Watch: Joe Rogan Absolutely Torches Rolling Stone Founder for Propping Up Leftist Censorship
Podcasting king Joe Rogan last week exposed how bad multi-millionaire Jann Wenner, the infamously left-wing founder of Rolling Stone magazine, actually is on the topic of free speech by pointing out the absurdity of Wenner’s views on Big Tech and big government censorship.
Wenner, who reportedly has a net worth of $600 million, appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” Oct. 5 episode, and at one point during the discussion, the topic turned toward censorship.
Both the magazine and its founder, of course, have been stolid supporters of the far left and the Democrat Party since the magazine’s inception.
The magazine is so sold out to the left and hostile to the GOP that in May it even falsely claimed that the mass murderer who shot up a Buffalo, New York, grocery store was a “mainstream Republican” even though the killer expressly denounced Republicans in his rambling manifesto.
Once censorship came up toward the end of Rogan’s discussion with the leftist publisher, a galling hypocrisy was revealed.
Wenner said he loves the internet, but “like every other industry in the United States, it has to be regulated.”
Rogan was quick to begin pointing out the logical flaws in Wenner’s argument.
“But who regulates it?” Rogan asked.
Wenner quickly replied, “The government.”
Rogan was flabbergasted.
“Do you trust the government to regulate the internet?” Rogan asked incredulous, to which Wenner stubbornly replied, “Absolutely.”
Wenner clearly imagines that all the censorship that he approves of will be descending only on his political enemies. But the magazine he sold in 2017 but still helps run would be subject to similar government-imposed monitoring of content.
After all, Rolling Stone was caught passing fake news about the drug ivermectin in Sept. of 2021. The magazine was called out so strongly, it even tried to offer a pathetic explanation of how it got the story so wrong. That is a perfect example of the sort of “fake news” that would be a prime candidate for censorship in an unbiased world.
Rogan pounced, though, and revealed Wenner’s hypocrisy by brilliantly approaching the magazine publisher from the left side of the debate on government corruption.
“You trust the people that got us into the Iraq War under false pretenses to regulate the internet? Do you think that makes any sense?” Rogan said.
Wenner could only muster an “Ahhhh” to that perfect attack from his own political side of the aisle.
“Do you think that makes any sense?” Rogan pushed.
“I would not…..the people that got us into the Iraq war…” Wenner bumbled.
“It’s the government.,” Rogan countered as Wenner tried to parry replying, “It’s the politicians.”
But as Rogan reiterated that “It’s the government,” Wenner tried to explain, “In the end yes, but who else is going to regulate it?”
Rogan, though, was not mollified. And he went on, saying, “If they’re gonna be in power and they’re regulating the internet, they’re gonna regulate the internet in a way that suits their best interest. The same way they do with the banking industry, the same way they do with the environment, the same way they do with energy, the same way they do with everything. What represents their interests? You’re talking about so much money involved in disseminating information in a very particular way.”
Wenner then lighted on the follow-the-money point that Rogan was making, and replied, saying, “The richest companies in the world are internet companies. They are rich beyond belief.”
Again, Rogan was not prepared to believe government could be unbiased, especially in an age where the Democratic Party is celebrating the elimination of free speech in universities, on social media, on TV, and everywhere else it can shut down its political opposition.
“Yeah. But it’s a disruptive thing that has never existed before. My … I think it exists…and where we’re at is where we’re at,” Rogan said. “I think we need to move forward collectively as a country with an ethic that respects truth and that appreciates opinions and reality and an understanding of things that’s not necessarily possible with corporate interest involved in dissemination of information.”
Wenner was undaunted, though, and claimed that the only way to do it was “through government,” adding, “Human nature’s not gonna change.”
As Rogan insisted that the government’s “not gonna change either,” Wenner insisted that it certainly could change. Then he used the odd example of how the government regulates food through the Department of Agriculture. Of course, the Constitution never mentions food, not that Wenner can probably grasp why that matters.
Indeed, not once were the words “U.S. Constitution” even brought up in the discussion, showing how little Wenner even thinks of the law of the land.
Still, Wenner is probably right to assume that most examples of censorship will come from the left and be used to eliminate the free speech of the center-right in the U.S. if the government was able to violate the U.S. Constitution and quash political free speech.
One only has to look at the recent news to show where censorship would go.
PayPal recently announced (then backed away from the announcment) that it would steal $2,500 from users who say something that PayPal’s executives don’t like, and that is on the heels of its deplatforming of a myriad of conservatives.
In another case, internal emails showed that Facebook worked with the Biden administration to censor conservatives. In yet another case, Facebook was caught colluding with the FBI to interfere in the 2020 election. And the Biden White House worked with Twitter to ban those who held the “wrong” opinion on the coronavirus vaccines.
Reports like these are many showing that if the government was given full power to censor the internet, the vast majority of the time it would be those on the center-right who would face the summary elimination of their freedom of speech.
So, it is no wonder that raving leftist millionaire Jann Wenner is all in favor of the government censoring free speech. He understands that most of the time that effort would be eliminating his political opposition.
Fortunately, so do people like Joe Rogan.
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