How Joe Rogan and the Canadian Truckers Are Exactly the Same
For corporate media and woke, western governments, it's "Nazis" all the way down. Plus: Dance to “Feira de Mangaio” with Clara Nunes and Sivuca.
There’s an old blogging or political writing convention that brings together a few of the big stories of the day and explains that they’re really just the same story, with a different set of actors and fact patterns. Sometimes this effort is forced, or too cute. Other times, the insight is so unremarkable and obvious, it hardly needs telling.
Of course, political or cultural controversies will break along partisan lines, and contain a certain degree of predictability: libertinism vs tradition, censoriousness vs free expression, landmine-steppers vs victimologists, etc. These are mostly just third- or fourth-order expressions of—as Thomas Sowell explains in the indispensable Conflict of Visions—the consequences of the West’s two distinct understandings of human nature: relatively fixed or infinitely malleable.
While that might be the root of the philosophical cleavage in the West, especially in the United States, it doesn’t answer what could be called, the tactical questions. How do the power centers in culture and politics exert power? What is their primary method of waging war?
We’ve arrived at a political moment in the West where the most powerful protagonists are so closely aligned–the academy, entertainment, the still-potent behemoth of mainstream, corporate media and the intersectional and woke left-wing political party–as to be a seamless organism, lurching in very predictable spasms.
This alliance of forces–which has been called, aptly, The Cathedral–can now only lash out at its enemies in the same way: the opponents of its orthodoxy and dictates are always and everywhere Nazis and fascists, far-right terrorists and insurrectionists poised to lay waste to “our democracy” if not stopped. The only way to preserve it and halt these forces, of course, is to deplatform, bankrupt, and choke their ability to communicate their message.
This now-predictable narrative is the only possible narrative, and the only possible information campaign the Cathedral can mount. There are two reasons for this. First, the Left has encouraged its people to respond, junkie-like, to the increasing use of extreme labels. An infinite number of villains must be squeezed inside of the now- meaningless “Nazi” container, as that’s the only one that’ll provide the elusive thrill.
In addition–and closely related–is the issue that intersectional, woke politics recognizes but one offense; its worldview is oriented toward stomping out its own ever-expanding definition of “hate.” Who but the Nazis evoke this kind of potent and limitless hate? A sober mind can look at the media’s current obsession with under-the-bed Nazis and think that we’re completely insane, consumed with forces that will obviously lay waste to our social cohesion.
And it surely will.
All this brings us to the two biggest stories of the last two weeks, the Cathedral’s attempts to destroy both Joe Rogan and the Canadian Truckers. They are both very similar targets: both appear non-threatening, working-class, happy-go-lucky, commonsensical, and wholesome. They are essentially apolitical or, at least, explicitly non-partisan. This makes them harder to dismiss and, from the point of view of the Left, far more crucial to destroy.
Joe Rogan built a massive audience on the power of his everyman inquisitiveness and his willingness to spend hours in conversation with interesting guests. Rogan’s podcasts provide the firmest rebuke to the media theorists of the prior decade, who were certain that modern attention spans could only handle short bursts. (The younger cohort’s obsession with TikTok, however, could condition viewers to the opposite before very long.)
There’s a strong element of “the medium is the message” here: Rogan’s interviews are rambling and illuminating the way real conversation is; they contain both moments of intense drama and mundanity. The format is exhaustive for a reason–the pressure of time breaks-down even hardened, jaded and pompous guests. What’s left is honesty and, when the interview subject can muster it, evidence of real expertise.
It is raw, because several hours of unguarded conversation allows nearly anyone to fall on his face. In this way, the Joe Rogan Experience couldn’t be more different than what passes for discourse in the television and social media age–soundbites, “info-tainment” passed off as news, and carefully-crafted and PR-massaged Instagram reels from “influencers” and people famous for being famous.
Everybody seemed to like Joe Rogan until he became a prominent dissenting voice from the hypnotic lies of the Covid orthodoxy, promoting Ivermectin, doubting the wisdom of lockdowns and—worst of all—showing the government and media to be malevolent, tyrannical fools.
Meanwhile, up in Canada, a movement of thousands of truckers against tyrannical, anti-freedom Covid vaccine mandates–along with tens or hundreds of thousands of supporters–has descended on the country’s capital city and many other of its population centers. While the more extreme example of Australia’s lockdown-happy tyranny has overshadowed the Covid-induced insanity of the rest of the English-speaking world, Canadians have suffered two years under their own ruthless biomedical nanny-state.
As Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party embraced every ineffective ham-fisted government measure against Covid, from lockdowns to vaccine and mask mandates, its rival Conservative Party has been hiding in the tall grass, or worse. Canada’s opposition party makes the GOP look like principled, courageous freedom fighters. It was into this giant political chasm that the Trucker Convoys entered, flags waving and Honk-Honking. And so many ordinary Canadians thrilled to their presence in the cities—the very definition of non-violent protests.
So naturally, neither of these things could stand. Both Rogan and the Truckers, as well as their supporters, have been blasted with accusations of racism: thin, context-free or outright false derogatory information (emerging, of course, from political opposition research shops), which ratify the Left’s narrative.
It’s important to know that the targets of an information campaign are never the people or movements that are to be destroyed. Rather, the targets are the consumers of the campaign’s “information” and narrative-driving product. They are the intended audience; the people the campaign is addressed to sway or convince.
But which people? The information campaign is not intended to distance Rogan or the Canadian Truckers from their most enthusiastic supporters. From the point of view of the Cathedral, these people are enemies.
Rather, both of these offensives target moderates–the people who think of themselves as Democrats or liberals who might listen sometimes to Joe Rogan, or who might see the smiling, working class in the Trucker Convoy and might think, “well, they’ve got a point.” The attacks on both are intended to stop these types of people from giving either a chance. These folks aren’t very committed to either, and they’re ready to accept a reason to dismiss–and then despise–people like Rogan and the Truckers because the media frightens them into believing both are, absurdly, insuffienctly offended by Nazis.
There was another recent run at this narrative, this time an attack on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for “refusing to condemn” less than a dozen pathetic, self-described Nazis who appeared alongside the highway near Orlando. The people who can’t plausibly be called “Nazis” are, according to the left, winking at or sending dog whistles to Nazis.
Of course, there’s nobody sane who believes any of these accusations based on the merits or facts of the case; it is a rhetorical battle waged using trigger-words a Pavlovian shorthand. Many of us used to complain that the Left’s promiscuous use of “Nazi” and “fascist” and “racist” would cheapen the terms, important for future use against legitimate Nazis, fascists and racists.
Now, though, the complaint seems far overtaken by events; it’s much too late, and the damage to our civic life has been thoroughly done. We’re now in a world where it makes more sense to greet these cynical accusations with “LOLGF”—LOL, Get Fucked—as it conveys all the response required.
On the Turntable
One day soon, Clara Nunes will get her own, more extensive and detailed treatment here. But this is a groove that is infectious, and too good not to share. This is a late recording, from 1979, before her tragic and unexpected death. “Feira de Mangaio” appears on her LP Esperança, and is a collaboration with Sivuca, an elderly, white-bearded Brazilian guitar and accordion virtuoso. It’s hip as anything.