British Author Tries to Shame Joe Rogan Into Deplatforming Anti-War Voices

British neoconservative author Douglas Murray publicly scolded the world’s most popular podcaster for allowing anti-war voices and dissident thinkers to appear on his show. Instead of rebutting arguments, Murray attacked Rogan himself—accusing him of platforming the “wrong” people and endangering the credibility of his podcast by refusing to limit guests to establishment-approved “experts.”

Rogan supporters say Murray’s attempt to police acceptable discourse says more about the panic of the permanent-war establishment than it does about Rogan’s show.

Footage of Douglas calling Rogan out
@nosoup4knowles https://t.co/iYl12Ak6Ki pic.twitter.com/qgAJrdgwDB

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) April 10, 2025

Murray specifically complained that Rogan has not had enough pro-Israeli voices on his show to defend the ongoing war in Gaza. Murray has called Rogan’s guest selection “dangerous” for allowing views he does not think ought to be broadcast.

The mainstream media is chiming in, trying to further shame Rogan into only having elite-approved guests.

Online, some have categorized this in different ways as either a pro-Israel/anti-Israel issue, or pro-war/anti-war, while others claim this represents, more broadly, questions about platforming mainstream ‘experts’ vs. non-mainstream voices.

The comments came during a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring comedian and libertarian commentator Dave Smith and British neoconservative author and columnist Murray. Instead of engaging the discussion with substance, Murray went on offense—not against the arguments made by dissident thinkers—but against Rogan for giving them a platform at all.

“If you platform people who don’t know what they’re talking about and nod along, it’s weird,” Murray told Rogan, pressing him to draw a “line” against inviting such guests.

Though he framed it as a concern for accuracy, Murray’s substantial issue was who gets to speak. He singled out two past Rogan guests in the last month, saying ‘These guys are not historians, they’re not knowledgeable about anything’, referencing:

• Ian Carroll, a YouTuber who has questioned official 9/11 narratives and offered unorthodox views on Israel’s geopolitical actions, including claiming that Israel was involved in 9/11, and was behind the Jeffrey Epstein espionage ring. Carroll also discussed the “Pizzagate” theory where American elites are alleged to be engaged in Satanic rituals in order to gain and preserve their power.

• Darryl Cooper, a provocative commentator who called Winston Churchill “the chief villain of World War II” and who highlighted the darker sides of Allied decision-making during the war. Cooper also challenged the death totals during World War II, suggesting food shortages and the impact of war was more to blame for deaths than deliberate genocidal policies.

Murray was clearly disturbed that these voices—uncredentialed by the establishment—were being heard by millions. He implied Rogan’s openness to such guests contributes to misinformation, even though Rogan repeatedly clarified that his show is about open dialogue, not gatekeeping.

Murray said dissident views on Churchill were “horsesh**.”

“But then why listen to their views on Churchill? If you only get the contrary 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 to think that’s the view. And that’s horsesh** of the most profound kind.”

Rogan said he is more interested in interesting voices and perspectives than in necessarily bringing in guests who were part of the official establishment with accompanying degrees and certifications as to their expertise.

“I have people on that I think are interesting,” Rogan said. “You want me to talk to experts—I do. But I also talk to interesting people who say interesting shit.”

Murray doubled down in a column published Friday in The Spectator, where he lamented that he may need to take a “break” from Rogan’s podcast altogether. He described himself as “more exhausted than amused” by what he called a proliferation of “weird conspiracy theories” among Rogan’s guests. But his examples weren’t theories—they were inconvenient historical interpretations and uncomfortable questions.

The British Spectator is already claiming that Murray “broke” Rogan, suggesting that the interview hurt Rogan’s powerful brand.

Rogan’s brand has over 14 million followers on Spotify, making it the world’s most popular podcast, and his YouTube subscribers are over 19.6 million, with 6 billion total views as of April 2025.

Murray has written he believes Oswald acted alone in assassinating John F. Kennedy in 1963, for example. He complained that “some conspiracy theories have come true” and lamented that this means ‘other sets of facts’ might fall apart next.

What Murray seems to oppose isn’t conspiracy—but independence from mainstream narratives. Rogan’s podcast is the most popular show in the world, pundits assert, because it doesn’t bow to legacy media narratives or credentialed experts who have repeatedly gotten major events—like Iraq, Afghanistan, 2020 Voter Fraud, COVID, and Ukraine—dead wrong.

Darryl Cooper responded forcefully online, saying:

“The truth about WWII is complicated. It’s not a Hollywood movie. People like Murray want history to be simplistic and virtuous when it suits them. That’s not how real history works.”

Murray’s public scolding of Rogan reflects a deeper anxiety among transatlantic elites. For decades, war narratives—from Vietnam to Syria to Ukraine—have been shaped by a small, credentialed class of academics, think tanks, and media pundits who never face consequences for being wrong despite repeatedly launching the world into wars. Independent media and dissident voices now threaten their monopoly on public perception.

Murray’s views on history are also notably willfully ignorant of the war propaganda used to justify many of America’s wars over the past century.

Murray is part of the elite caste of social liberals who hate taxes and regulations, who publish books about the need for more warfare, without including the facts about America’s past wars that would run against the conventional narratives.

The 1898 Spanish-American War was predicated on the supposed attack on the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor, a view most historians now challenge, instead saying that the explosion was likely from an accident.

The First World War was partially motivated by the sinking of the H.M.S. Lusitania which was alleged to have been only transporting civilians, even though historians now admit it was also probably carrying munitions and war materials in violation of international law at the time, and making it a legitimate war target. The war propaganda also claimed that Germans were raping Belgian nuns and impaling babies on bayonets, all claims that were proven within a decade after the war to have been false.

The Second World War was motivated by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and while many historians still challenge whether Franklin Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the attack, the record indicates Roosevelt deliberately sought war with Japan by supplying Japan with oil and steel, and then abruptly cutting it off in the summer of 1941, an act that Roosevelt himself in the media said would cause Japan to go to war. Roosevelt refused peace initiatives from the Konoe government, knowing that it would collapse and be handed over to the Japanese militarists, as it did in October 1941. Internal memos indicated that U.S.  spies abroad knew that a sneak attack would happen at Pearl Harbor, on a Sunday morning, and also refused to stop the impending war from starting when they told the Australians they wanted the fighting to start.

The continuation of the Second World War, and refusing to give peace terms to Japan, was predicated on the war propaganda of the “Bataan Death March” which initial reports said had 5,000-7,500 casualties. Modern estimates have revised those numbers down to 500-650.

The Korean War started after North Korea was given the green light to invade by the Soviet Union, and the Soviets had been told by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson in a speech on January 12, 1950 that the United States was unconcerned about the future of Korea, because it was conspicuously not mentioned as part of its “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific. The North Koreans invaded six months later, on June 25th.

The Vietnam War was predicated on two attacks upon the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, and while there was certainly a first attack, the second attack was possibly due to misinterpretations of radar signatures during bad weather. The second attack was used as justification for a wide-ranging authority for the then-President Lyndon Johnson to begin a full-scale war in Vietnam.

The U.S.S. Liberty incident in June 1967 was likely a ‘false flag’ event meant to draw American into the ongoing war between Israel and its Arab neighbors known as the “Six Days War.” In that incident 34 died and 161 sailors were wounded, a signals intelligence ship was sunk by Israeli warplanes, who then attempted to strafe survivors in their liferafts, and whose survivors have said the U.S. flag was repeatedly shot down and seen by the pilots. Israel later apologized and said it was an accidental friendly-fire incident.

The Iraq War in 2003 was, in significant part, motivated by George Bush’s statements that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was close to developing more. These claims were later proven to be based on such obviously flawed intelligence that many whistleblowers, including former CIA agent John Kiriakou, have claimed the intelligence community suppressed all evidence indicating that such claims were false.

In August 2013 the Barack Obama administration claimed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on its own civilian population, claims that were highly disputed. Obama could not successfully persuade the Republican-led Congress that the intelligence was accurate. These same claims made about the then-Assad regime, that it used gas on its civilians, was denied by the U.S. military.

In March 2022, Russia claimed that the United States was developing biolabs in Ukraine, and working with Neo-Nazi militarists to harass the Russian population living in Ukraine. These claims were used to justify their invasion of Ukraine, and were denied by all of the western media outlets. Yet Victoria Nuland confirmed the existence of United States biolabs in Ukraine when she lamented to Congress that she was concerned Russia would seize control of the labs. The nazi-linked Azov batallion was similarly well-documented in dissident media, to the point where even CNN had to admit it was true while still trying to downplay its significance, disproving the mainstream narrative that there were no neo-Nazis involved.

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