- The debate between Rogan, Murray and Smith highlighted tensions between traditional experts and the growing influence of podcasters, with Murray advocating for more qualified experts in public discourse.
- Murray warned about the potential danger of podcasters giving platforms to unqualified individuals making controversial historical claims.
- Murray also argued that Israel has been unfairly denied global sympathy following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks due to widespread misinformation and anti-Israel sentiment.
British author and journalist Douglas Murray joined podcasters and comedians Joe Rogan and Dave Smith on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast Thursday, where they debated the limitations of podcasts as a source of information and the war between Hamas and Israel.
Murray spent considerable time in the Middle East to research his latest book, “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization,” which was released Thursday.
One day after being posted, the episode had already been viewed over 1.9 million times on YouTube.
Rogan began the podcast by saying he brought Smith and Murray together with the goal of showing an intelligent conversation between two people who disagree on “gigantic world events.”
After Rogan explained this, Murray asked him if he believes he’d had “enough” guests on his show who are supportive of Ukraine and Israel, and proceeded to ask the larger question of why Rogan has favored inviting “people who have appointed themselves experts but are not experts” to talk about history or current public affairs.
General distrust in experts vs. a steady rise in podcasting
Murray mentioned Rogan’s recent conversation with Darryl Cooper, the host of the “The Martyr Made” podcast, which has included criticism of WWII era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, claiming his decisions during World War II prolonged the war unnecessarily.
“You’ve got a big platform, who have been throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind,” Murray said.
Murray told Rogan and Smith that these kinds of historical claims have been researched and debunked by historians. “He (Cooper) didn’t know what he was talking about,” and yet he was given a million-person audience, Murray said.
“He had a country view, and it was interesting and stimulating to hear, but if you only get the country view, which is: isn’t it fun if we all pretend that Churchill was the bad guy of the 20th century, at some point you’re going to lead people down a path where they think that’s the view. And that’s (expletive) of the most profound kind,” he said.
The deeper issue, to Murray, is that podcasters’ hazy qualifications give them room to not be held responsible for their claims they spread.
“The problem is that because you and your own platform has come about because you’re a very successful comedian and much more ... there are a lot of people who have come along, partly because they’ve come on this show ... and they’ve decided, ‘I can play this double game. On the one hand, I am going to push really edgy, and sometimes frankly horrific opinions.’ And if you say ‘that’s wrong,’ they say, ‘I’m a comedian,‘” Murray said.
Murray said that while the left has downplayed “evils that were done of their side” for decades, including during Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, Lenin and Stalin’s regimes, there are “subcultures including people who follow both of you” that are doing the same thing on the right.
He questioned “why someone like Jake Shields wants to play around with Holocaust denial. Why?”
Experts debunked during COVID-19 led to a distrust of previously trusted experts
Responding to Murray’s request for popular podcasters to invite more verified experts onto their shows, Smith said that public trust of these individuals has disintegrated.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave many people valid reasons to distrust government experts, as early claims about the origin of the virus and prevention methods were later debunked, he said.
That led people to ask, “‘Well, what else have they been lying to me about?’ And then they almost want to look into every single thing, and now they think the whole thing was lies,” Smith said.
He continued, “The people with real power should do a better job of not lying through their ... teeth about everything.”
“Well, maybe you have power,” Murray responded. “Maybe you have power — both of you. We live in an era where podcasters have a lot of power.“
“If you go on a podcast with Jake Shields, and Jake Shields goes on to another podcast and says he doesn’t think 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, what do you think is happening there? That’s an exercise of power,” Murray said.
Rogan intervened and asked, “So what’s the solution, to not talk about it?”
Murray responded, “No, it’s to have more experts around.”
He continued, “One major thing can break down in front of your eyes or many major things, and it does not mean that every single one of the sewer gates should be lifted. I’m saying this is the chatter that is part of our side at the moment.”
Murray and Smith debate whether hostility toward Israel is justified
The debate on Israel and Hamas began with Smith claiming the October 7 attacks were a result of Israel trying to “prevent a Palestinian state.”
Murray disagreed, saying the war “is a result of Hamas deciding to start another war with Israel and trying to annihilate their neighbor.”
“The reason Hamas was in power,” he explained, “is that — much, much against the interest of the Israelis — was that they were voted into power after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005.”
He continued, “They had elections, perhaps unwisely, and Hamas won and didn’t have another election again and ruled the Gaza for 18 years until they finally got the great fruit of their labors on the 7th of October of 2023 and went around massacring people in southern Israel wherever they could, including young people at a dance party, and then caused in turn the destruction of the place they were meant to be governing.”
Murray also said that Israel and Israeli victims have been unfairly deprived of empathy from a large majority of the rest of the world.
“Only in the case of the young Israelis dancing in the early hours of the morning on Oct. 7, 2023, do the victims become victimized again and not believed. The era we lived through in the late 2010s was the era of ‘believe all women.’ And all the Israeli women who were raped that morning, much of the international community does not want to listen to them at all and certainly doesn’t want to believe them,” Murray said.
The alleged reasons for refusing sympathy for Israel
The first reason Murray believes Israel is denied sympathy is that new generations have “been told there is something especially wicked about Israel, that there is something especially wicked about Israel’s existence and its actions and its people, and it means that when their people are burned alive in their homes, or raped at a music festival, or shot in the head, they are uniquely undeserving of sympathy.”
“The aims of Hamas, the stated aims, include the annihilation of the Jewish people, and on October 7th, they had their best go at doing that,” Murray said.
He continued, “The state of Israel has been uniquely libeled, has been uniquely lied about, its history has been uniquely lied about, its history has been uniquely put in an international spotlight and then misrepresented in a way that I cannot think of many other countries in the world that have been treated that way.”
Murray believes the deep reasons “include some of the most ancient bigotries of the human heart. And the shallow reasons are people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”