As Abilene Freedom League readers already know there has been an all out censorship campaign launched against Joe Rogan and his podcast by the left, Mainstream Media, unelected Government officials, Big Pharma, and all the "Doctors and Scientists" who gladly push their vaccine agenda. This whole thing got started because of three events.
First, Joe Rogan got COVID and publicly came out and told the world he used Ivermectin, Monoclonal Antibodies, and vitamin drips as part of a cocktail he had been instructed to take by his personal medical professionals. While most of the things he mentioned are at least publicly admitted to as safe and helpful the thing that set them off was the Ivermectin. There has been a massive propaganda effort to demonize Ivermectin as unsafe and noneffective treatment against COVID. With no proof at all they have tried to claim it is just a horse dewormer which is dangerous to humans despite the pill form being made exclusively for human use and the drug maker having won a The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The second Rogan came out and said that he had taken the drug and pronounced how quickly he got over COVID, every mainstream news outlet immediately went into attack mode. They had worked very hard in pushing lies about it and didn't want someone with Rogan's reach to put out a counter narrative.
The second and third things that caused them to lose their minds was in December of 2021, when in a matter of two weeks, Joe had Doctor Peter McCullough and Doctor Robert Malone on his podcast to have long, well expressed conversations about COVID, Vaccines, and the way they are being treated. Both podcasts exploded doing upwards of 100 million views combined in less than a month. Despite the best efforts of the media and the "doctors" pushing the mainstream covid narratives, Malone and McCullough are highly credible specialists who are articulate enough to convey the counter narrative to their propaganda.
This couldn't be tolerated and so a group of 270 "doctors" came out claiming that Rogan and his guest were "Spreading COVID Disinformation" despite only a third of them actually being practicing physicians. This did absolutely nothing to put pressure on Spotify to punish their golden goose in Rogan and his podcast and the platform made no comments. Not ones to give up, the same propaganda pushers made a new attempt with 1,000 scientists and healthcare professionals this time. That still did nothing because Rogan averages 11 million views for each podcast and is the biggest individual media source in the world.
Next, aging rocker and activist Neil Young wrote a letter to Rolling Stone Magazine telling Spotify that "they can have Young or Rogan. Not both." The 76 year old quickly found out where he stood as Spotify announced the next day they would honor his request and take down his music. Young was later joined by Joni Mitchel as she said she is also taking her music down from Spotify. I doubt there will be many that join them as the platform makes up 83% of the market share of US music. Add that to the fact that many artists have sold their publishing rights to their music and don't have the power to do that.
Spotify did come out and make a statement about the whole situation. CEO Daniel Ek claimed Sunday that the streaming service will add a content advisory to podcast episodes that discuss Covid which will direct listeners to Spotify's COVID-19 Hub which has access to 'data-driven' information about the virus. He went on to say "Based on the feedback over the last several weeks, it's become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely-accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time." This is clearly Spotify trying to do something without upsetting Rogan. They are bowing down to the cancel culture but not in a way that would break a contract with the Podcast King and risk losing him. This will likely be the same "fact check posts" we see on FB, Youtube, and other social media sites.
Joe Rogan gave a near ten minute response to all of this today on his instagram. Here are some of the highlights of the response. "Hello friends. I wanted to make a video to address some of the controversy that has been going on over the past few days and to say thank you to everyone who has sent love and support. I truly, truly appreciate it and it's been very nice to hear from you. I wanted to make this video because first of all, I think there are a lot of people who have a distorted perception of what I do, maybe based on sound bites or based on headlines of articles that are disparaging. The podcast has been accused of spreading dangerous misinformation. Specifically, about two episodes...One with Doctor Peter McCullough and one with Doctor Robert Malone. Doctor Peter McCullough is a cardiologist and he is the most published physician in his field in history. Doctor Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to the mRNA vaccines. Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people and they have an opinion that is different than the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is. I had them on and because of those episodes in particular, those episodes were labeled saying they had dangerous misinformation in them."
Joe went on to explain why he had a problem with this, saying "The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today, is that many of things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact. For instance, eight months ago if you said 'if you get vaccinated you can still catch covid and you can still spread covid', you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that is accepted as fact. If you said 'I don't think cloth masks work' you would be banned from social media. Now, that is openly, repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said 'I think it is possible that covid-19 came form a lab' you would be banned from many social media platforms. Now, that's on the cover of Newsweek. All of those theories that at one point and time were banned, were openly discussed by those two men I had on my podcasts that have been accused of dangerous misinformation."
Rogan also said "Do I get things wrong? Absolutely, I get things wrong but I try to correct them. Whenever I get something wrong, I try to correct it cause I am interested in telling the truth. I am interested in finding out what the truth is and I'm interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions."
He ended the ten minute response by telling Spotify he is sorry for the heat they are getting and that he doesn't dislike Neil Young or Joni Mitchel. He ended by saying "The point of doing this is to create interesting conversations and ones that I hope people enjoy. So, if I pissed you off, I'm sorry. If you enjoy the podcast, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks to Spotify, thanks to the supporters, and even thanks to the haters. It is good to have some haters because it makes you reassess what you're doing and put things in perspective and I think that's good too."
Will this be the end of the drama? Time will tell. Cancel Culture and the forces that push it still fear Rogan and his ability to provide a voice that counters their propaganda. Spotify knows it is bad business to mess with him. For example, their stock went up as much as 13% Monday after announcing that the only thing they would do to Rogan is place "fact checks" on podcasts that talk about covid. They don't want to upset him enough that they violate his contract or push him to leave as he is by far the biggest force on Spotify and they need him more than he needs them.
Check out Rogan's Youtube statement here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7hbsdCc9U
Written by guest writer Chris Turner
Source:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/01/31/what-joe-rogan-controversy-spotify-surges-as-bullish-expert-declares-stock-undervalued-after-10-billion-crash
https://nypost.com/2022/01/29/joni-mitchell-removing-her-music-from-spotify-i-stand-with-neil-young/