The playbook they’re running against Joe Rogan is obvious, recognizable, and requires new defensive weapons.
The attempt to cancel Joe Rogan has moved through its predictable stages. First, you had a slew of concerned doctors — which included a large number of people who were not, actually, doctors — raise their stethoscopes outside Spotify headquarters about Rogan’s meandering lengthy interviews with people they deem unacceptable sharing their perspectives regarding the Covid pandemic. This was framed in the press without any regard for the actual expertise of those raising the claims. Nor was there any investigation into whether these people themselves held views now deemed dubious about masking, school shutdowns, economic lockdowns, treatment methods, or how effective the vaccines would be — all of which would be relevant to the veracity of their Rogan critiques. The approach was very obviously an activation of the Cathedral — that is, the organized combination of elite power represented by a priesthood of media, academia, politicians and activist groups all funded by corporate tithes. They cracked open a similar playbook to the many “open letters” which assured the American people the powers that be possessed incontrovertible evidence that Donald Trump was elected via a Russian conspiracy, or that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a fraudulent Russian creation. The experts are concerned. The media dutifully reports. The institutes release their findings. And the people must listen for our safety and security and the sake of our democracy. The clerisy of the all-powerful woke religion has declared what reality is. So let it be written, so let it be done. What’s so interesting about the Rogan attack is that, at least initially, it failed. It failed because Rogan occupies a seat of influence and power that is far above his station, from the Cathedral’s perspective. There is power in numbers, and even if they view his listeners as rabble listening to the rambling queries of a barbarian Khan from the steppes, they are too numerous and engaged to not know what’s going on and recognize the playbook for what it is. Keep in mind, of course, that it is this rabble that is the problem. The Cathedral can’t cancel them all, they are too numerous, so instead they seek to take down Rogan both to deny his followers a gathering point, and to send a message of any other lower tier podcaster or commentator lest they entertain ill-advised contrarian ideas. The tactical failure of this attack of the nursing students is of a piece with why Rogan is popular in the first place — his willingness to bring in interesting, contrarian guests who break with elite consensus on all manner of topics. So they moved on to Spotify’s business model.
