🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
Last week I seemed to break the internet.
I went back on the Joe Rogan podcast to talk about my new book “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization,” Which is now available at all good book stores and on Audible, since you ask.
I’ve been on Joe’s podcast a number of times before and have always enjoyed it.
Joe is a master of his art.
A lot of people think they can talk casually but interestingly for hours.
That’s mainly because Joe makes it look so easy.
But this time I went on with a question.
Having not spoken to Joe since the wars in Ukraine and Israel started, I had become increasingly irked that the guests he has had on have been almost entirely anti-Ukraine and anti-Israel.
Many of the latter in particular are not just vindictively and maliciously anti-Israel but have been spewing out claims that are demonstrably false.
Many are also people who are simply in no way expert at what they are talking about.
Attacks on Israel
One of these is a comedian who goes by the name of Dave Smith.
Claiming some Jewish ancestry, he has spent the 18 months since Oct. 7, 2023, being very unfunny indeed.
Specifically he has decided to spend his time going around the podcast world sounding off about Israel.
In the process he largely cites people like him — people who have many views but no obvious expertise.
People like Darryl Cooper who both says he isn’t a historian yet has been invited onto some of the world’s biggest podcasts as “a historian.”
One of Cooper’s many ahistorical claims is that Winston Churchill was the chief villain of World War II.
On these and many other occasions, Cooper has simply lied about history.
When invited to debate the world’s foremost living expert on Churchill last year, he declined, saying that he didn’t know enough to go against such a figure.
Yet still Cooper gets invited on show after show to throw out falsehoods which he can’t even back up.
And which his online interviewers seem happy not to challenge him on.
Another such figure from the world of comedy who is changing his shape to fit the time is Rogan guest Ian Carroll.
This is someone who when he last went on Joe Rogan’s podcast very carefully tried to minimize the evil of Adolf Hitler.
Outrageously and completely falsely, Carroll claimed that in the 1930s Hitler had kept his antisemitism down.
A provably false claim that Rogan did nothing to counter.
All these men have also been palling around online with Holocaust deniers and proud antisemites like Jake Shields.
My bout on Rogan
Two weeks ago, Rogan had his mate Dave Smith on yet again for a long podcast.
But for my return to the show, the deal was that I could come on only if Dave Smith was — once again — in the studio.
As if Joe didn’t want to be unaccompanied.
Or that Joe thought it was me — of all his guests — who must be challenged.
I like a debate as much as the next Scotsman.
But what resulted was more than a debate.
It seems to have led to some kind of podcast-world meltdown.
The first reason was that from the outset I challenged Joe on his choice of guests and why he had been giving a platform to only one side of a debate — and a very conspiratorial one at that.
He and Dave were immediately defensive.
But the real problem came when I raised the issue of expertise.
Because as I said then, and have said often, we have lived through a period when the “experts” have got an awful lot of things wrong.
From the COVID lab leak to the Hunter Biden laptop, we have lived through years after which distrust of experts has become inevitable.
Yet that doesn’t mean that expertise does not exist.
It does not mean that a comedian can simply hold himself out as a Middle East expert and should be listened to as if he has any body of work.
It does not mean that someone who says they are not a historian but who practices false-history should be cited as an historian.
This point seemed to rile both Dave and Joe.
It appears to have riled their audiences even more.
Because many people seem to think that what I mean is that they are not allowed to have an opinion.
That is wrong.
I think they are.
It’s just that there should be a price to pay for spreading bulls–t.
And one price is that you should be called out.
Have you been there?
If I had gone on Joe’s podcast and held myself out as an expert in MMA fighting I suspect he would have noticed.
If I had kept making mistake after mistake and shown ignorance piled upon ignorance, then I think he’d say — “Hey, you don’t seem to be very knowledgeable about this.”
And he’d be right.
So why is it hard to grasp that something similar applies in other areas?
In bigger rings and more important fights.
Having spent most of the last 18 months in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine, I don’t think I know everything.
But I think I know a darn sight more than someone like comic Dave, who admitted he’d never even been to the region he spends all his time talking about.
“Oh, so you have to go to a country to comment on it, do you,” said part of the internet.
Again the answer is obviously not.
But if it is your job, or you’re making it your job, then probably yes.
If I filed columns for this paper pretending to be an expert on countries I’d never been to, I would expect my readers to complain.
As they should.
If I filed columns about a war zone from the safety of West Palm Beach, I think it would be fraud.
Journalism has had its own meltdown in recent years.
But it doesn’t mean that we don’t have standards.
Much though that might amaze some people.
What the standards are in the new media — especially on podcasts — is still being worked out.
But there must be some.
Otherwise the new media will lead people into errors and evils far greater than the old media could ever dream of.