to?

Edit: i wouldn't even consider myself a Rogan 'fan' per se, I've not listened to a single episode since the spotify switch. mainly cause i don't have a spotify account.

[BIL]

He had James Hetfield on once and they just talked about beekeeping for a fucking hour

Great ep! Don't wear black, puts 'em into Angry Bee Boss mode!

[BulletMagnet]

No. I'm sure there's plenty to criticise him on re: Covid.

Noted, though I am still puzzled as to why you previously labeled reactions to the Covid controversy as "previous efforts to silence him", seemingly placing it on equivalent footing, in your view, as the racial slur. I assume there's some distinction therein I missed.

The only information you have about the man is from third- hand hit pieces, news outrage and controversy.

That being the case, I'm attempting to broaden, or at the very least inform, my viewpoint by picking the brains of people here who are more familiar with, and sympathetic to, him than I am; as you say, nobody's under any obligation to engage me, but I'd like to think at least some folks would rather say they tried to reach an understanding with someone coming from a different perspective than automatically write off anybody who's not already in the know as a lost cause.

[BIL]

No. I'm sure there's plenty to criticise him on re: Covid.

Noted, though I am still puzzled as to why you previously labeled reactions to the Covid controversy as "previous efforts to silence him", seemingly placing it on equivalent footing, in your view, as the racial slur. I assume there's some distinction therein I missed.

I see... yeah, I understand why people would prefer Rogan shut up about Covid. It's a poor subject for dilettantes like him. I've no more issue with partners like Neil Young severing ties with Spotify as a result, than I would listeners cancelling their subscriptions. Nobody should be forced to do business with someone they find unconscionable.

I just can't condone the race grift as a means to that end, or any end. That stuff is a provably lethal pathogen unto itself.

[Sengoku Strider]

Mainstream discourse having become so infantilised that mere utterances are themselves treated like unsayable blasphemies is not a convincing argument for the restriction of language. Quite the opposite.

I'd say it's demonstrably been the opposite. We're coming from a context in the 2nd half of the 20th century where comedians like Lenny Bruce & George Carlin were literally arrested for using words like "balls" or "piss" on stage in their routines.

Whether you agree with the underlying principle or not, there's little denying that black people having the socio-political clout to enforce the word as taboo represents massive cultural progress in the US. A few decades ago black folks weren't even legally allowed to marry whites in several states; the view of black people as subhuman or a genetic pollutant being enshrined in law is still within American living memory. Using that word as a red line to declare they're not going back is 100% understandable to me.

I mean fuck, look at the nuclear-level meltdowns half of white America had just hearing the words "black lives matter." They tried to keep that off TV.

This particular takedown of Rogan is nothing but laughably grotesque pantomime masquerading as social conscience. It's rotten, reeks to high heaven. Even a bemused bystander who values his speech (sup) can't help but retch.

I just want to be clear that we're on the same page here. This is what you're saying it's grotesque and disingenuous to criticize?

We’re gonna go see Planet of the Apes. So, I look at the iPhone app and it says, ‘OK, take me to this one.’ And the guy goes, OK. And I go, ‘Is that in a good neighborhood?’ And he goes [mimicking a foreign accent], ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah’—the guy barely speaks English. He takes us there. We get out and we’re giggling. ‘Oh, we’re going to see Planet of the Apes!’ We walk into Planet of the Apes. We walked into Africa, dude. We walked in the door and there was no white people. There was no white people. Planet of the Apes didn’t take place in Africa. That was a racist thing for me to say.

Or this this take, straight out of the 1930s:

Powerful combination genetic-wise, right? You get the body of the Black man and then you get the mind of the white man all together in some strange combination. That doesn’t, by the way, mean that Black people don’t have brains. It’s a different brain…

I like the attempted save at the end there.

And of course, who wouldn't have fun times with the founder of the Proud Boys? (Remember, they're not white supremacists, they're Western chauvinists). :



I get that he's stoned all the time, but as a white guy who speaks white guy, those aren't the type of thoughts that just assemble themselves randomly. He's one of of those guys who builds his brand on "telling it like it is." This is what he thinks it is.

In my ongoing chronicles here of the general zeitgeist of delusional jackassery, I've posted multiple statements from political figures and proposed bills which are overtly white nationalist. Plenty of obscene commentary from social media influencers. The banning of harmless or even helpful books. (I mean Maus? Really?) Literal book burnings. Just go back one page in this thread to see most of the above.

The push for cryptofascist America is literally here and now, it's widespread, and it's quite well funded through grassroots movements, political lobbies, wealthy donors and reactionary evangelical churches. Imaginary anti-free speech Stalin is not happening. Those guys are.

The Rogan thing is not on that level, but I would not be feeling like now is the moment where it's cool to get loosey goosey with hate speech standards.

[BIL]

Mainstream discourse having become so infantilised that mere utterances are themselves treated like unsayable blasphemies is not a convincing argument for the restriction of language. Quite the opposite.

I'd say it's demonstrably been the opposite. We're coming from a context in the 2nd half of the 20th century where comedians like Lenny Bruce & George Carlin were literally arrested for using words like "balls" or "piss" on stage in their routines.

Whether you agree with the underlying principle or not, there's little denying that black people having the socio-political clout to enforce the word as taboo represents massive cultural progress in the US. A few decades ago black folks weren't even legally allowed to marry whites in several states; the view of black people as subhuman or a genetic pollutant being enshrined in law is still within American living memory. Using that word as a red line to declare they're not going back is 100% understandable to me.

I'm a descendant of slaves infamously forced to eat shit if they displeased their white masters. Although, at least they had descendants, unlike slaves who were castrated as a matter of course on the other side of the Atlantic. I appreciate the timeline of 20th century America, which has indeed undergone seismic changes in a relative eyeblink - just giving my own vantage point from 18th century Jamaica, and further afield.

Where do the catastrophic rates of murdered black Americans over the last fifty years or so figure into this progress? How about their tragic rates of educational attainment? Cheap shot, I know, sorry.

But how has brutalising language to the point that certain words are as hazardous to one's social hygiene as a mouthful of shit helped those matters? You say the "n-word" taboo is emblematic of all that good progress. I think this is a misattribution, and an oversimplification. A formerly accepted, celebrated word has become roundly despised, and anyone espousing its sentiments will face widespread condemnation. That is progress. Making the word literally unsayable is not progress. This is not the behaviour of a mature society.

[white people] shouldn’t even be uttering the word. Don’t even say it – under any context.”

This offends me. (gasp) Context is fundamental. If hearing a hateful word in its proper context - say a lesson on atrocities committed under colonial British rule, as we underwent as part of the national curriculuim - causes a person to not merely flinch in discomfort (that's good), but recoil in debilitating horror, or lash out in uncontrollable rage, that's a problem. With them, not society.

I mean fuck, look at the nuclear-level meltdowns half of white America had just hearing the words "black lives matter." They tried to keep that off TV.

As I saw it, the problem was that "black lives matter" is an agreeable blandishment (rather like being "anti-fascist"). "Black Lives Matter" is an organisation, with a mission statement endorsing the dismantling of the nuclear family (curiously redacted since), one of a few screaming red warning flags I can recall.

"How can you not like these guys? They're the Don't Bludgeon Puppies party!"
"Yeah, but why are they campaigning for the abolition of age of consent laws?"
"Hello? PETA?! I've found a puppy bludgeoner!"

This particular takedown of Rogan is nothing but laughably grotesque pantomime masquerading as social conscience. It's rotten, reeks to high heaven. Even a bemused bystander who values his speech (sup) can't help but retch.

I just want to be clear that we're on the same page here. This is what you're saying it's grotesque and disingenuous to criticize?

We’re gonna go see Planet of the Apes...[/quote]

As it turns out, we are not on the same page!

The "Planet of the Apes" anecdote is some racist comedy indeed. He's suggesting black people act like monkeys! Niggas be wildin out! Shootin at the screen, and shit! Very rude. I've been in Irish cinemas, full of the whitest, gingerest motherfuckers on the planet... WILDING IT MASSIVE. Ear-splitting wilding!

Can you spot the word that's not in the anecdote? That's right! It's the n-word!

This isn't about a comedian saying edgy things about minorities. (oh hell naw) It's about a sizzle reel spanning twelve years and thousands of hours, arranged so that Rogan fires off Hard Rs like an overheating Ma Deuce. I would happily bet you a hundred of the king's good pounds that each and every one of those instances is, at minimum, heavily mitigated by context. I would be genuinely surprised to find a single /pol-styled "LMAO NIGGERS MIRITE" edgyboi take in there, let alone an expression of the genuine bigotry that word encapsulates.

Rubbing my eyes and squinting at the blistering-fast edits, in most of them, he resembles his usual ponderous, stoner BJJ bro self, a bald chimpanzee contemplating a bible scrap. But of course, you're not meant to examine, here. Only listen and react, barking like a trained seal at Bad Word He Say Muchly Many Time.

Again, I'm an on/off Rogan listener at best, no match for MM's fanatic zeal. If I thought he, a dopey hippy, were Andy Cumia, a bitter misanthropist with some rather specific pet hates, I'd say so. I'd still think the sizzle reel was laughably desperate, but I would not make the same wager, were it Andy blasting out the verbal war crimes.

Or this this take, straight out of the 1930s:

Powerful combination genetic-wise, right? You get the body of the Black man and then you get the mind of the white man all together in some strange combination. That doesn’t, by the way, mean that Black people don’t have brains. It’s a different brain…

I like the attempted save at the end there.

Boilerplate "Dude, like, black people are mad good at basketball and marathons, but what if you got those Icelandic viking dudes in there too, whoaaa" broscience.

IRL body horror: different populations trend towards different biological outcomes, across a myriad of different metrics. For instance, I'm more prone to hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and glaucoma than my homogenously white European cousins, despite being a much fitter, healthier motherfucker than any of them. Why? I hear it's to do with genes originating in sub-Saharan Africa interacting with the typical Western diet. Shit sucks.

It's uncouth, insensitive on Rogan's part. It's not hateful. What this hatchet job is trying to say is that Rogan is a casual bigot.

And of course, who wouldn't have fun times with the founder of the Proud Boys? (Remember, they're not white supremacists, they're Western chauvinists). :

[image]

I get that he's stoned all the time, but as a white guy who speaks white guy, those aren't the type of thoughts that just assemble themselves randomly. He's one of of those guys who builds his brand on "telling it like it is." This is what he thinks it is.

Honestly, I would probably have fun with Gavin McInnes, given he rammed a dildo up his asshole live in-studio. My Nazi-meter's not fluttering much at that retarded leaf and his band of gay boys. I'm sorry, you'll have to fill me in a bit more on their antics. I hear something about a list of breakfast cereals, and I tune out fast.

In my ongoing chronicles here of the general zeitgeist of delusional jackassery, I've posted multiple statements from political figures and proposed bills which are overtly white nationalist. Plenty of obscene commentary from social media influencers. The banning of harmless or even helpful books. (I mean Maus? Really?) Literal book burnings. Just go back one page in this thread to see most of the above.

The push for cryptofascist America is literally here and now, it's widespread, and it's quite well funded through grassroots movements, political lobbies, wealthy donors and reactionary evangelical churches. Imaginary anti-free speech Stalin is not happening. Those guys are.

The Rogan thing is not on that level, but I would not be feeling like now is the moment where it's cool to get loosey goosey with hate speech standards.

You've posted many snapshots of a particularly American Right idiocy dating back centuries. You do indeed have a whole lot of easily-led, armed-to-the-teeth bible-thumping white simpletons. You've (meaning the Anglosphere) also got a bunch of other bad shit on the boil. Did someone say book burning? (if you can bring in a leaf I can too!)

Regardless of whether any of this ends up meaning anything (my money is on the TERFs), I don't know that hate speech exists. Not in the way I tend to see it described. If you lack a hatred, no matter how vociferously you say its anointed word, it'll be an affectation at best. As with all sentiments. Despite living in England most of my adult life, I cringe at being called "mate," never mind saying it myself, because to me, that word means a pair of dogs fucking. If you hate someone, you won't need any particular word to express it.

So I think conflating the two classes - the hateful, and everyone else - into one is a fundamentally bad, even dangerous idea. I think exploiting this flawed process like a cudgel on a kneecap ala Tonya Harding is outright disgusting.

[Blinge]

" It's performed delicacy.. i don't get how anybody can say they're a strong person and engage in that performance of allowing white people that power. "

John McWhorter on N-word
https://youtu.be/oC7CCqqPOyo


Also full planet of the apes context. and boy did they go back far, rogan has hair
https://youtu.be/nNwxyxdKXh4

[BulletMagnet]

Where do the catastrophic rates of murdered black Americans over the last fifty years or so figure into this progress? How about their tragic rates of educational attainment? Cheap shot, I know, sorry.

I believe you and I went back and forth on this not too long ago; the main point I argued was how the same people who for ages have used inner-city violence/drug use/school dropouts/etc. as evidence of cultural inferiority and insisted that the solution is to crack down on those degenerates, mollycoddling them will only make it worse, now that many of the same phenomena are rapidly on the rise in white parts of the country, have changed their tune to instead blame legitimate socio-economic concerns and pleaded that these neglected, marginalized people desperately need help, right now.

It's uncouth, insensitive on Rogan's part. It's not hateful.

The thing is, at some point if people repeatedly ask you to stop being insensitive to their pleas and you just keep on rolling right along like nothing happened (or briefly apologize and get back to business the second the press has moved on), the between-the-lines message from you becomes "you people and all your history aren't worth so much as a minor inconvenience on my part". Maybe not "racism" as we usually define it, but it still involves taking an entire group of people (multiple groups in Rogan's case, blacks aren't the only ones he's done this to) and essentially stating "what I want, no matter how minor, is more important than what you want, no matter how major".

[emphatic]

The only information you have about the man is from third- hand hit pieces, news outrage and controversy.

That being the case, I'm attempting to broaden, or at the very least inform, my viewpoint by picking the brains of people here who are more familiar with, and sympathetic to, him than I am; as you say, nobody's under any obligation to engage me, but I'd like to think at least some folks would rather say they tried to reach an understanding with someone coming from a different perspective than automatically write off anybody who's not already in the know as a lost cause.

This I just don't understand. Why not go straight to the source and listen to his podcast? Please, explain why this is not possible. Why undermine your arguments against him by using third party information, that's likely to be biased? I mean, what's better - picking the brains of people that has a different perspective when listening to him or just listening to him yourself?

[BIL]

Where do the catastrophic rates of murdered black Americans over the last fifty years or so figure into this progress? How about their tragic rates of educational attainment? Cheap shot, I know, sorry.

I believe you and I went back and forth on this not too long ago; the main point I argued was how the same people who for ages have used inner-city violence/drug use/school dropouts/etc. as evidence of cultural inferiority and insisted that the solution is to crack down on those degenerates, mollycoddling them will only make it worse, now that many of the same phenomena are rapidly on the rise in white parts of the country, have changed their tune to instead blame legitimate socio-economic concerns and pleaded that these neglected, marginalized people desperately need help, right now.

I mean some people would call my granny a black bitch, my mom a brown one, and my dad a race-traitoring disgrace to thousands of years of proud Aryan tradition (at least until they realised he's Irish - then they'd probably downgrade his firing range ticket to the gas chambers). Or if you invert these hypothetical asswipes' polarities, they'd call the first two capable, accomplished women (I'm gonna dox myself if this shit keeps up... too much personal shit lately) hapless victims of colonialism, and my old man a raping slaver.

I don't waste my time defending moronic opinions. We did indeed discuss this subject not long ago - as I noted then, I tend to view the plight of urban black America via an urban black lens. And why not - those are the people on the ground witnessing this stuff first-hand, the ones in the blast radius when policies go awry, as they have post-Floyd and, arguably, for many decades prior.

Something is clearly not right here. I remember a retired cop visiting my country in the mid-90s, white guy, he was liaising with our organised crime task force. He remarked to the press that if his state was witnessing the rates of violent crime ours was, they'd call in the National Guard. I was too young at the time, but now I'd wonder about his opinion on places like Detroit, Philly, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, Gary, on and on... (admittedly not on the hellacious level of the true third world - but then again, located in states vastly less impoverished and corruption-wracked)

I wonder if we're going to see a second Biden crime bill, honestly. Things are only a fraction as bad, in terms of homicides per year, than they were then, at least in the cities I keep track of (NYC '93, ~2000 killed, versus 2021's ~500). But the situation is worsening. "Ok, whatever - come and get these motherfuckers off our streets!" is the rallying cry from law-abiding black citizens those around for the first bill recall. We know of course how that bill is regarded in hindsight. What will happen this time around?

My only point to Strider was that portraying the elevation of black America as an across-the-board success paints an incomplete picture. Some stoner hippy neglecting to self-censor in polite, necessarily hard conversations will neither help nor harm these unfortunates. Locking up a black kid for getting caught with a joint, something Rogan has (predictably) decried? More of a problem.

It's uncouth, insensitive on Rogan's part. It's not hateful.

The thing is, at some point if people repeatedly ask you to stop being insensitive to their pleas and you just keep on rolling right along like nothing happened (or briefly apologize and get back to business the second the press has moved on), the between-the-lines message from you becomes "you people and all your history aren't worth so much as a minor inconvenience on my part". Maybe not "racism" as we usually define it, but it still involves taking an entire group of people (multiple groups in Rogan's case, blacks aren't the only ones he's done this to) and essentially stating "what I want, no matter how minor, is more important than what you want, no matter how major".

Like Strider, you're conflating a reasonable notion ("Can't Rogan not compare rowdy black crowds to monkeys?") with a stitched-together hatchet reel so risibly craven, it was instantly reprised with a star lineup of lefty darlings blasting out the Hard Rs in identically context-free style.

Nobody should take either seriously, it goes without saying. But this wasn't a chicken/egg case.

Also, to the point I was specifically calling "uncouth:" Rogan's a jock, a martial arts one in specific. He's never going to stop pondering the genetic advantages/disadvantages of differing human populations. Just like he'll never stop pointing out that letting natal males smash natal females' faces in is fundamentally unfair.

"He racist!" No. "He transphobic!" Also no. This is biology. A fist shattering an orbital bone doesn't do politics.

[Blinge]

The other year, can't remember when.. I had a racist thought while out and about

and i thought "what the hell man, not cool." This kinda ruined my mood a bit, where did that come from
why did it pop into my head?
then I got over it.

I'm not alone in this, and if you insist it hasn't happened to you, you're a god damned liar.

I'm gonna make excuses for Joe Hogan now. His stupid decade old joke is the result of a similar internal monologue, just on the outside, in a long conversation with friends, probably stoned, who knows. Again people's social constraints tend to fall away a bit after a long time in such an atmosphere. As a comment pointed out, he made the joke, then immediately corrected himself. Youze never said anything a bit yikes? The rest of the chat is him making inoffensive, even appreciative observations about culture difference in cinema-goers. Then how strange it is to see nothing but whiteys on the silver screen for the entire experience.

The joke is only a smoking gun if you want it to be.

[BIL]

Confession time, I've not even looked at the link you provided Not that I don't appreciate it, I just have the feeling I know what's in it (ie, what you describe). Rogan's a goofy hippy. His interminable comfy weedbro podcasts and generally kumbayah outlook make me sleepy - deadly when at the wheel negotiating the busy streets of Tinkletowne on WeeWillehWinkeh BLVD. I'll give it a spin now I'm home with me feet up (no homo )

[Blinge]

full homo with eye contact

[BIL]

I knew I should've thrown out that webcam

[BulletMagnet]

Why not go straight to the source and listen to his podcast?

First, like Blinge I don't have a Spotify account. Second, even if you take out all of the "objectionable" content, the "just invite on whoever, just kinda talk about whatever" format that Rogan uses doesn't appeal to me personally at all, and I wouldn't have ever tuned into him even if none of the issues being discussed here existed.

Third, and most importantly, however, what's being volleyed back and forth here goes far beyond Rogan or his show: he's far from the first media personality to take heat for both the language he uses and the people whose voices he amplifies, and won't be the last. What strikes me most about the current situation is how so many people, from "regular" listeners to high-profile celebrities of various stripes, not only loudly attest that he doesn't deserve to be "cancelled" (which, again, is simply not happening either way), but that few, if any, of the numerous incidents he's been criticized for are even worth criticizing at all, and even that said criticism is merely a fig leaf for an insidious, far-reaching smear campaign against him. My admittedly limited knowledge of the subject matter at hand makes it, frankly, difficult for me to completely wrap my head around this, and I'm attempting to at least gain some measure of understanding about where this sort of reaction stems from; frankly, I doubt that listening to the show itself would offer much insight to this end.

My only point to Strider was that portraying the elevation of black America as an across-the-board success paints an incomplete picture.

I suppose one would have to get deeper into the weeds as to what precisely the "elevation" of black America comprises, but, if I may use plain language here, it sounds like you think that efforts to "elevate" blacks and other long-oppressed groups in the US have had negative effects as well as positive ones, the most oft-cited example in your posts (in my estimation, anyway) being a tendency to "dogpile" anyone or anything singled out as "offensive" without attempting to sort through whatever mitigating nuance might be present therein.

Off the cuff it would appear, to be blunt, that you've put a good deal more thought into these sorts of issues than I have, so I am curious, if you think that the well-intentioned initiatives that got us here were flawed to the extent that it's unleashed something fundamentally dangerous, what, if anything, do you think was/is a viable alternative to the same end?

Youze never said anything a bit yikes?

No, though methinks there's an argument to be made that folks with millions of viewers/readers/listeners might be expected to hold themselves to a somewhat higher standard, especially when discussing issues of importance (again, his vaccine talk is infinitely more concerning to me than the racial slurs; that's not just a "random thought" you have and quickly dismiss), though the "I'm just some random guy shooting from the hip with occasionally hilarious results" shtick Rogan and others traffic in obviously clashes directly with such a notion. In any event, as I've noted several times, he's at least apologized and promised to change things up to some degree, and time will tell if he's true to his word.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm a descendant of slaves infamously forced to eat shit if they displeased their white masters. Although, at least they had descendants, unlike slaves who were castrated as a matter of course on the other side of the Atlantic. I appreciate the timeline of 20th century America, which has indeed undergone seismic changes in a relative eyeblink - just giving my own vantage point from 18th century Jamaica, and further afield.

Sure, and whether you feel this way or not let me surface a couple of things here - I'm not questioning your bonafides to comment, or whether it's sufficiently black. My own methodology starts from the standpoint that there are as many black/asian/caucasian experiences and viewpoints as there are black/asian/caucasian people. Not because it sounds nice or idealistic, but simply because it's undeniably true.

This is why my eyes were rolling out of my skull at the "important" criticism of the French Sifu devs not having a token Asian on their 12 person team. As though said person would have provided authenticity through their innate genetic connection to the Asian matrix. The criticism ironically highlights why that type of take is silly; the mystical traditions around theatrical arm-wavy hand to hand martial arts are largely an invented product of modernity. Tailor-made for an era of mechanical visual reproduction, one in which firearms have rendered actual traditional battlefield practices useless. The author vetting its presentation demonstrates first hand how people within a cultural fishbowl are no less susceptible to falsehood and distortion than those outside it.

Where do the catastrophic rates of murdered black Americans over the last fifty years or so figure into this progress? How about their tragic rates of educational attainment? Cheap shot, I know, sorry.

One the one hand, patronizing "they can't help it" takes from liberals on this topic are a popular subgenre of diet racism all their own.

On the other hand, from a macro perspective it's pretty much an axiomatic sociological fact that poverty and desperation breed crime, and that moralizing doesn't stop it, and police crackdowns don't stop it. Within the context of American plutoracy, area poverty produces shitty schools, neglected neighbourhoods and broken infrastructure; a self-sustaining feedback loop, all wrapped up with an "it's your fault for not working harder and listening to so much rap music" bow.



World's wealthiest country y'all.

Psychology also has a pretty good handle on how human motivation works - or at least, how it doesn't work. It's premised on projected outcome, and if you can convince someone their work won't pay off, the brain literally throttles the dopamine supply that drives the motivation & arousal systems. So, in a wealth and celebrity obsessed culture still gripped by the myth of hard work as a virtue rewarded by (protestant) Heaven, if a demographic sees a future like this ahead of them:

Spoiler

...a significant percentage of those human wills are just going to go into a complete tailspin. Because the metabolic return on investment to work hard only to end up in a high-displacement and frequently shamed station in life doesn't add up to our hypothalamus, which is so old and basic and dumb it predates vertebrae in our evolutionary history. So it says fuck it and turns off the juice, because it evolved out of a context in which wasted energy meant starvation, freezing or death. It's not a race thing, the US has a country full of drug-addled poor white communities as corollary evidence.

But how has brutalising language to the point that certain words are as hazardous to one's social hygiene as a mouthful of shit helped those matters? You say the "n-word" taboo is emblematic of all that good progress. I think this is a misattribution, and an oversimplification. A formerly accepted, celebrated word has become roundly despised, and anyone espousing its sentiments will face widespread condemnation. That is progress. Making the word literally unsayable is not progress. This is not the behaviour of a mature society.

America is a fountainhead of technological and intellectual revolution. It is the omphalos of post-war global civilization. It is a country with a post-secondary education system which has produced a vast number of historically transformative ideas. It put a human being on the Moon. It is the nation who gave us rock music and hip hop and The Simpsons and superheroes and video games.

But my dude. America is nothing resembling a mature society. It's a culture full of Eric Cartmans stamping their feet and throwing tantrums if someone asks them to inconvenience themselves by maybe not spreading their history's worst murder plague. It's a country that handed an ADHD-addled malignant narcissist the keys to history's deadliest nuclear arsenal, largest economy and most absurdly OP military, because he seemed tough when he made duck-faces on his game show. It is a country which has seen more than 2000 mass shootings since 2013, but tolerates this out of a belief that randos with AR-15s will defeat a 21st century armoured totalitarian military. It's a country where civic leadership roles are assigned based on who people would "most like to have a beer with."

It's a culture that produced Kanye West: Artistic Genius and Cultural Voice to Be Taken Very Seriously.™




It is a country whose most watched and influential political commentator spends an inordinate amount of time arguing with puppet shows.



I, personally, might not say that maybe taking some of those fingers off the n-word trigger is the cultural Jenga block that will bring it all crashing down.

As I saw it, the problem was that "black lives matter" is an agreeable blandishment (rather like being "anti-fascist"). "Black Lives Matter" is an organisation, with a mission statement endorsing the dismantling of the nuclear family (curiously redacted since), one of a few screaming red warning flags I can recall.

Oh no. All the moral panics over Marxist post-gender rap utopia were retconned in after the fact.

The actual sequence of events went:

1. Black guy kneeled during the national anthem at a football game without saying anything.
2.


-
-




It just kinda picked up steam from there.

This isn't about a comedian saying edgy things about minorities. (oh hell naw) It's about a sizzle reel spanning twelve years and thousands of hours, arranged so that Rogan fires off Hard Rs like an overheating Ma Deuce.

It is though. Watch the India Arie video you linked, she posts the exact clip.

As an aside, I respect the Mortal Kombat Queen Sindel hair game, but man she fell off.

Spoiler

Boilerplate "Dude, like, black people are mad good at basketball and marathons, but what if you got those Icelandic viking dudes in there too, whoaaa" broscience.

IRL body horror: different populations trend towards different biological outcomes, across a myriad of different metrics. For instance, I'm more prone to hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and glaucoma than my homogenously white European cousins, despite being a much fitter, healthier motherfucker than any of them. Why? I hear it's to do with genes originating in sub-Saharan Africa interacting with the typical Western diet. Shit sucks.

The genetic nucleotide difference between me and the blackest guy on Earth is 0.1%. If someone walks through life thinking "black people have a different brain" he's flying a certain kind of flag. There are many flavours of dumb, but if you keep picking racist pistachio it's because you kinda like it.

Honestly, I would probably have fun with Gavin McInnes, given he rammed a dildo up his asshole live in-studio. My Nazi-meter's not fluttering much at that retarded leaf and his band of gay boys. I'm sorry, you'll have to fill me in a bit more on their antics. I hear something about a list of breakfast cereals, and I tune out fast.

Seems like a fun dude.