Is There a Way Back From Cancel Culture? | Joe Rogan & Sam Harris

Have you ever met Jamie Kilstein? So Jamie and I have a checkered history. I don't know if we, maybe you and I have spoken about this. I've never met Jamie, but Jamie, when Jamie was social justice warrior number one, he went hard. He went hard on me. Yeah. Yeah. Like he, he just, he just was dunking on me endlessly in ways that were totally unfair. I mean, he was just, you know, he was, he was working very hard to become an enemy. And, um, then he had his, his epiphany, you know, but then the social justice mob came for him over something. Over almost nothing. Right. Over him trying to get laid. I mean, like they were saying he was a creep or something like that. Hitting on girls. Yeah. Well, I miss the details there, but then he came, then so then he's since sent me very, um, uh, friendly and apologetic emails about just, you know, I'm sorry, what I did. And, and you know, he, so he wants, he wants to do a podcast. I haven't taken him up on it, but, um, you know, that, that maybe that could be an interesting conversation. He's sincerely apologetic. Yeah. He's a good guy. I mean, he, we, he and I had our own issue at one point in time, um, over a podcast that we did versus, uh, it was, you remember when the Daniel Tosh rape controversy, like, uh, do you, do you remember this? I know who taught us, but I miss that joke. I should say, rape joke. Um, some woman in a crowd, he was, he was on stage and he wasn't supposed to be there. It was at the laugh factory and Dom Ira put him on stage and he goes, look, I don't have any material. What do you guys want to talk about? And some guy yells out rape and uh, that's always helpful. And so, you know, it's like some drunk in a crowd, right? He goes, Jesus Christ. And so Daniel Tosh's take on it. He's out. Okay. What, what's funny about that humiliation, violence, you know, he's, he's like berating this guy in trying to do standup while he's doing this. And some woman yells out, actually, there's nothing funny about rape. And he goes, wouldn't it be funny if someone just raped her? And everybody starts laughing. I do remember. And so this woman wrote a giant blog about it and she wanted him to apologize about it. And Jamie went after Daniel Tosh as a fellow, yes, as a fellow comic saying that it's, you know, like, and I was like, well, she's a heckler. The woman, woman heckled like while he was trying to do, to stand up. And he's like, I'm not going to support rape culture. And he's like, how the fuck is that rape culture? Like he's, he's clearly making a joke about something she said that was very, very patronizing. Like obviously he doesn't think there's something funny about rape. This is, he's just trying to work through this ad lib set that he's doing with some guy who yelled out something that this whole crowd has to respond to. He can't just ignore the fact that it happened and go, how about fire trucks folks? Why are they always red? You know, he can't do that. He's got to, he's got to deal with what this guy said. And so that's what he tosses out there and everybody laughed by the way, but also the problem of his persona, just a villain. He takes it to the edge, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's, yeah. He's edgy comedian. He's funny. And you know, and Jamie and I had this little tit for tat about it, but he, he's very honest about his mistakes. Like when you talk to him and he's, he's got great insight because he was that guy, you know, he was that guy that was going back and forth with people online all day and checking his mentions. Like couldn't walk down the street more than five steps before he'd pull out his phone and check his mentions to see how people responding to his latest dunking or take down or, you know, it's just, it's a toxic thing that people are doing. It's this, this, you know, looking for people that are, that are bad and looking for things that are wrong, looking for wrong speak. It's very toxic. It's toxic for the people that are doing it. It's toxic for the people that are receiving it. It's just, it's not a way that human beings would ever communicate in one on one. I mean, I tried to communicate with people the same way online as I would if they were right in front of me. I don't know, I just exceed, but I try. That's my goal. My goal is to try to talk to someone as if they were right in front of me. That's clearly not how everybody's handled. No, no. I think road rage is the, is the best analogy for what's happening on social media. Yeah. I've adopted that. I've adopted that way of looking at it too. And, but the only difference is road rage, you know, there's like a physiological reason for road rage. Because you're, you're, you're in a dangerous situation that you're subliminally taking stock. You're going fast. You're in a metal machine with a bunch of assholes that are probably looking at their phone and everybody's going fast and you could die at any moment. If someone goes wrong, if you're on a highway, like the 405, when you have five lanes going 70 miles an hour, it is a fucking miracle that no one dies. And every day we do it every day. Everything's fine. Yeah. Well, so, oh, let's go back to this idea of what the, the actual normative response would be when somebody puts their foot in their mouth or something from their past gets disclosed. I mean, the, the, the stupid and indefensible thing they did as a teenager, right? Yeah. You know, like this, you know, you got these guys who are now having their careers destroyed for having dressed up, you know, in the blackface or in a hood for Halloween or whatever it was. I mean, I, you know, I don't, I think, I think this, that one politician has said he's not even in the, in the photo, but the photo was on his yearbook page or like, whatever you put on your yearbook page in high school, right? Um, you find out this thing that you know, adult is going to defend, right? But what is the path back? What like, what, like, what is the reboot that should be acceptable? Because we don't even know, it seems we don't even know what could conceivably work to rehabilitate somebody's career. And yet on this other side, we've got people who, again, are being led out of prison for murders. They admit they committed, right? Or rapes they admit, admit they committed and they're rehabilitated. And we had, and these are, these are stories we're supposed to feel good about. Right. So we have to figure out how to square this, um, on the left. And you know, I don't know, the way I've been thinking about it is that it has to be intelligible, how you are different from the person who committed that thing. Right. So like if you, if you did something that was, let's say, legit racist when you were 20 and it was like Mark, Mark Wahlberg is an example of this. I mean, he was running around just beating people senseless, right? And for avowed racist motives, I believe, when he was a teenager. Well, he would have lost his eye. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, but, and I think that was a, I think I was a Vietnamese guy he attacked or, uh, but I mean, he was just doing truly indefensible things. Now, I don't know what sort of, you know, PR moment he has had since or how he's apologized for it or, but I mean, that was a, that was a very different time. I think if it was, if all that stuff was being discovered about him now, there may be no way back to make, to make him lose. The problem is with this day and age, it could be reignited. Right. Like even though he's apologized for it and even though that it's been addressed, it absolutely could get reignited. I mean, just me talking about it on your podcast is fucking him over. Right. It could. Yeah. I mean, and also people have to recognize that there's some things, but you can't retroactively instill today's ideas of what constitutes racism on 1985. So if you were in high school in 1985 and you dressed up as Mr. T, you know, I don't know if that was racist back then. I never did it, but I don't know if that's racist. Like if you had a bunch of gold chains and you made your hair black and you made your face black and gave yourself a mohawk and you said, I'm Mr. T for Halloween. Right. And the pictures emerged today. What you did when you went door to door, when you were 15 or 12 or whatever you were knocking on people's doors and everybody was laughing, Oh, you're Mr. T. Nobody thought it was racist. Yeah. But today, let's take the hard case. Let's say you were racist, right? I mean, so I had this guy, Christian Piccolini on my podcast, once who's an ex neo-Nazi, he just legit racist, right? He's got all the tattoos to prove it. And now there are major problems with Christian Piccolini as, as, as I think, you know, uh, that I discovered after that podcast. But, um, so this is not an endorsement of him. Sorry, Christian. But the, the, the, there's a path back. I mean, so like he's celebrated on the left. Like he's a former neo-Nazi and he's, you know, I, I, I discovered him on Sarah, Silverman's, uh, show on wherever that is, Hulu. Um, and uh, you know, he's a darling of the left, right? And darling of MSNBC for this redemption story. So, but what is the, you take someone like any of these politicians who have something in their backstory that is ugly. Um, my feeling is all there has to be is a transparent and intelligible account of how you are now different of how you can actually honestly look back on this thing and say, yeah, I am as embarrassed by that as you think I should be. Right? That's not like that is nothing that that does not represent how I view the world at all now. Uh, but there's just, there's a spirit of the time on social media, again, especially on the left and to our total dysfunction politically is to not just accept any of that. I mean, there's, there is no apology good enough. Right. And, um, or that, or there's, you know, the most cynical possible interpretation of your, of your apology. So you're just trying to, your, the only reason why you're apologizing is because you want to save your job. Yes. Um, and that, you know, we have to figure out how to, I mean, we just need some, you know, recovery disc that we can reboot on the left and discovery disc that we can reboot from here because it's just not, this is going someplace terrible and again, to look at it through the lens narrowly, politically over the next two years, it's to the massive disadvantage of the left. It certainly is, but I don't see any way to fix that. Like with the current climate and this current attitude where people are engaging in this recreational outrage, it fits the climate. I don't know what would have to happen for people to come to some sort of a realization. I mean, it would have to happen to them like it did to Jamie. Like what happened with Jamie Kilstein is that they turned on him and he's like, oh my God, this is awful. Like I'm, what's this? And then he realized, you know, I mean, I don't know what other thing could happen. Well, I mean, what weird, the game we're playing is part of it. I mean, you and I are in a position to take risks that, you know, even the people at the top of journalism can't. I mean, like, like Megan Kelly says one wrong thing and you know, it doesn't matter that she's got a $20 million contract. She's fired. And when you look at the thing that she said, I mean, it was just a question. Yeah. I mean, she just didn't seem to understand how charged the phrase blackface was. Right. She's just ignorant of that piece of history or something. But like, you know, so she just, she just, she put her foot in her mouth. She gave an apology that was just like, you know, full blown hostage video apology. Just like, you know, just like, I am so fucking sorry. You don't even know. Like here, take a sample of my blood and you'll just see my, you know, test my cortisol and not good enough. Not good enough. And they let her say the apology too, which is even more crazy. They let her come back, say the apology and they go, good. Thanks for doing that. Get the fuck out of here. So she, no one's job in that space is secure enough where they can take real risks. But you know, you and I, you know, you and I could do an interview with Louis C.K., right? Like, and just process his coming back into standup. Yeah. And do it in a way where if people didn't like it, you just say, okay, fuck off, right? This is the conversation we had. And I think modeling that more and more, I mean, I think, I think we have to take those risks and people like us have to take those risks and hope to break this spell by having those conversations in public.