They Come for the Bro King

Why come for Joe Rogan? It's not COVID...

Just who is this guy anyway?

Joe Rogan has become one of the most famous people in the world. You could use a lot of words to describe the guy. He is a comic, an MMA commentator, a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, and an interviewer. He’s also driven and curious. He has been described as controversial, alt-right adjacent, and a conspiracy theorist. The list goes on… but one thing you can’t say about Joe Rogan is that he’s irrelevant.

His podcast reaches an average audience of over 11 million people. His stand up specials are among the most watched on Netflix. When he read an obscure book about the Comanche Indians by a relatively obscure author and simply mentioned it on his podcast, the largely ignored book shot up the rankings to best seller status over a couple of days. His interview with the author landed the book, Empire of the Summer Moon, firmly at #1 on the Amazon charts.

When Rogan mentions a restaurant, lines form around the block. When he recommends a piece of hunting equipment, it sells out. When he promotes a comic, they sell out shows. This guy is seriously influential… and to ignore him or to relegate him to “bro status” or some kind of flash in the pan is to ignore the mood of a pretty darn important part of American culture, that being young men.

Who is listening to Rogan and why?

Obviously, a lot of people listen to the Joe Rogan Experience. 11 million unique Spotify views for a 3 hour podcast is a very large following, and that doesn’t include the millions more who are watching clips of the show on YouTube. Having said that, Rogan’s average listener is male, white, and in his 20’s. Keep in mind, that’s just an average. I know women who love the show. I know many older folks who are fans. I’m in my 40’s and find it very entertaining.

Having said that, his audience is mostly young and mostly male… and they are mostly extremely loyal to him. But why?

Answer: American culture has systematically destroyed masculine role models and young men are searching for older men to look up to. That’s Joe Rogan.

Rogan is unapologetically masculine. He bow hunts elk. He lifts weights. He has tattoos and likes whiskey and cigars. He has fast cars and makes a lot of money. He has a very attractive wife and three daughters. He is into cage fighting and is confident. In a world filled with girly men… he’s a manly man and young men are attracted to that.

Moreover, he portrays himself as a moral man. He seems to love his family. He doesn’t cheat on his wife. He is a good father, protector, and provider. He is comfortable as the head of his household but not tyrannical. He is dangerous, but chooses to be peaceful. That is why young men look up to him. For many young men out there, Joe Rogan is the father figure their own fathers aren’t.

Young men fill his audience to be part of something unapologetically masculine and strong. That is why they are loyal. He is the funny, rich, badass with a sense of honor and a code of behavior to which they aspire. In a society that has all but outlawed those qualities, it’s no wonder that the guy who represents those things is in demand. It’s also no wonder he’s under attack.

They are attacking him for COVID misinformation? Is that a joke?

Why is Rogan so despised by the elite? People seem to think it’s about COVID misinformation. They say he’s promoting dangerous misinformation and that it can get people killed.

Just as a reminder, the same people calling for censorship of Rogan have been dead wrong about the following with regard to COVID. (Partial list)

• BLM Protests - After months of locking people down in their homes and destroying businesses and calling anyone who defied the lockdown orders “murderers”, they changed on a dime after the death of George Floyd deciding that gathering in large groups was just fine as long as it was for something the elites liked.

• Virus Origins - For over a year it was considered “fringe” or a “conspiracy theory” to suggest that the virus was anything other than naturally evolved from a “wet market” (whatever the hell that is) in China. As it turns out Anthony Fauci and many others knew very early on that the virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan China. This lab was partially funded with NIH money. This is now common knowledge. People censored for suggesting this and no apology or official correction has been offered.

• Cloth Masks - They don’t do anything. People were called “science deniers” for stating this obvious fact for almost two years.

• Vaccine effectiveness - People who get the vaccine can still get COVID and can still transfer COVID. This was unspeakable and was shouted down and censored for over a year. It was also obviously true. The vaccine is effective against hospitalization and death.

• Vaccine safety - There are side effects to the vaccine. Some people have been injured by the vaccine. Again… unspeakable.

• Lockdowns - The lockdowns likely didn’t have any positive effect on the virus beyond simply slowing the spread slightly to give hospitals a chance to ramp up. After the first two weeks the lockdowns were far more harmful than helpful as they lead to alcoholism, suicide, and isolation.

• Effects on children - As was pointed out by Bari Weiss, the COVID measures put on children have been a moral atrocity. We are already seeing developmental issues with children who have been subjected to this crap. To this day, idiots try to torture kids further in the name of their “safety”.

• Fauci - A liar. An egomaniac. A puppy torturer.

• Treatments - There has been too much nonsense to specify in this blurb… but the fact is that not a single piece of good information has been provided about COVID treatments from the mainstream. Ivermectin is horse medicine… monoclonal antibodies don’t work… an inability to distribute the new Pfizer treatment. It’s all be a complete crap show.

• Testing - Should we be testing more? Less? Are tests available? Well done all around.

• Outdoor dining - I have not seen information that a single person got COVID from dining outside… yet the powers that be arbitrarily shut places down while dining maskless in their favorite places.

I could go on for days, but the very idea that the people attacking Joe Rogan are doing so to protect us from “misinformation” about COVID is laughable. The mainstream has given nothing but misinformation on COVID. Every one of those bullet points is independently verifiable misinformation that was fed to us over the last two years by the exact people who want Rogan shut down. Yet they have never apologized. They have never admitted they made mistakes. They have never been introspective about their own misinformation.

I think it’s pretty obvious, the “misinformation” line is just a cover. They hate Rogan for other reasons. COVID misinformation is more their domain than his.

It’s because he represents something they hate

Okay… so if it’s not COVID, what is it? Why are they coming for Rogan?

The answer is that they are coming for him for the same reasons people like him. They are threatened by the idea of a morally correct, strong, masculine figure showing young men how to behave. They despise the working class vernacular he uses. They are appalled by the fact that he talks to 11 million people in a t-shirt. They find his muscles obscene and his tattoos gauche. They are afraid of him… and they should be.

Beyond that, they cannot swallow the fact that this “bro” has more influence than they do among any demographic, especially the key demographic of young men. Rogan didn’t go to their schools. He never wrote an op ed for the New York Times. For God sakes… He’s the Fear Factor guy!

Yet here he is, out there telling 11 million young men that the powers that be have spent decades castrating, that they should lose weight, that they should be strong, that they should go out and try to do hard stuff. He is telling them, through conversations with accomplished people of every walk of life, that they should not sit in a room with a scented candle and weep like a woman on her period, but go out into the world and act like a man.

Young men love that. Castrated elites fear it. So they try to make him go away.

Don’t give an inch

Rogan has created this interesting niche where he is half Johnny Carson and half William F. Buckley with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson. He is adding something to our culture through interesting conversations with interesting people. He is giving young men a positive image to look up to and aspire to. He isn’t hateful or angry and far more importantly, he isn’t afraid.

Perhaps that’s the most galling thing of all for those who want Rogan gone. Rogan isn’t afraid. He’s not afraid of COVID. He’s not afraid of Russia. He’s not afraid virtually anything the eunuchs on cable news tell us all to be afraid of. To them, that is simply intolerable, because if he makes young men unafraid… young men can’t be controlled.

And that is why it is so important that neither Rogan, nor Spotify, nor us give them an inch. If one thing has been proven over the last bunch of years about the cancel mob, it’s that they can’t be satiated. The only thing that stops them is strength. He can never apologize to them. He can never back down… because the moment he does, they will rip his guts out.

The only option is to continue on, and in one voice, tell them with confidence… I am not afraid of you.

Happy Tuesday all!

—V