Judging Freedom - With Spotify & Rogan, Disagreement Should Never Equal Silence

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Spotify Technology SA Chief Executive Daniel Ek apologized to employees about Joe Rogan's racial slurs - but Rogan is not going anywhere. #Spotify #JoeRogan #freespeechSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 7th, 2022. It's about 1.40 in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States, and the dispute involving Joe Rogan and the freedom of speech continues to rage. Joe Rogan is, of course, the king of the hill for all podcasts. He has an enormous audience and tremendous influence, and he's been doing this for a number of years, but about two weeks ago, he interviewed two physicians who challenged the government and challenged big pharma and challenged the elites in the healthcare community and offered persuasive arguments about why the vaccines that the government and big pharma are pushing aren't vaccines at all and why wearing masks don't keep you healthy, they make you sick.

These were valid arguments that were based upon scientific evidence. They are not the arguments of most people. They're not the arguments of the government. They're not the arguments of the elites in the medical community. They're certainly not the arguments of Big Pharma, but they're arguments. They're free speech. Well, Joe Rogan licenses his show to Spotify. You all know what that is. Spotify doesn't produce the show. They don't write the scripts. They don't put it together. They just provide a platform on which the show is delivered to their paying customers. And then other entertainers, Neil Young foremost among them

and first among them, whose music and whose professional work appears on Spotify said, I don't want to be on there if Rogan's on there. So get rid of him or get rid of me. And that has sort of snowballed. Other entertainers have said the same thing because they're very pro-wearing mask and very pro-vaccine. And they're not into challenging the orthodoxy of the government and the medical and pharmaceutical communities.

And so Spotify has to decide what to do. We have a $100 million deal with Joe Rogan. I don't know what their deals are with Neil Young and with the others, but it's a business decision that they'll have to make. Or is it a freedom of speech decision? Now, the First Amendment keeps the government from interfering with free speech, but it doesn't keep private people from interfering with free speech. If you work for the government, your boss can't punish you because of what your political opinions are. But if you work for a private entity where political opinions are sensitive to the customers or clients of the private entity and you violate workplace regulations about expressing your political opinions, you can be punished. On the other hand, if you have licensed your work to a platform and the platform approves of your work, that's it. You have a deal and they have to let you speak your mind. This is a question

of freedom of speech, not freedom of speech in the instance of the government interfering, but freedom of speech in the instance of non-governmental entities interfering. Well, who are these people that want to silence Joe Rogan? If you don't like what he says, don't listen to him. Watch another podcast. Watch Judging Freedom or watch whatever podcast you want. What's wrong with people today that they hear something that they disagree with and instead of challenging it or ignoring it, they want to silence it? This business about silencing speakers is very, very dangerous, whether it's done by the government or whether it's done by the loudest voices in the room or whether it's done by a consensus.

If you hate speech, the remedy is more speech. If you hate speech, don't listen to it. But you have no right silencing the speaker. Hang in there, Joe. Judge Napolitano, judging freedom.