Joe Rogan: Just a Full-Blown Idiot, Not a Full-Blown Jew Hater... Yet...
Joe Rogan: Just a Full-Blown Idiot, Not a Full-Blown Jew Hater... Yet...
In most cases it takes more than burping out one bigoted trope to qualify. The ADL laid this out after decades of polling on antisemitism and realizing the complexity of the phenomenon.
Click here to check out the first 30 Installments - Volume I - in this series on Antisemitism and Culture. Among the top 5 most important pieces from this first wave:
What It Means When the Leader of the Republican Party Dines With THREE Antisemites
7 Reasons This Christian Hippie Became a Zealot Against Jew Hatred
This is the fifteenth installment in Volume II, intended as another 30 pieces exploring the many manifestations of Jew Hatred and the issues surrounding it in America and globally. See the previous articles in this new collection below.
Martin Luther King, Jr: An American Hero and Courageous Zionist Voice
Talking to These Students Gave Me Hope in this Dark, Dark World of War and Hate
Why I Don't Expect the Palestinians Will *Ever* Make Peace with Israel and Thus Gain Statehood
The Antisemitism of Ron Paul's Far Right Anarcho-Capitalist Ideological Cult
When Holocaust Trivialization Manifests in the Wrestling World
2 Numbers Which Reveal the Overwhelming Level of Human Devastation Wrought by the Holocaust
The Deep Depths of Ideological Depravity: Comparing the Holocaust to the Covid-19 Vaccine
Unfortunately, Christian Nationalism Is the Normal, Much More Longstanding Version of Christianity
7 Great Counterculture Authors Who Inspire My Writing and Zionist Activism
Why Twitter & Social Media Are Such a Poison Brew of Antisemitism, Hate, Death, and Lies
The Antisemitism of Noam Chomsky's Far Left Anarcho-Syndicalist Ideological Cult
Why I Make a Point to Avoid Analyzing or Pontificating on Internal Israeli Politics
These writings are part of my ongoing effort to overcome my PTSD by forcing myself to try to write and publish something every day commenting on and analyzing current cultural affairs and their impacts on politics, faith, and, well, everything. “Politics is downstream from culture,” the late Andrew Breitbart popularized among conservative bloggers while he was alive. I’d go a step further: Everything is downstream from culture. The cultures you embrace determine who you are and who you become. You become what you worship.
Antisemitism is an endlessly fascinating subject, and truly unique phenomenon to study.
So far in this series I’ve largely explained why I advocate against it as a Zionist activist informed by my personal morals and cultural values. As a Bible-based counterculturist in perpetual critique of the bigger, more “mainstream” and dominate cultures in America and around the world, I have a sense of solidarity with the Jewish people and a shared moral-ethical foundation.
My “Judeo-Christian Mysticism” approach is phrased as such to indicate the order in which those values flow. The Torah and its extrapolations across the rest of the Old Testament is the foundation; the Christian Gospels and their extrapolations across the New Testament then offer to extend these monotheistic and universalist moral values to every human on the planet; and the broad range of “mystical” rituals and practices can be utilized to imprint these concepts onto one’s soul and personality.
But I am not just an activist and writer against the varieties of antisemitism. For years I have also been using the political science training of my undergraduate years (2002-2006) to do professional, serious research into antisemitic movements and groups. In this capacity I’ve primarily focused on domestic Islamist groups and their far left allies, but also spent years digging into the anti-Israel and sometimes anti-Jewish content on Wikipedia with my mentor, the late Jack Saltzberg. More recently I’ve been researching far right antisemites - who lately have largely been Christian nationalist antisemites congregating around Kanye West - and criminal antisemites for my writings at Jewish News Syndicate. But studying the far right Jew Haters is nothing new to me. As I explained here, I’ve been dealing with the paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarian antisemites for over a decade now and just come to deeply despise their ideology:
I’ve spent so much time studying these groups not just because original factual research makes activist journalism so much more powerful and effective, but because I find the subject so endlessly fascinating and yes, unique. Antisemitism has its parallels with racism and the bigotries exerted toward other minority groups, but it is a unique phenomenon in itself and should not be made entirely analogous with them.
Why is antisemitism so unique? Because the people it targets and their role in broader human history is unique. It was through the Jewish people and their primary holy book the Torah which humanity came to be dominated by ethical monotheism - a creed which espouses one God and one moral standard for all people. This ethos was then spread across the planet via the two most popular religious traditions today - Christianity and Islam. Today there are 2.5 billion Christians and 1.9 billion Muslims out of the total population of 8 billion humans. That’s more than half - 55%. The next four religious traditions don’t even come close - Secularism with 15.58%, Hinduism with 15.16%, Buddhism with 5.06%, and Chinese traditional religions with 5%.
That incredible achievement in human history rests with the Jews, and it is because of their unique religious role that they have been so hated for so long, to the point that 1.09 billion humans - 26% of the adult population in the countries surveyed - hate them.
"I the LORD have called unto you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and submitted you as the people's covenant, as a light unto the nations" - Isaiah 42:6
So I have seen how complex antisemitism is as a phenomenon, how it moves and changes over time, how antisemites come up with new reasons to hate Jewish people that are really manifestations of the old reasons. See this previous installment in the series for some insights into how modern day antisemitism can be seen reflected in 3 biblical characters who were each enemies of the Jewish people, hating them for different reasons:
So I suppose one would expect me to be blasting Joe Rogan for his little controversy this past week defending antisemitic congresswoman Ilhan Omar and insisting that Jews like money as much as Italians like pizza.
As JNS noted this week in a brief: “Joe Rogan under fire for Jews ‘into money’ rant”
Joe Rogan has been slammed for saying on the latest episode of his popular podcast that Jewish people are “into money,” during a discussion on the U.S. House’s move last week to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“It’s crazy,” said Rogan. “Did you see him sitting next to Ilhan Omar, where she’s apologizing for talking about ‘it’s all about the Benjamins’? Which is just about money. She’s talking about money. That’s not an antisemitic comment, I don’t think that is. Benjamins are money. The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza. It’s f****** stupid,” he added.
He was referring to a 2019 tweet by Omar in which she wrote that pro-Israel votes in Congress were “all about the Benjamins.” Republicans cited the tweet, one in a series of antisemitic remarks made by Omar, as one of the reasons for booting her off the committee.
Omar has also accused Israel of having “hypnotized the world,” and Jews of buying control of Congress. She called Israel an “apartheid state” and likened it to the terrorist groups Taliban and Hamas.
Yet I’ll offer him a defense of sorts, as I did on Twitter when the story broke. Someone said something like “Who thinks Joe Rogan doesn’t know what he’s saying?” And then went on to suggest he was an antisemite. And I responded that I didn’t think that Rogan knew what he was saying.
Yes, Rogan employed an antisemite trope - the idea that Jews have some special ability or extra affinity toward money. Does that mean he’s antisemitic? In most cases it generally would be a strong sign that someone was personally antisemitic, that they held a personal dislike or hatred of the Jewish people, and likely embraced other standard-issue antisemitic ideas.
However, not in all cases. Tell me: if a 14-year-old boy made similar comments about Jews being as connected to and enthusiastic about money as Italians supposedly are about pizza, would the first thing you thought be that he was an antisemite? Or would you give him the benefit of the doubt, realize that a child does not have the knowledge to fully know what he’s saying, and that given the chance to learn more about antisemitism, in the future he probably won’t say it again?
To me Rogan largely falls into this category. I’ve never liked him and have found the rise of his podcast - he’s now the #1 in the world - extremely irritating. Why? Because he’s just a dumb guy. And thus he empowers a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals, conspiracy theorists, and con artist journalists with his popular show’s platform. He contributes to the stupefying of humanity, particularly his largely young, ignorant, and male audience:
According to our survey respondent demos, Joe’s listenership is 71% male and evenly split between high school and post-secondary graduates. Fifty seven percent of his audience reports earning over $50k per year, with 19% making over $100k. The average age of his listeners was 24.
I’ve also been annoyed in recent years to see the extent which Rogan has become an “influencer” in conservative media. Even though he is not at all a conservative himself - he’s generally expressed left-wing views - Republicans and conservatives embraced him because Rogan did not want to go along with the politically correct, who have these days been rechristened for the next generation as “woke.” And of course during Covid, Rogan did as right-wing media did, in platforming a bunch of evil vaccine-denying motherfuckers, further enhancing his “conservative” creds and listenership:
As I’ve discussed previously, I deeply hate what right-wing media did during Covid, as I explained here how it influenced me to abandon the industry and the ideology to refocus on Zionism instead:
But why did Rogan platform Covid-denialists? And why did he, himself, declare that young people don’t need to get vaccinated? For the same reason why he fell into an antisemitic trope - because he’s a fuckin’ dumbass without the brains or education to do better.
He’s one of those man-boys who never grew up, never matured, and still is largely the same guy he was in junior high and high school. Hence why 24 is the average age of his listenership. They too have not yet matured so they relate to him and mindlessly take in the pseudo-intellectuals he puts on. I remember how I was at that age and just about all the males I knew - while some had matured a little bit, by and large we were still teenagers with just more money, more freedom, more sexual experience, and - for some of us who had graduated college - a bit more education which we didn’t yet know how to really apply.
How can we know for sure that Rogan is genuinely a moron? Well, apart from listening to him and looking at his guest list, just hear what he had to say in defense of Ilhan Omar’s claim that AIPAC used money to buy the votes of politicians:
She’s talking about money. That’s not an antisemitic comment, I don’t think that is. Benjamins are money. The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza. It’s f****** stupid
What’s fucking stupid is thinking that Omar was saying that “Jewish people are into money.” What she was saying was the classically antisemitic idea that Jews use money in order to manipulate politicians into taking their positions. That’s antisemitic and is one of the points which the IHRA definition of antisemitism - the leading definition embraced by nations and organizations across the globe - mentions (my emphasis added):
Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
The ADL in its polls of antisemitism in the US and globally asks similar questions on this theme (my emphasis added again):
Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/the countries they live in]*
Jews have too much power in international financial markets
Jews have too much control over global affairs
Jews think they are better than other people
Jews have too much control over the global media
Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars
Jews have too much power in the business world
Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind
People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave
Jews have too much control over the United States government
Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust
Now Ilhan Omar has no such stupidity excuse. She’s an elected official obligated to know better, has said way more antisemitic thing than just this one statement, and has made clear her sympathies with antisemitic Islamist groups, including speaking at their events. I wrote about this for The Washington Examiner in 2019 and then covered the protests against her Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) speech in Woodland Hills, California. For those of you unaware: CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood front group with a long history of antisemitic advocacy.
She is indeed a “full-blown” antisemite.
So how to get around this conundrum of sorting the idiots who sometimes stumble into antisemitic sentiment because they don’t know better from the serious antisemites?
The ADL, which has been polling on antisemitism for decades - since the 1960s at least - figured this out awhile ago and their explanation is reasonable:
As with previous public opinion research conducted by ADL in the United States, survey respondents who said at least 6 out of the 11 statements are "probably true" are considered to harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. The Index Score for each country represents the percentage of adults in that specific country who answered "probably true" to a majority of the anti-Semitic stereotypes tested.
Get how this works? For someone to genuinely be antisemitic they need to embrace numerous antisemitic ideas.
And I’d go a step further in the case of public figures: a key sign about whether someone is a full-blown antisemite or not is simply how frequently they choose to talk negatively about Israel and/or Jewish people. If it’s not a subject they talk about a lot, then chances are they don’t hold 6 or more of the statements. If they did, then they would care enough to talk about it way more.
Does that make sense? Anyone disagree with me and the ADL and regard just one antisemitic statement as all it takes to qualify as a full-blown antisemite? Please let me know in the comments, on Twitter, or via email and we’ll discuss.
Right on target. But the damage being done is the trickle-down to those 24-year-olds.
One antisemitic comment in and of itself isn't enough to make you a full-blown antisemite, but it's the kind of thing that should be nipped in the bud before it metastasizes into something much worse. (How one does that is an art more than a science. The temptation is the scream insults at the offender, but that's more likely to make them dig in further.)
I've long remembered talking about World War II (as men do) with a left-leaning friend of mine, who never before nor since showed any kind of animosity toward the Jewish people, but who made a comment to the effect that the German economy before Hitler took power really was dominated by Jews, wasn't it? These ideas are floating around out there, and they're contagious.