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Cancel Culture Vultures Circle Joe Rogan with Anticipation, At Speculation of Spotify Censorship

September 11, 2020 — Leave a comment

Joe Rogan’s $100 million dollar switch from YouTube to Spotify, has been met with controversy over concerns Spotify have censored the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast.

According to PodNews there are ‘46 episodes missing’.

Variety Magazine stated that most are ‘[“]far-right[”] commentators’ such as Stefan Molyneux. Others include personalities such as Tommy Chong (Cheech & Chong fame), Alex Jones (Info Wars) and Mikhailia Peterson (daughter of Jordan Peterson) – among others.

Variety’s overall report was smug. Todd Spangler pointed out that YouTube and Twitter had ‘kicked Stefan Molyneux for alleged hate-speech violations.’ Then passive aggressively accused Rogan, and Spotify of being a ‘willing platform for the far-right fringe.’

(It’s no surprise ‘Spotify and Rogan didn’t respond to requests from Variety to comment.’)’

Variety did, however, clarify that ‘Spotify will become the exclusive distributor of “JRE,” Rogan will maintain full creative control over the show under the agreement. [Additionally,] some content won’t be available until later in the year’

Mikhailia Peterson voiced her own concerns about potential censorship, in a Twitter thread that challenged Spotify to explain why it hadn’t released the full catalogue, when that was what had been advertised.

Cancel Culture, and its new Spanish Inquisitors running off (toxic) Intersectionality rubrics, give good reason for the concern.

Does Spotify not releasing the full catalogue, imply future censorship?

The Rogan Experience isn’t for everyone, but as Bari Weiss wrote in May (before her protest resignation from the NYT), Rogan is filling a gap left by the skittish mainstream media.

A media too scared to tell the truth, unless it supports an organize myth, is safe-space friendly, and blue check verified.

A media which demonizes masculinity, equates melanin (particularly the lighter shades) with sin, hates Israel, kowtows to cancel culture – often surrenders truth to falsehood; and chains life to false doctrines, that promote double standards, division, blame, bitterness and unforgiveness.

False doctrines which sit at the core of new cultural laws, pushed onto Western society by the radical left.

New cultural laws that are enforced by the silencing of any opposing viewpoints that may function as a correction in the struggle to replace lies with the truth, and half-truths with the facts.

As Bari Weiss noted, Rogan likes Bernie Sanders, sees the legalization of Marijuana, evolutionary theory, and faith as open questions. Yet he’s refused to interview Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren.

Rogan isn’t afraid to question the narrative – or more to the point – he isn’t afraid to ask questions of those who are questioning the narrative.

To quote Weiss:

‘while GQ puts Pharrell gowned in a yellow sleeping bag on the cover of its “new masculinity” issue, Joe Rogan swings kettlebells and bow-hunts elk…The prestige press has become too delicate, worried about backlash on Twitter and thus is shying away from an ever-increasing number of perceived third rails.’

Think of Tara Reade. Anyone with eyes could see that her accusation against Joe Biden was treated differently by the press than the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh…You can rely on Rogan to talk about that double standard. Indeed, you can rely on Rogan to talk about just about anything at all.’

With the eventual ‘exclusive’ move from YouTube to Spotify, and the censorship concerns, Rogan has denied that he’s sold out, or that the deal would limit his ability to maintain the show’s straight-talking, raw, free exchange of ideas.

While mocking Alex Jones, and expressing contempt for Stefan Molyneux, Forbes, senior contributor, Dani Di Placido criticized Rogan for associating with ‘pseudoscience and bigotry.’ Claiming that Rogan was ‘amplifying destructive voices’, then lecturing him on how allowing those voices a platform ‘isn’t the same as platforming quirky outsiders.’

Placido, joined some leftists in all but applauding the idea of censoring Rogan, saying that it ‘made sense’, and that this new deal might be Rogan ‘moving away from the baggage of his past.’

Answering the controversy over censorship, Rogan said that, “[Spotify] want me to just continue doing it the way I’m doing it right now,” It’s just a licensing deal, so Spotify won’t have any creative control over the show. It will be the exact same show.” (Forbes)

While cancel culture’s vultures circle the deal, posturing elation at the thought of converting Rogan through fear of cancelation, and/or muzzling yet another alternative media personality, the biggest concern for Rogan could be distribution.

BNN Bloomberg said that being exclusive to Spotify, ‘Rogan was taking a risk. There’s a chance he will lose the majority of his audience, since Apple accounts for more than 60 per cent of listeners for most podcasts.’

From Peterson’s caution about censorship to Placido’s jubilation at the prospect, there’s general agreement across the board.

It remains to be seen whether the formidable, freedom-loving Rogan can stop cancel culture from getting its cold, boney death grip around the Joe Rogan Experience, and ripping its heart out on altars built by our would-be leftist overlords, in worship to their prevailing anti-liberty ideological hegemony.

I’m not a huge fan, but I’m optimistic. The reason why is worked out in what is, in my opinion, one of Rogan’s best anti-cancel culture discussions on the net: #1006: Jordan Peterson & Brett Weinstein.

The other side of this is that Rogan didn’t just arrive on Spotify. His unique podcast, and hard work got him there.

Cancel culture vultures won’t be feeding on their prey anytime soon.

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th September, 2020.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

In Political Theology, Politics Bari Weiss, Cancel Culture, Joe Rogan, Podcasting, Podcasts, Spotify

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: LEOs Respectfully try to School Indoctrinated Leftist White Liberal

June 26, 2020 — Leave a comment

Watch as both white and black police officers respectfully try to school (or perhaps its better to say unschool?) this leftist, white woman, after she accuses the white police officer of being a racist (and therefore evil) because of his shade of melanin.

One of the officers near the end nails it saying, “let me tell you something, America has a sin problem. The world has a sin problem. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” America and the world has a sin problem. That’s where racism, injustice, and hate, and anger, and violence, are coming from. It’s not about racism. Read the Bible!”

Associating evil with skin colour in the name of anti-racism, is racism. Worse, it’s demonising a complete ethnic group in much the same way the Nazis demonised the Jews, and in the same way Bolsheviks demonised the “kulaks”. The end result of this kind of thinking is bloodshed.

You can help end this before it gets to that point, by speaking truth into the falsehoods, and rejecting that trajectory as graciously as possible.

Big kudos to these lads from law enforcement.

“Blessed are the peacemakers…”

Video: Breitbart

In Political Theology, Politics Cancel Culture, Indoctrination, Law Enforcement, Leftism, Peacemakers

Leftist Hypocrisy & Cancel Culture’s “life unworthy of life” prescription for Cultural Suicide

June 26, 2020 — Leave a comment

Eric Abetz (LNP) is proving to be no mediocre politician. His speech from July last year remains relevant, making his message one of the best ever entered into the Australian senate’s Hansard.[i]

This year the Senator for Tasmania provided us with a sequel. Speaking about ‘Political Discourse’ Abetz went head to head with cancel culture and the Left’s double standards.

The speech highlighted Queensland University Law professor, James Allen’s piece for The Australian on the June, 16^th.

He gave a long list of examples where people were being bullied into submission, and their livelihoods cancelled because of a small, boisterous percentage of people online, and within corporations, looking for oppression, prejudice, malice and racism in everything.

Under Cancel Culture, it no longer matters whether or not a perceived offense was intentional or unintentional (or accidental). These are often labeled micro-aggressions. All that matters is the perceived outcome.

This is what Jonathon Haidt called ‘outcome over intent’ [ii]. Haidt explains that micro-aggression theory is the life blood of cancel culture. If the outcome is perceived to be offensive, intention doesn’t matter.

Appearance and accusation, follows emotional reasoning. Feelings are then placed as lord and master over evidence based reasoning. If something feels offensive, than that something, or someone, is no longer deemed worthy of life or livelihood.

Not only is this culture unstable, it’s unsustainable, and as Abetz argues, ultimately destructive.

Make no mistake about it. Cancel culture is a “life unworthy of life” prescription that echoes the same kind of ideology which allowed Stalin’s Gulags, and purges, along with Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbruck and Buchenwald (among others).

This should send a chill up and down the proverbial spine of Western society. The same callous boney fingers which gripped Europe in the 20^th Century, is wrapping its hands round the necks of Western society.

It gives us a strong reason to step back, assess and rethink any agreement with, or participation in such a culture and its ideology.

For these reasons alone, I don’t think it a stretch to say here that, yet again, Abetz is spot on in both his warning, and rebuttal of Cancel Culture’s, “life unworthy of life” prescription for cultural suicide.

Full Transcript of Eric’s five minute speech:

“If an individual were to engage in self-loathing, relentlessly finding the fault with self, and ridiculing and denigrating all their past endeavors, we would rightly conclude the individual had issues. Counseling might be in order.

So to with a society; if a society is willing to engage and embrace those who relentlessly spread negativity, and wallow in fault-finding it will have an extremely bleak future. A mature reflection of self or of society recognizes the good, with the not so good.

We should learn from past mistakes, not to tear down and destroy, but to build an even better future. This is how our society has progressed, and why we are where we are today as a nation – the envy of the world.

Let’s be clear. One of the great freedoms we have in Australia is the liberty to leave if we don’t like it. I don’t see any of the professionally and perpetually outraged leaving Australia for North Korea, Cuba or China.

For its alleged and real faults, Australia is the favored destination of the peoples of the world seeking freedom and opportunity.

As professor [James] Allen so eloquently wrote, “you know you’re living in George Orwell’s world, when speech is considered violence, and violence is considered speech.”

And that is exactly what we are witnessing today. Ugly double standards courtesy of the Anarchist Left; when conservatives speak they are accused of violence if they take a view contrary to the “woke” Left, but if the same language is used by the Left, it as indication of empathy, and “wokeness” – always excused.

Bettina Arndt’s award earlier this year was vehemently attacked by Labor senate leadership team. That same team of two women remain as silent as a rock, over the more recent award to that purveyor of ugly, sexist violence to women and anti-Semitic tweets, Mike Carlton.

Reason? He’s from the tribe. He’s from the Left. Similarly the treatment of Cardinal George Pell, and Paul Bonjornio, both in a seminary with that horrific pedophile, Ridgedale.

Pell should have been fully alert and known all that went on. Bonjornio on the other hand, fully excused, “of course, he couldn’t have known.”

The difference of treatment? Pell is of a conservative disposition; Bonjornio from the Left. We see the “woke” Left attacking statues of former Coalition leaders and Captain Cook, possibly the world’s greatest ever navigator; for allegedly being racist.

But a Labor leader [Arthur Calwell] who supported the ‘White Australia Policy’, and famously (or infamously) said, “two wongs, don’t make a white” sits in the pantheon of Labor leaders. As does another Labor leader [Gough Whitlam] who referred to Vietnamese refugees “[expletive deleted], Vietnamese Balts.”

No their names are not to be vilified or desecrated. Instead they are hallowed. Why? Because they are from the Left, whereas the Coalition leader [Tony Abbott] who voluntarily dedicated a week per year assisting Indigenous communities without media fan fare, needs to be vilified for his alleged racism.

Go figure!

Refusal to acknowledge any good in others, and any possible failings in the tribe has become the mantra and justification to remove people from employment, films and books from the public; for sports people to kneel for a cause and close businesses.

So much for the celebration of diversity – everything is judged in terms of claimable victimhood, division and partisanship.

The tribe excuses each other and accuses everyone else – the recipe for disharmony, anarchy and societal collapse. Facts, evidence, objective truths are junked in favor of bullying, sloganeering, and emoting.

The time has come to stand firm, push back and advocate the cause of our wonderful heritage bequeathed to us by our forebears; an heritage of civility, a system of democratic government, the rule of law, personal freedoms, and the standard of living, all of which makes Australians the envy of the world.

I for one will continue to be thankful and defend and promote that heritage, because for all its faults I know no better country.

I know no better people.”

References:

[i] Abetz, E. Freedom of Speech, 2^nd July 2019.

[ii] Haidt, J. & Lukianoff. G. 2018. The Coddling of the American Mind Penguin Books Ltd.

[iii] Allen, J. Cowardly Elites appease bullies of Cancel Culture The Australian, 16^th June, 2020

First published on Caldron Pool, 25th June 2020.

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

In Australia, Politics Cancel Culture, Eric Abetz, James Allen, Jonathon Haidt, Life unworthy of life

Answering Cancel Culture With Unconquerable Joy

April 20, 2020 — Leave a comment

In a brief five minute video posted to Desiring God’s YouTube channel, John Piper rips apart the cultural control of ‘cancel culture’. The small segment was taken from a talk given in January called ‘Serious Joy, Cultural Conflict, & Christian Humility: Thoughts on Christian Education.’

Piper’s argument is one of the best I’ve heard so far from Christian leaders – Voddie Baucham’s lengthy, but poignant takedown of ‘Cultural Marxism’ being the only exception (as has been discussed by Caldron Pool’s Editor Ben Davis, here).

Like Baucham, Piper turns the light on where few seem willing to do so. Leaning on work from Jonathon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in their outstanding book, ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ (2018), Piper briefly addresses the non-sequitur, and vacuous subjective nature of the movement. In sum, Haidt and Lukianoff identify ‘cancel culture’ as part of a broader new paradigm which measures good and evil by the yardstick of ‘safe versus dangerous, instead of true versus false.’

Under the authoritarian, whimsical hegemony of ‘cancel culture’, ‘if you take your stand and speak your truth, you may be subject to call-out, outrage, or being cancelled, because you have not sufficiently coddled’ the feelings of others, or sufficiently met any number of asinine politically correct requirements. As Haidt and Lukianoff quip, the response then is one where ‘you must call out [the offence giver]! Assemble a coalition of the righteous, and shame the evil ones until they change their ways.”

As part of their introduction, Haidt writes that ‘cancel culture’ ‘unwittingly employs the very cognitive distortions that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy tries to correct. For example: catastrophizing (jumping the worst possible conclusions), and negative filtering (negative self-talk; such as saying to yourself, “I’ll never amount to anything”). Haidt then notes, ‘stated simply: Many university students are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases their likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt.’

Equating ‘cancel culture’ with the persecution of Christians in Acts 5:27-41, Piper supports this appraisal. Just as the ‘Sanhedrin tried to silence the voice of Christian leaders’, so sways the motion and violent conclusions of ‘cancel culture.’ Being easily offended, or a person having their feelings hurt, isn’t enough just-cause to rage at people, call people out, or “cancel” them.

According to Piper, the response to ‘cancel culture’ is ‘serious joy.’ The Apostle Peter, beaten by enraged, and blood-thirsty authorities, ‘rejoiced’ that he and others ‘were counted worthy to suffer dishonour’ for speaking in Jesus Christ’s name; that name having been banned – cancelled – deemed offensive by the authorities.

Piper’s conclusion:

“If you take a stand the culture hates, and speak a word the culture condemns, and they shame you, and persecute you, and plunder you, but your serious joy remains, they’ve lost their power to control where you stand and what you say.

If your joy comes from the world — its benefits, its comforts, its kudos — you’re like a leaf in the wind. Yours is not a serious joy. It’s a secondhand joy. You are not free. Serious joy sets people free. And makes them the most secure and subversive people when it comes to cultural control.

This has always been true, for two thousand years. Serious joy in Christ through pain has always been radically liberating from cultural control. In getting their joy from heaven, Christians become free on earth.”

Piper is right. ‘Cancel culture’ cannot beat ‘serious joy.’ There’s no excuse for our response to be joyless. Humility wins. We speak truth in love, bearing the name of Jesus Christ. Not falling into step with the spirit of the age, but keeping in step with the Holy Spirit, knowing that though, would-be and actual authoritarians may try to cancel us, our work – or even our entire livelihoods – the unconquerable joy gifted to us in Jesus Christ, and the gracious provision God brings with, through, and because of it, cannot, and will not be cancelled.

Extending out from Piper’s final word is this: ‘stand firm in serious joy’ – for the fact that man ‘is not God. We are sinners. We are finite’ (Piper); and though men and women may arrogantly try to control it, for the very fact that ‘man has no control over God’s grace.’ (Karl Barth, CD. 3:4:105).