Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2211 - Michael Shellenberger
Uploaded: 2024-10-09T17:00:35.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2211 - Michael Shellenberger' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2211 - Michael Shellenberger' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-09. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2211 - Michael Shellenberger

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
Mr. Schellenberger, good to see you.
Mr. Rogan, good to see you, man.
How you been, man?
Every day, every day.
You've been neck deep in the chaos of the world.
I made it to Brazil and back, so put it that way.
What was that like?
It was intense, man.
I mean, it's still going on.
We did Twitter Files Brazil, and three days later, that was back in March,
three days
later, Elon just throws down and starts to attack this main Supreme Court
justice, who's
the guy that's now banned X.
So X is banned in Brazil.
They're in negotiations, but it was very exciting to be there, and the Brazilians
were just relieved.
They were like, everything that we thought was happening is proven by the
Twitter Files
Brazil.
And they were just very grateful to Elon.
So it's been this-
What did the Twitter Files, I know about the Twitter Files America, I don't
know about
the Twitter Files in Brazil.
So they, this is like one of the most extreme forms of censorship we've seen in
democratic countries.
India has been pretty bad too, but this, what they were, the worst of it was
that they were-
I'll pull that sucker up.
Is it too, okay.
Yeah, it's hard to bring it up to you.
How's that?
Is that better?
Good to go.
This is, the most dramatic part is that they were the judge, this is a Supreme
Court justice,
who is basically the dictator of Brazil, was demanding that particular
journalists and politicians
just be banned, not only from X, but from every other social media platform,
which is a tactic
that we had seen in earlier censorship files.
We had done something on something called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League
with Taibbi
showing this, and it was an early military censorship operation, and they'd had
a list of tactics,
and one of them was to get people banned on every platform.
So you're basically like just depersoning people, just destroying their career.
You can't make a career as a journalist or a politician if you're banned from
every platform.
So that was one of the most dramatic parts, all in secret, all open
investigations, ongoing,
and basically nobody, there's no checks and balances, there's no chance to
argue with it.
So that came out, and Elon responded like three days later and was like, yeah,
Brazil's like
the worst in the world, and just starts attacking the Supreme Court justice as
like Darth Vader
and Voldemort and doing what Elon does.
Fast forward to last month, and they had a huge protest in Sao Paulo, one of
the largest
free speech protests in history, which was itself just amazing and inspiring
because, you know,
it's a, free speech has been something that we didn't really think we had to
fight for.
So to see like hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Sao Paulo was
amazing.
I was there with the former president.
He sort of sees me, brings me up.
I'm up on top of the stage.
He's, you know, just, you know, yelling at the crowd.
Everyone's worked up.
You know, he kind of looks over at me and covers the mic, and he's like, it's
Schellenberger, right?
You know, he's like, Michael Schellenberger's up here.
And the crowd's just, you know, they knew about the Twitter files.
Afterwards, we go down, and it's just, you know, it's just a lot of emotion and
anger, but also hope.
The Brazilian people are, for me, it's like one of the most exciting cultures
in the world
because they're so expressive.
The president, like, while he's speaking, he's like crying.
You know, it's a very, like, emotionally open culture.
So now, I mean, the question for Elon, and they're having to negotiate this,
is do you, out of principle, keep, you know, X banned in Brazil
to defend the several dozen people that the government is requiring be banned
permanently?
But that means that 20 million Brazilians are denied X as a platform.
Or do you go along with what the government's demanding and hope to fight for
another day?
And that's what's happening now.
The 12 people, it's 12 people?
We actually don't know, but probably under 100.
And what are they being accused of that the government is saying is so
important that they need to be banned?
Misinformation.
You know, particularly, you can see every country in the world is particularly
obsessed with COVID misinformation
and election misinformation.
So, but to give you an example of how arbitrary and unjust it is,
there's one of the members of Congress who's one of the most dynamic.
He's not actually in the party of Bolsonaro.
That's the controversial former president.
He's in a different party.
His name is Marcel von Hatten.
And he was, he got into, he didn't even know this until the Twitter files
Brazil came out.
And then Elon did release, because the House of Representatives, Jim Jordan,
asked for these internal files from X.
He subpoenaed them.
So we even learned more information from those files.
They showed that von Hatten had, he was, he was supposedly being deplatformed
for election misinformation.
But it turned out that the video he posted was posted the day after the
elections, and it had to do with labor issues, had nothing to do with elections.
And that's just really common.
I mean, you just see, it's just arbitrary rule by one guy.
That's why I say it's a dictatorship.
And has there been any debate or discussion, like, has anybody tried to hold
him to the fire as to why these people are being banned and please prove that
this is misinformation?
Has there been any sort of discussion?
Huge.
I mean, it's maybe one of the biggest issues in Brazil.
It's the president of Brazil who probably hasn't gotten enough criticism for it
because he's going along with it.
He defended the censorship.
This is Lula.
I always heard that he was a great guy when Jair Bolsonaro was the president.
The narrative was Bolsonaro was a dictator, that he was a bad guy.
But I know so many Brazilians, you know, from Jiu-Jitsu, I know so many Brazilians,
and they all love Bolsonaro.
I was like, I am so confused about their politics over there.
I don't know what's going on.
But Lula was supposed to be this guy that was for the people, and to hear that
he is a part of this whole disinformation crackdown, alleged disinformation
crackdown is so disheartening.
Well, yeah.
I mean, for me personally, the funny thing is I had this – just coincidentally,
I have this deep relationship with Brazil because I lived in Brazil in the
early 90s.
I was working – I was actually working towards my Ph.D. in the semi-Amazon.
I went to Rio and Sao Paulo.
I interviewed Lula in 1994, sat across from him just like I'm standing across
from you right now.
What was your take on him?
I love – I mean, at the time, I loved him.
I mean, I was – you know, I was on the radical left for –
Right.
You know, up until, you know, five minutes ago.
Up until the Kool-Aid war off.
Yeah.
I mean, even until the – I mean, really, even up until the censorship part.
I mean, when you start censoring, you're just like – not to digress, but it's
kind of like, you know, back in the 90s, we were anti-war, pro-free speech, and
pro-gay rights.
Now the left is pro-censorship, pro-war, and engaged in horrible medical mistreatment
of gay children in the name of trans medicine.
So it's like literally like who changed here?
You know, my values did stay the same, at least on those things.
But anyway, I mean, I sat across from him and I just said, you know, everybody
says that you're going to turn Brazil into Cuba.
He does love Fidel Castro, but he said absolutely not.
He does.
Seriously, they're like bros.
No, they're bros.
I mean –
That seems like a bit of a problem.
The thing is that in Latin America, like everybody on the left, even some of
the center left, they actually had a lot of respect for Fidel.
I know it's amazing, but they really did.
It's so crazy.
Yeah.
He's a very – Fidel's a very – he was a very charismatic person.
I actually met him too.
Really?
I met all these guys.
I met Hugo Chavez.
Do you think he's Justin Trudeau's dad?
Oh, hell yeah.
Have you seen the photographs?
It's crazy.
It is crazy.
It really is crazy.
It's – I mean –
But he kind of looks like his dad too.
I – yeah, maybe.
I mean, for me, it's like Roman – it's like Roman Farrow.
Well, the Roman Farrow – Frank Sinatra one is just insane.
Yeah.
That is not Woody Allen's kid.
No.
Like no if, ands.
That one's more dramatic than the Trudeau one.
That one's crazy.
I mean, that looks like Frank Sinatra.
What are the odds?
Unless, like, she loves Sinatra so much she, like, willed him into existence in
her own child.
That's – yeah, immaculate conception.
Yeah.
But anyway, so, I mean, I asked Lula directly.
I said – and I actually wrote an article for a left-wing magazine at the time.
I said, are you going to try to turn Brazil into Cuba and have censorship?
And he said, absolutely not.
Our socialism is going to be democratic socialism.
And that was my attraction to Brazil too was that, I mean, here you – I mean,
and to the Workers' Party and to Lula.
I mean, he was super – he had all the stuff that you loved about the left,
but he was going to respect free speech.
So, I – you know, basically after the tour files Brazil and the Workers'
Party, you know, and Lula just start defending censorship, then I start going
after Lula too.
And I'm like, you lied to me, and this is, you know –
What do you think changed?
Unacceptable.
Wow, great question.
I mean, there's a way in which it's the same thing that changed for the left
everywhere.
I mean, this is the question we're always asking, which is like –
How?
I mean, because, you know, if you read the histories, I've been – you know, I'm
now – by the way, I'm – so, I'm – we're going to spend three months in
Austin every year now because I'm the CBR chair of politics, censorship, and
free speech at the University of Austin.
Oh.
I'm the first and only endowed chair there.
So, so it's exciting.
So, I'm here and –
Well, welcome.
Thank you, man.
I'm really – yeah, we just bought a little house and –
Nice.
Yeah.
Nice.
So, yeah, I mean, one of the – because, of course, if you read the histories
of free speech, particularly the last couple hundred years, it's really the –
it's really the right censoring the left.
There's a few exceptions.
But, I mean, overwhelmingly, all the way back to the original, you know, French
parliament where they split – you know, the French – where they split
people on left and right became a way to refer to liberals and conservatives.
Conservatives were about protecting tradition, about propriety.
You don't say certain things.
You know, that was like what conservatives were.
And then if you go to the United States, like one of the most dramatic
instances of censorship here is the early part of the 20th century with the Sedition
Act.
And that's when they were, you know, arresting socialists, incarcerating
thousands of people.
I mean, it's a crazy period.
And so that was – that's basically the tradition.
And that's why when we were, you know, in the 90s and up until recently, you
know, free speech was part of the left tradition.
So what happened?
I mean, one of – what's clear about the censorship that's going on is it's
counter-populist.
So they're going – Jair Bolsonaro, like Trump, is a populist candidate.
So one thought experiment would be if Bernie Sanders had become president in
2016, would the deep state have sided with – would they have sided with the
right, with the Republicans to censor a populist Democratic Party?
It's an interesting question.
I don't know the answer to it.
Clearly, I mean, I would say the – right, if you look at what the global
elite, you know, the – which is kind of a center-left elite in Europe, Brazil,
United States, Canada, it really wants to censor on COVID elections and
migration.
And they do the migration, mass migration stuff around hate.
So, like, if you criticize mass migration, it's hate speech and you should be
censored.
So, clearly, this is a reaction by th