How Joe Rogan and Sam Harris are dangerous
As a philosopher and neuroscientist, Sam Harris initially rose to prominence as one of the so-called “Four Horsemen of Atheism”, which included biologist Richard Dawkins, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens and philosopher Daniel Dennett. In those days, he was largely known for his strident critique of religion, focusing somewhat on Islam. Harris was involved in several high-profile debates with theists and apologists, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Deepak Chopra, among others. After building a somewhat substantial public profile, he pivoted to a podcast originally named Waking Up with Sam Harris, which was eventually re-branded to The Making Sense podcast. In the early years of his podcast, Sam did still largely host discussions revolving around religion and theism in general, but has slowly pivoted away from the subject in recent years.
Joe Rogan is a former taekwondo state champion in Massachusetts, former game show host, stand-up comedian, and an MMA commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In December 2009, Joe Rogan would launch his first free podcast, eventually naming it The Joe Rogan Experience, growing it into one of the most downloaded podcasts ever.
As previously mentioned, Sam Harris initially tackled religion and theism in his public appearances and debates. Perhaps recognizing that he would need to diversify his range of topics to maintain relevance and widen his potential audience for speaking gigs, Harris began pivoting to discussing topics such as AI, morality, meditation, politics and most recently and prominently, race. Over the years, Harris has developed a reputation for having highly educated intellectuals on his podcast to discuss their given expertise.
For Rogan, his path to podcast mega-stardom was a bit more of a meandering path, initially having a video editor he hired essentially follow him and record him doing stand-up and other activities. This slowly morphed into a podcast as demand for the content grew. As The Joe Rogan Experience has grown into the behemoth podcast that it is today, he has had a litany of guests ranging from MMA fighters, scientists, politicians, stand-up comedians and many more.
Sam Harris and Joe Rogan converge as members of the so-called “intellectual dark web” (a term coined by mathematical physician Eric Weinstein and popularized by journalist Bari Weiss). The Intellectual Dark Web or IDW, is an informal group of commentators that are self-described to be in opposition of identity politics, political correctness, partisan politics and cancel culture. Though superficially, the intellectual dark web is just an informal name to describe a certain style of commentary, it is generally agreed that Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson along with both Eric and Bret Weinstein are “members” of the intellectual dark web, not to mention several other high-profile public figures that are also somewhat loosely associated with the term.
Despite ostensibly containing members from either end of the political spectrum, members of the IDW typically share a willingness to criticize left-wing individuals and ideas specifically.
Even if not technically a political commentator himself, Joe Rogan is known for having political analysts and commentators as well as politicians from varying ends of the spectrum. Although he has self-identified as a liberal and supporting certain liberal policies, Rogan has established a reputation for engaging with conservatives from common ground and attempting to maintain said common ground during conversations on his podcasts. To be fair, he has either outright disagreed with, or at least given push-back to conservative ideas he disagrees with, but is generally agreeable with his right-leaning guests.
The danger from Joe Rogan and Sam Harris lies in specific views they hold and how they use it to tangentially address other issues. A common theme for both commentators is the so-called “Oppression Olympics.” Again, for the uninitiated, the idea behind the “Oppression Olympics” is that there is an imagined list of marginalized groups ranging from minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ community. Members of these groups, especially those with overlapping identities are ranked on this imaginary list and attempt to claim a specific level of entitled victimhood based on their identity. This idea also intersects with the notion of identity politics, wherein the political attitudes or positions that focus on the concerns of social groups are based on varying aspects of their identity.
As with most pernicious ideas, there is a morsel of truth to be found in the idea of the pejoratively named “Oppression Olympics.” Individuals among different identity groups are viewed and treated differently based on those very identities. It can range from the fairly simple, a single woman walking into a body shop. To the potentially more insidious, a black man going for a walk in a sub-urban area that is occupied by mostly whites. The mere acknowledgement of that reality is not an example of individuals trying to engage in Oppression Olympics to prove they are the most marginalized. Though seemingly obvious with even brief introspection, they both seem to have missed that people do not choose to be marginalized by society, and that if they had the power to stop it, they would.
An almost direct consequence of the propagation of the idea of self-victimhood, is the additional idea that systemic racism and bigotry should only be tangentially and briefly acknowledged, but the onus is on those that are marginalized to improve their own situations. While in passing this may seem like a positive, self-empowering message, it serves as nothing more than an excuse to shelve the palpable effects of malevolent systemic structures as those of a bygone era. Rather than attempt to repair or even break a system rigged against the oppressed, they should adopt the old conservative adage of “pulling yourself up by the boot-straps”. If this still sounds reasonable, recognize that one can simultaneously rail against the system rigged against them while doing the best they can with their current circumstances.
Outside of trying to, and in some cases successfully, convince minorities and other marginalized groups that their oppression is imagined, this idea has the additional side-effect of ushering a certain demographic towards more dangerous far-right and more specifically alt-right ideologies. Neither Sam Harris, nor Joe Rogan are far right or alt-right themselves, based on their public persona. However, their continued dissemination of the aforementioned ideas, act as a vehicle to provide shelter for individuals seeking refuge for the idea that any empathy for marginalized groups is simply misplaced white guilt.
This further morphs into, ironically, an unspoken but implied sense of “white victim-hood”. Both Rogan and Harris have on multiple occasions bemoaned situations where whites were either “unfairly silenced” or “this would be so much worse if it were the other way around.” As an example, Joe Rogan, spent some time on his podcast discussing the Netflix executive’s Jonathan Friedland firing after he was dismissed for using the n-word in a descriptive manner on at least two occasions. Rogan’s take on the matter was Friedland was fired for using the word in a meeting wherein they were discussing the things they cannot say. He was specifically disturbed that the context of his usage of the n-word, did not seem to matter, and he expressed what appeared to be genuine bewilderment at the fact that usage of the n-word is specifically taboo for white people, but more socially acceptable for black people.
Absent from Rogan’s analysis was that the first incident of Friedland using the n-word had occurred months prior and that he had since done it again a few days later to two black human resources employees as he was discussing the first incident. Which may be genuine ignorance on his part, but Rogan has the reach and influence of mainstream reporters, with none of the same accountability, an undoubtedly dangerous combination. Also missing from Rogan’s analysis of the situation is that Netflix is of course, a private (i.e., not owned by the government) company and has the absolute right to terminate a high ranking employee, or any employee for that matter, if they feel that their behavior does not comport with the company’s values. Friedland’s intentions are almost beside the point. He, nor anyone else, is owed a job at Netflix, or anywhere else for that matter. Though Rogan himself was likely not intentionally behaving as a bad actor in this instance, it is almost unimaginable that an adult capable of coherent thoughts would be genuinely confused as to why it is typically seen as worse for whites to use the n-word as opposed to blacks.
To provide an example of Sam Harris utilizing the “it would have been worse the other way around” trope, he posted the following tweet:
For context, he is referencing a 2012 study that found genome mutations consistent with Neanderthal DNA was found to be prevalent in non-Africans living today. On the surface, it would appear that this tweet actually serves the purpose of dismissing racist notions, and in a literal sense it does. However, during a podcast discussion with Ezra Klein, Harris elaborated on his feelings about the findings and his subsequent feelings about it:
“But what if the data had broken the other way? What if the only people on Earth, who were part Neanderthal, were black? What then? What would have happened to anyone who reported those data? What would’ve, would that have been an example of trafficking in the most deeply harmful tropes? It’s just pure good luck it broke the other way. And yet, this is the kind of thing that will keep coming at us. This is the problem that you appear to be unprepared for, okay?”
The incredible irony of Sam’s words seemed to sail over his own head as he uttered those words. Assuming that Harris’ tweet was actually intended to troll racists, which he literally claimed one sentence before the quoted paragraph, then this means he understands that in the mind of a racist, findings of Neanderthal DNA would in fact be used by said racists to justify their racism, or perhaps bare minimum would be used as a trolling device against blacks.
What Harris managed to do in that podcast, however, was conflate the potential backlash against racists trying to use scientific research against black individuals, and attempted to imply that excessive cultural wokeness would destroy the careers of scientists and researches that dared to discover a politically incorrect finding. Not only did Harris fail to provide even a single example of a researcher losing their career over an inconvenient but accurate finding, he also successfully shifted the blame of destructive racist behavior from racists to those that would be offended or disgusted by it. Which, in a bottom line sense, is what Harris seems to accomplish with his audience intentionally or not. Being offended by racism is shopped as a form of unsophisticated, excessive wokeness. Harris pays little attention, or mere lip service to addressing actual racism, while focusing on the response that racism and oppression awakens within people as problematic.
The additional layer of irony here is that for all of Harris’ concern trolling over racists using the scientific findings of Neanderthal DNA to their advantage if the evidence had swung this way, it was Harris himself that was stoking the flames of racial tension. For many, the idea that it was non-Africans walking around with traces of Neanderthal DNA, was something brought to their consciousness by Sam Harris himself. Even a cursory web search on the term Neanderthal DNA, seems to return numerous pieces referencing Sam himself.
The icing on the cake however is the additional, updated information that seems to contradict the original research cited by Harris. A later study indicated that modern Africans do in fact have Neanderthal DNA, albeit at lower levels that non-Africans. There has been no public outcry and the involved researchers have not been blacklisted or cancelled by woke hipsters or ultra-lefties.
Whether or not Joe Rogan and Sam Harris even accept or acknowledge their roles as gate-keepers to the alt-right bears no weight to the accuracy of that claim. They are both particularly dangerous, because unlike fellow IDW colleague, Ben Shapiro, who openly blames black culture for wealth disparity in the U.S., Harris and Rogan are liberals, and such serve as an introductory bridge that lead almost directly towards alt-right ideology.
A 2019 study from the Federal University of Minas Gerais uncovered a pattern of YouTube viewers who would watch Harris, Rogan and other IDW members videos, would typically migrate to outright alt-right content over time.
To be clear, at no point should this piece be mistaken for a hit piece against Sam Harris and Joe Rogan. Sam Harris particularly, seems to be frequently taken out of context by bad actors. Nor is the argument here that Rogan and Harris are the only public commentators that help usher their audience towards alt-right material. As previously mentioned, they are both liberals and both hold morally conscientious views on many topics. In the case of Sam Harris specifically, he has taken great measures to insulate himself from dissenting opinions, and rejects faithfully dismisses objections to his work as misguided. Joe Rogan on the other hand, seems to be far less insidious, and rather makes seems to make it a point to placate members of his audience from both ends of the political spectrum. Regardless of their underlying motives, not pointing out the danger they currently pose would be a failure.
