[u crank]

The Dangerous Appeal of Neil Young’s Righteous Censorship

The good news about Young’s move to marginalize Rogan is that it won’t work. That’s magical thinking. Even in our times, when tolerance for speech that’s considered misinformation or offensive is reaching a new dipping point, censorious blow-ups like Young’s accomplish little.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...rship-00003923

By trying to mute Rogan, Young and his ilk seem to be saying that some ideas — even the stupid ones about vaccines and Covid that Rogan has endorsed — are so powerful that they will displace “good” public health ideas and that Rogan is guilty of inspiring Covid deaths. This, of course, is preposterous. About 85 percent of adult Americans have taken at least one dose of the vaccine, since it became available just a year ago.

The standard human appetite for convenient, reductionist theories tends to soar during times of crisis as people seek easy explanations for the hard problems. Why anybody at this late date would still reject the vaccine is beyond me, but vaccine resistance would persist even if Rogan vanished. How much of the blame can be assigned to Rogan is unknowable, but given that the average age of his largely white and male audience is 24, and younger people tend to resist the ravages of Covid, it can’t be that significant. How many people base their health priorities entirely on a podcast that occasionally discusses Covid?