Joe Rogan - Ben Shapiro Being Labelled Alt-Right is Disingenuous

You're an asshole though. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're a very nice guy. You're just conservative. That's the dirty little secret though Yeah, we're not supposed to we're not supposed to talk about that But this is one of the things that bothers me so much about you being so misrepresented when I read things about you There was a the article that we were just talking about the alt-right sage without the rage They called you and you're not even remotely alt-right. In fact, you were the leading target of anti-semitic abuse for all of 2016 weren't you? Yeah, according to the anti-defamation League, which is no l.i.m. I'm so yeah I mean, I'm not only am I not alt-right. I've spent the last four years Like legitimately battling the alt-right talking about how evil I think their ideology is how evil I think white supremacy is I mean, first of all like people with yarmulke is typically not the favorites of the alt-right and then beyond that I mean, I think their ideology is legitimately a devastatingly awful Twist on what Western civilization is supposed to be what was amazing is a review of my new book and my new book has several Sections and they're dedicated to how terrible the alt-right is and then the interview they did with me doesn't talk about alt-right stuff at all But they just assume I'm on the conservative right that must mean that I am alt-right. It's like no you stupid Labels they're disingenuous people are labeling people in a very simple manner to try to categorize them as the enemy and instead of just addressing these points like I love watching your Debates where you do Q&A's with college students and with people in the audience Because you can see you agree with you or disagree with you. You have well formulated ideas This isn't just some bullshit that you're spouting out. You've thought these things through I've been doing this for legitimately more than half my life I'm 35 and I started when I was 17 and I started writing a syndicated column at that point and when you're 17 You think a lot of dumb stuff and then you get older and you educate yourself and you spend a lot of time reading and a lot Of time studying. Hopefully you have some cogent arguments after 20 years of doing anything I mean, but it's the demonization is pretty astonishing. We had an on Andrew Yang He's the only Democratic candidate who has agreed to go on the Sunday special that I do We did a full hour on UBI. It was perfectly nice. It was perfectly coherent and and conciliatory and Yet people will suggest that everything I do is about destroying people on the other side because of all the Ben Shapiro destroys videos and all That kind of stuff. There's there are certain groups of people where that's their shtick. They're like their goons, right? They just go after people online for attention. Yes. This is a shtick This is not you and this is what bothers me so much And I know that you've said some things in the past like particularly about Arabs and like when you were a younger man You said I shouldn't have said that. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right Some of those things were taken out of context like that one particular tweet Which is a bad tweet was a tweet that was part of a tweet threat in which I was specifically contrasting Israel and the Hamas leadership and saying that the Israeli government likes to build and the Hamas leadership would prefer that their citizens live in Sewage and bomb things but that was a bad tweet. Obviously, you know my entire history on on Muslim Relations is one like I supported the ability of Ilhan Omar to wear a hijab on the on the floor I opposed President Trump's originally proposed Muslim ban in the last three weeks. I've had on Majib Nawaz. I've had on Kanta Ahmed I had on yesterday a reform Muslim like these are conversations that have to be had but to take This is one of things that bugs me so much. I've tweeted I think 140,000 times. I've written millions of words I'm sure you can find something. I don't even remember having written. Yeah, that I have a running list by the way I try to be honest about this. I'm one of the only people I know who has I have a running list It's called. So here's the giant list of all the dumb stuff I've ever done right and I actually go through all this like you can look it up This is not me saying this now I mean you can go and look up all the things that I think I've done wrong and I'll apologize for some and I'll say Some were dumb and I'll say some I'm fine with and you're just taking out of context But I mean that I hope that's what honest people try to do but this is the problem You're not dealing with honest people What when people are trying to categorize you as alt-right or they're trying to put you into this category of internet goon They're they in they did quote tweet There's taking some little tiny phrase that you said seven years ago and trying to say this is you this is you now It's so that's such a disingenuous thing to do. I hate it and I hate it across the aisle By the way, I was a defender of James Gunn. I thought James Gunn shouldn't have been fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Dumb jokes that's exactly right and even if somebody tweeted something bad like ten years ago bringing it up Now is not an attempt to actually make the public space better And you're not actually offended by that thing the person tweeted ten years ago that you didn't notice What it is that you want to get rid of this person or hurt this person? So you're gonna bring up something from ten years ago And then you're gonna try and club them into submission with it because if you actually ask them their opinion about it They might have a more nuanced view on what they said. Maybe they apologize Yeah, maybe they think I don't even remember saying that right? I mean, I felt the same way by the way I try to be consistent. I really do about about this stuff I said the same thing about for example Ralph Northam the governor of Virginia who is excoriated for having this terrible Racist photo on his yearbook page back in medical school in 1987 and people were saying well, this is evidence He's racist now. It's like well. No that's evidence that he was doing a racist thing then that's not evidence that he is racist now you sort of have to look over the broad course of his career and He ended up doing what everyone now does which is you just don't apologize for anything you just try to pass it off as a nothing the public space is actually getting worse because Let's say that you did something bad in the past. There are a few human responses, too I did something I don't like in the past human response number one is you know what I apologize that was wrong these days That gets your face stepped on right you say I apologize. I was wrong It means well Why did you do it in the first place because you're a bad person? Apologies are not accepted and then number two is you brazen it out you do the Trump you know what I never did anything wrong ever I've never I'm perfect right and that and then you get your defenders to come and surround you and then nothing ever gets cleansed or Opportunity number three is you do what Barack Obama did which is you come out? Preemptively and you try to remember all the bad stuff you do and then you confess it in public so in dreams for my father He says right well When I was back in high school did a little blow and everyone's like oh, okay, so you did cocaine when he was in high school That's that's cool whereas if it comes out during the campaign right then he's bone right then he's got a real problem The problem is that right now even if you preemptively come out and say I did something wrong like for example Liam Neeson Talking about years ago when he had a racist thought that he didn't act on when he had a racist thought This is now we're gonna try and ruin your career for something that you admit was bad that you did 30 years ago We're gonna try and ruin you over that if you apologize for something that you did 30 years ago Which you would have preferred just got forgotten because it was embarrassing and stupid Then we say you're bad and so all you're left with is like the most shameless people in the world Who are in the public space right the incentive structure is to be deeply shameless to just say yeah, man I own that and it was great when I said it or I didn't say it at all and you're just you're just full of it I never said that stuff who you're gonna believe your eyes or me and it makes it makes for a really bad politics Well, it's just this the culture of going after people for things and finding anything To categorize them as someone who's a viable target and this is what I've seen thrust your way It's like there's nothing wrong with being conservative There's something wrong with wanting everyone to think the way you think though This is the difference like you what you what I like that you do is you debate your points you state your positions You have a philosophy and what I don't like is when people try to pretend that that philosophy is some somewhat somehow hateful Or somehow regressive or something like you're that you condemn people for their thoughts you you just you don't This is what I'm not what I see with you. I appreciate it and I appreciate the accuracy. I think that's true I mean I've come out against virtually every Twitter ban including people who have personally targeted me I've come out against that I've come out against virtually every what you talk about that because what do you what are your thoughts? About this idea of deplatforming and you know this is something that we were just discussing before the podcast where the CEO of YouTube and Kara swishers, yeah from recode I think Kara swisher they were talking about removing you from YouTube and I thought it was the CEO of YouTube It was actually Kara who said I would if I could yeah She's pissed because her son apparently listens to that's kind of funny if she's being funny saying I can't but it was it I thought it was the CEO of YouTube She was trying to imply that she was trying to do the same thing that they they do with you or with Dave Rubin or Jordan Peterson which is that anybody who is sort of heterodox because in that group I think I'm the only registered Republican ever anybody who's heterodox is now being Docks meaning just thinks differently from kind of the down the line Democratic Party platform you're not like down the line with Hillary Yeah, like Sam Harris is a Democrat Sam Harris is heterodox because he disagrees that Islam is by necessity a religion of peace for example, right or he thinks that we have to look at actual statistics in order to make evidentiary based points about discrimination and disparity And this makes him an enemy of people like Ezra Klein at Vox calm All right, this sort of stuff they then say that you are a feeder for white supremacy, right? They can't actually get you on what you say. Yeah, so it turns into well, you know Some members of your audience do things that that are really bad It's like well, dude, I have like millions of people who are members of my audience. I have five million Facebook followers I have two million on Twitter and you're way bigger than I am. I assume that some of those people are gonna be crazy Yeah, I would assume yeah the idea that you're responsible Well, this is what YouTube try to do You know about the comment thing where the YouTube was gonna try to make people responsible for the comments and their videos, which What is a normal Jamie like a normal video that we get how many comments is it get? Like 10,000 that's like an average one how the fuck My supposed to have some dude with his itchy trigger finger standing by in front of a keyboard Just waiting for something offensive to pop up and this was in response to something that happened with them where there was pedophiles who were watching videos of children doing things and they were commenting stuff in the you know, like children's gymnastics and stuff like that they're commenting and like communicating with each other through the comments and it was sort of Discovered that there was this this connection that they were doing this in many many videos and YouTube Rightly panicked and like holy shit. We have to stop this So the response I guess was we just have to make people responsible for their comments. Someone said oh, yeah good idea I didn't think through it at all, right? Certain people that can't do that. It's totally insane and it's insane and in virtually every respect and it's funny how it's only applied Kind of by the media on one side of the aisle So to take an example the congressional baseball shooting happens a couple of years ago guy happens to be a Bernie fan Is that Bernie Sanders his fault right? No, that is not Bernie Sanders is that went away Literally people stopped talking about and that was shooting of legislators like elected people one nearly died and that kind of went away We didn't talk about, you know Bernie's responsibility, but there's a shooting in Christ Church and it's Jordan Peterson's fault Yeah, and Jordan Peterson has no relationship with the shooter whatsoever. It's my fault I have no relationship with the shooter and denounce everything that that piece of crap stands for