Joe Rogan: Please don't feed the anti-establishment propagandists
On a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” journalist and author Douglas Murray joined to discuss his new book, On Democracies and Death Cults — a pro-Israel take on the Israel-Hamas-Palestine conflict. But in a now-predictable twist, comedian Dave Smith — who’s shifted more toward anti-Israel talking points than actual comedy — also appeared on the panel.
Murray opened by calling out the slew of anti-Israel voices Rogan has platformed lately (Darryl Cooper, Ian Carroll, Dave Smith, to name a few) and made it clear he wasn’t going to back down quietly. The conversation quickly devolved into a two-on-one dogpile of sorts against Murray, sparking heated debate across the internet.
While there’s plenty to unpack from this three-hour conversation — both in terms of alternative media dynamics and the current geopolitical landscape of the Middle East (the heart of Murray’s book) — I want to zero in on one critical issue: the double game played by figures like Dave, Darryl, Ian, and others.
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Here’s how the game works:
They spend countless hours pushing debunked, overly simplistic, historically revisionist narratives that cast Israel as the root of all Western ills (just like the Woke Left, paradoxically). But when challenged on those claims, they retreat behind a convenient excuse —“Hey, we’re not experts, just comedians, podcasters, or guys who read stuff and talk a lot.”
It’s a classic case of the “clown nose on/clown nose off” routine — serious when it suits them, unserious when they’re held accountable.
This dynamic allows these men — under the banner of “challenging establishment narratives” (which, to be fair, are often flawed — COVID being a prime example of so-called expert deception) — to push their own elaborate counter-narratives. But rather than raising the standard for truth itself and accountability therein, they contribute to the same chaos — a dialectic of sorts — they claim to oppose, creating a vacuum where facts and robust credibility should be.
The message shifts from “don’t blindly trust the experts” to “trust those who admit they’re not.” In doing so, they’ve arguably become the very monster they claim to be fighting, both making supposed credentials (or lack thereof) the defining factor in the truthfulness of one’s claims, rather than objectivity itself.
Douglas Murray rightly points out that over the past decade, we’ve witnessed a wave of extreme leftist overreach — marked by lies, propaganda, and deliberate misinformation. And now, as he puts it, “completely predictably,” the pendulum is swinging too far the other way. With the Right regaining some of its momentum, we’re seeing a surge of overcorrection — unfounded conspiracy theories and reckless narratives gaining traction, often elevated (purposely or not) by figures like Dave Smith and Joe Rogan.
Let me give you a quick example
Take Darryl Cooper — he gained some media buzz after being featured on Tucker Carlson’s show, where Carlson quite literally introduced him as one of the ”most important historians of our time.” Cooper, both on that episode and on X, went so far as to call Winston Churchill the “chief villain of World War II,”downplaying, if not excusing, the atrocities of The Third Reich. Dave and Joe dismiss Darryl’s take as mere “hyperbole” or say he was just “joking around” with his friend Jocko Willink (judge for yourself — clown nose on/off) — but let’s look at what Darryl actually said, in his own words, from a tweet he had pinned to the top of his profile.
“Time for a Churchill thread? Time for a Churchill thread. Let's do this. Why I think Churchill was a chief villain of World War.”
I know that sounds like hyperbole. Churchill didn’t order the most deaths, oversee the most atrocities, or commit the worst crimes. But most of those crimes could not have been committed if the war had not happened, and Churchill was the leader most intent on making it happen.” — @martyrmade 4/09/2024
On one hand, in his Tucker appearance, Cooper states his claims are “hyperbolic trolling” (clown nose on); on the other, in complete self-contradiction, he turns around and insists they’re serious (clown nose off). This tactic — whether conscious or not — lets figures like Darryl say whatever outrageous things they want while dodging any thorough accountability. Ironically, that’s the very essence of propaganda — something that thrives just as easily in alternative media circles as it does in the mainstream.
Or consider this post from Cooper in November 2019, where he wrote: “Democracy is the disease. Tyranny is the cure.”
Or this one, where he recently refers to the widely discredited “historian” David Irving’s book Hitler’s War as a “great book.”
Or here, where Cooper explicitly wishes that the Nazis had won the war.
Despite what Rogan and Dave insist — framing it as harmless curiosity (“just asking questions”) or simply questioning “mainstream” narratives — this doesn’t come across as innocent at all. It sounds more like a man with a clear agenda, actively trying to convert others to his particular worldview.
The path forward
I think it’s fair to say Douglas Murray is right — this trend isn’t just gaining traction, it’s quickly becoming the new mainstream. And far from being a corrective to the leftist lies we've been fed through media, education, and government, it’s proving to be just as destructive. If anything, it’s deeply counterproductive. Because the truth is, despite their claims of being outsiders, alternative unserious media, or underdogs, figures like Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Dave Smith, and Darryl Cooper hold enormous influence in the social, historical, and political arenas — perhaps more than legacy media itself. For all intents and purposes, they are the new mainstream media — trusted by millions and fully capable of shaping public opinion, even swinging elections. And as Murray rightly points out, it’s time they started taking that responsibility a lot more seriously.
A wise man once said, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
After all, expertise isn’t the problem — competence is essential. We seem to understand this in nearly every area of life except, lately, in politics. No one wants an amateur flying their plane, and rightly so.
Yes, we’ve been lied to — countless times — by leaders, the media, academia, government, and institutions that told us to trust them without question. But let’s not make the same fatal mistake in reverse. Overcorrecting by embracing pseudo-intellectual blowhards on the other end of the spectrum, just because they aren’t the establishment, only trades one form of propaganda for another.
We need a higher standard — one rooted not in political reactionism, but in well-founded, time-tested objective truth.
That isn’t an easy path, unfortunately, but it must be our path.
Mikale Olson is a contributor at The Federalist and a writer at Not the Bee, specializing in commentary on Christian theology and conservative politics. As a podcaster, YouTuber, and seasoned commentator, Mikale engages audiences with insightful analysis on faith, culture, and the public square.
