It's Not What Happens with Joe Rogan, It's the Chilling Effect Around Him
he's just an example that's being made
Issues of free expression are in a weird place in our culture. Many liberals are pretty much entirely opposed to free speech as a concept and have developed a whole weird set of made up facts about it. (They say, for example, that the word “censorship” refers only to state action, and that free speech debates are only about the First Amendment, both of which are entirely wrong.) But there’s this vestigial refusal to simply own that position, mostly because they don't want to confirm what the right wing media says about them.
The Joe Rogan debate has raged for an eternity. I'm about ready for a new national crisis to finally push it out of the discourse, frankly. Here's a point people keep making, usually disingenuously: Rogan hasn't been censored, he's still wealthy and influential, and if Spotify deplatforms him he'll still have a huge audience. I've made some version of this point myself, but from something like the opposite angle - since they must know that they can't actually silence Rogan, the point is the more insidious aspect, the chilling effect this kind of controversy has on people who aren't inoculated by money and fame.
What message, do you think, is Spotify taking from all this? They owe Rogan enough money, and the case is high-profile enough, that they may well hang in there. But the important question isn't their conduct towards the biggest podcaster in the world. The important question is their conduct towards the average, not rich, not famous podcaster with anything other than 100% woke politics. And they cannot possibly be as hospitable to people with unorthodox politics after all this than they were before. You can look at the warning labels and disappearing episodes for proof of that. Spotify has been disciplined, even if nothing else happens to Rogan. And so have the rest of the major podcasting companies. They're watching too.
It's the same dynamic when censorship controversies arise on college campuses or on social networks. “Hey, what's the big deal,” they always say, constantly suggesting than any given controversy is overblown or that the spaces in which they occur don't matter. But it's never just the individual events. It's always the impact that restricting free expression has on everyone else, on the cases you don't hear, or on those now too scared to step out of line. College administrators and social media companies never come out of that controversies more committed to free expression. They come out with a greater commitment to checking their ass. The fear of another censorious liberal meltdown never goes away.
Which of course was always the real point of this. Rogan is merely a figurehead for the larger demand: liberals have decided that they and they alone will determine the free flow of ideas. That this is contrary to ideals that they themselves embraced a mere decade ago, and that some of us have not forgotten, is immaterial. They cling to this right to control discourse because discourse is all they have. Later this year the Democrats are going to be on the receiving end of a political bloodletting of incredible scale, as Republicans make hay out of broken promises, tone-deaf messaging, and the Democratic party's takeover by a deluded activist class. Liberals can't take real power, but they will flex their muscles in the only arenas they can, the arenas of discourse and ideas. And the more Republicans win, the more illiberal the left-of-center will become.
Of course the Republicans and their anti-CRT and book burning bills are a disgrace. Of course they're illiberal censors. Of course they're despicable hypocrites. I would never expect anything else. All the more reason why we on the left should be the ones to safeguard these values, to stand for personal freedoms against the moral rot of contemporary conservatism. They’re good values, and some of us have not forgotten them.
People may say, well, you yourself make a lot of money, you have a big platform, you say what you want and you're OK. That's true. But I got grandfathered in. I already had a large enough audience to provide at least some degree of protection. When I talk to young people who want to to be writers, if I can't talk them out of it, amidst a lot of other advice I have to tell them: if you're not explicitly a conservative, you have to be careful with what you say when you're starting out. You just do. I hate hate hate saying it, but it would be malpractice not to, an act of cruelty. It's just a reflection of where the culture is right now. I can't tell a 20 year old who dreams of a staff writing gig and a book deal that they should just throw bombs all the time. Not if I'm actually trying to say what's best for them. And it's them that I worry for, all the young writers and artists and thinkers who are holding their tongues, out of sight, every day. Joe Rogan will be fine. But not everybody else will be.
One point to add to your closing is that this is also another social signal to hold your tongue. I have stopped believing lockstep with my fellow NYT-NPR liberals for the past few years, but with few exceptions, any time something comes up around which I am not a 100% Orthodox Mainstream Good Guy Liberal, I bite my tongue. Honestly, I just don't want to lose my relationships.
I am sure it is the same way among non-Trump conservatives in their circles. I really don't think mainstream liberals understand that there are people around them with the best of intentions but who are terrified of being excommunicated from their very real life tribe.
Noah Smith recently re-posted a blog post to the effect of "the state isn't the only one who can limit your freedom." His forward noted that it was intended as a shot at the right, who engage in the delusion that the employee-employer relationship is somehow free and consensual. He stated that it now read like a critique of the left, with idea that's it not censorship if a corporate monopoly does it.