EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,166 words- 0:00 – 0:39
Behind the scenes of Matt Walsh’s comedy-doc “Am I Racist?”
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) All right. Joe, what's happening?
- MWMatt Walsh
Hey. Great to be back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to-
- MWMatt Walsh
Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Your movie is really funny. It's really-
- MWMatt Walsh
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
... funny. By myself, laughing out loud hysterically today. Had, m- I watched it-
- MWMatt Walsh
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
... in the sauna, I watched it in the gym, I watched it, uh... It, it was... It's one of the best comedies I've seen in a long time (laughs) 'cause there's so many moments in it that are so uncomfortable.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, that means a lot. I appreciate that. Yeah. That's what we're, what we're hoping for.
- 0:39 – 2:20
The Robin DiAngelo reparations bit: engineering an uncomfortable payoff
- JRJoe Rogan
The Robin D... (laughs) The Robin DiAngelo one, where you gave that guy money for reparations and you got her-
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and she thought it was uncomfortable. (laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. That was kind of a-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
... we got... When we-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
When we had the idea for the, for the film, to talk about race, we knew we needed to get Robin DiAngelo. I didn't think we'd get her, 'cause I figured she'd be a lot more-
- JRJoe Rogan
Savvy?
- MWMatt Walsh
... cautious.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah, savvy and cautious. Uh, but apparently she doesn't, she has no idea what's happening outside of her bubble at all. So, she didn't know who I was. I mean, I gave her my name and she had no clue. So...
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, so, but we, we kinda went into that knowing wha- what the end was supposed to be. If we could get her... We came up with that idea, we went to a bar, uh, the night before the interview, and we came up with this idea, could we get her to actually pay reparations to Ben, our Black producer?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
And, uh, we had to kinda talk him into it.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
And, you know, it was really just like, in real time, I was there for about two hours, and it was an hour and a half of the most mind-numbing conversation where I'm just... None of that's in the movie, 'cause it's just me, like, fluff questions, and I, and I'm, and I'm repeating back to her own ideas so she knows that I'm a safe person.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
It's a safe space. And then you gotta build to it, and build to it, and build to it, and then finally you get to a point where you can do something a little weird.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
And she'll, and she'll probably go along with it. And, um... And she did. I mean, you saw in, we, we'd go through a whole, we have a whole series of exercises we, we wanna do with her, and she went, she did it. She was, uh, she was game.
- JRJoe Rogan
Phew.
- MWMatt Walsh
So, that was, uh, and that was one of the first things we filmed, so after we got that we knew that, okay, we have a movie here.
- JRJoe Rogan
I feel-
- 2:20 – 3:09
Pay-to-play DEI consulting and the “price tag” satire
- MWMatt Walsh
You-
- JRJoe Rogan
... like you got your money's worth with her seeing as it's $15,000, but I feel like you got robbed by the, the lady that got upset about the mascot.
- MWMatt Walsh
(laughs) Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
$50,000, you barely got anything out of her.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. That was... Well, it... Part of the, the point of the movie is, that's why we put the, uh, the price tags on the screen, um, we want people to see how absurd it is. So in a certain way it was like, it... The, the higher they quoted, the price, we said, "Great, we'll pay, we'll pay that." 'Cause this is, this, we want this in the movie.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
Um, because if all these people had said, "Oh yeah, I'll do it for free," or, "I'll do it for 200 bucks, just pay my travel," doesn't really make the point.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
But they all were, uh, were quoting exorbitant prices, and she was, she was the most.
- JRJoe Rogan
$50,000.
- MWMatt Walsh
And, and then she basically said almost nothing. But, um, but it was, it was okay.
- 3:09 – 5:51
Mascot controversy, “race hustlers,” and interpreting everyday slights as racism
- JRJoe Rogan
No one ever found out who the identity of the mascot is?
- MWMatt Walsh
No. I don't think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Got it. It would've been hilarious if it was a person of color.
- MWMatt Walsh
Well, it-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
... it almost certainly was. It, it almost certainly was, because if it was a white guy-
- JRJoe Rogan
They would've thrown him under the bus.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. Yeah. They would've. So the fact that they didn't... You know, 'cause it was probably some, like, Hispanic kid or something.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you gotta imagine, you can't see real good with that fucking costume. You ever put a mascot costume on?
- MWMatt Walsh
I haven't, but I can tell that there's little eye slits. You can't even see what's below you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- MWMatt Walsh
And that's why-
- JRJoe Rogan
Duncan-
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Duncan and I did a whole podcast where we pretended to be furries. We lasted... We, we... Every podcast we do, we dress up. We'll dress up like Star Wars people or whatever, spaceship people. We did a podcast as furries, we kept the helmets on for maybe five minutes, we were like, "I can't fucking do it." And we both took them off.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm like, props to the furries. If you could run around with this thing on, this is hard to do. Like you can't see shit. You can't-
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... breathe.
- MWMatt Walsh
And the fur-
- JRJoe Rogan
So the idea that he missed those kids is like-
- MWMatt Walsh
And the furry, the furries are doing a lot more than running around in those things too, so that's the-
- JRJoe Rogan
They are.
- MWMatt Walsh
(chuckles) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They are. I think-
- MWMatt Walsh
I-
- JRJoe Rogan
... they designed special ones for that.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. I don't even wanna know. But I, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like a hatch.
- MWMatt Walsh
But that's, it's actually a perfect example of the, what these people do, these, these race hustlers, that something happened, it was a little bit unpleasant-
- 5:51 – 10:26
Intent, offense, and redefining “racism” as a personal mental state
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's interesting that nobody wants to call that out, nobody wants to be reasonable. Nobody wants to say, "Well..." Is that... Like, you just say, "Oh, wow." You know, you have to listen to it. That's part of the problem. Like, you can't say, "Are you sure that's racist?" 'Cause then you're a racist apologist, and then you're racist by proxy.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah, and how do you know ... So, how do you know what's in that other person's mind? How can you ascribe motives to them?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
This, it, it drives me nuts that this is what, this is what we do now, where if someone does something or says something, someone else is offended by it, that person who's offended gets to decide what the intent was behind the other person's action. To the extent that if the other person says, "No, no, no. This was my intention. I'll tell you what it was," they don't get to have a say in their, the intentions behind their own actions.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
They, they are, they are suddenly not authorities in, in their own behavior.
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- MWMatt Walsh
This other person who was the offended party gets to inform you what you meant by that thing. Um, which is really what the, the ... You know, I mean, the movie's called Am I Racist? But in reality, uh, there's only one person who can answer whether you're a racist person, and that's you. And if you don't think that you're racist, then you, then you aren't. Because racism is a thought process, and if it's not in your head, then you're not racist. You might, uh, you might have stereotypical views about people of other races. Everybody does to some extent. You might think things that are even insulting about people of other races. But it's not, it's not racist, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
... racist means you hate people of other races or you think they're inferior to you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, but you could be not a racist person and think that, whatever, uh, Asians are bad drivers. You know, you could think that that stereotype is, is true. Whether it's true or not, you just happen to think that that's a true thing about this group. Doesn't mean you hate them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
Doesn't mean that you think that they're inferior. It's just-
- JRJoe Rogan
You can say frat boys are annoying and not hate men.
- MWMatt Walsh
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
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- MWMatt Walsh
Exactly. Whether, and, and most-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
Exa- And most of the time, these stereotypes, they didn't just fall outta the sky.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
Like, they're, they're grounded in something.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's j- If they did, no one would ... It wouldn't make any sense.
- MWMatt Walsh
Right. Uh, and nobody would be offend- That's the thing. Nobody would be offended by a stereotype that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
... no, that, that really was not true at all.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
They're, you're only offended because it rings true at least a little bit, because otherwise it would just be ar- It'd j- It would be-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- 10:26 – 11:50
Outside the DEI bubble: talking to bikers and poor communities about ‘systemic racism’
- MWMatt Walsh
... absurd. Which is why when you get ... I mean, in the movie we go, uh ... There's a, a section where we go kinda outside the, this bubble, and we go down and we talk to s- bikers at a biker bar in the South. We talk to the poor Black community in, in New Orleans. And, um, the only reason we did that was just ... Well, like, let's, let's find people who are not ... They probably didn't go to college, so they didn't get, they didn't get brainwashed there. They're not getting the corporate DEI seminars. They're not list- They're not reading Robin DiAngelo or any of these people. Um, what do they think about this stuff? What are the ... Are they worried about systemic racism? Do they see everything as racist all the time? And what we found is, no, they're just not even th- Th- They, they don't, they don't even speak that language. When you say the term systemic racism to them, they say, "Well, what do you mean by that? What is that?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, this was something that ... Like, look, people are always concerned about people being racist, but there's something that happened in this country somewhere around 2012-ish where things really, really ramped up.
- MWMatt Walsh
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it, it just became, it just became much more of a subject, a subject that was like constantly around, you know, worrying about racial bias and, and it, and it, and it ramped up, right? It ramped up 'til you get to the point where you do have some of these race hustlers that are saying everyone's racist. You're all ... You must confront your unconscious bias, and we're all ra-
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're just constantly hearing about it. It's like-
- 11:50 – 25:33
Obama-era backlash vs ‘systemic’ claims, plus monuments and “woke as religion”
- MWMatt Walsh
I think bec- And I think you're right that it was around 2012. BLM, uh, came into formation in 2013, I think. That was the Trayvon Martin thing. Um, and it's ... So it's not a coincidence that it seemed like race relations in this country were improving-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MWMatt Walsh
... decade after decade. They weren't perfect, but it seemed like they were pretty good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Much better than the '60s.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah, the '90s.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
I grew up in the '90s. It was not perfect, but ...I grew up in a diverse area, I went to public school, a lot of people of different ethnicities and races. We didn't, we weren't talking about racism all the time, it was basically fine. Uh, and, and then something happened in the, you know, middle part of the, you know, first decade of the 2000s where it seemed like things started backsliding, and that's right at, right at the time when, when, uh, Barack Obama was elected, and that's not a coincidence. Like, a lot of people have noticed that, you know, it's odd that we had a Black president, and then all of a sudden now we're having race riots again. And I think the reason is that when you elect a Black president, I didn't like O- Obama, I didn't vote for him, I think his policies are terrible, but you would think that at least one positive you could draw from that is that, "Well, at least that means that systemic racism is not a problem in this country anymore." I mean, if the, if a Black guy could rise to the top of the system and run it, then clearly the system is not racist against Black people. Uh, and in fact was, was overwhelmingly voted into that position by Americans, which is true, so that is evidence that America isn't systemically racist against Black people, but the race hustlers don't want us to draw that conclusion. They're worried that we'll look at Obama as president and say, "Okay, well, racism isn't a big issue anymore," and that's a problem for them because there's a lot of power, money, and influence to be found in the racist narr- racism narrative. So they had to kind of, like, double up on their efforts to convince us that America's actually racist, which is why during Obama's term, that's when we started getting all these race hoaxes and the race riots and BLM. Uh, that's when things like m- people started talking about microaggressions and all this kind of nonsense, because they needed to tell us that, "Yeah, you might think, uh, that this issue is kind of solved now, but it's not. Racism is actually, is actually worse than you ever imagined, it's lurking everywhere." And now we're at a point... Yeah, and then, and then not long after that they started tearing down, you know, Confederate Civil War monuments and stuff, stuff that's been there for, like, 100 years, which was always weird because 100 years ago people could w- whatever, walk by a Robert E. Lee monument and not care, it wasn't a big deal to them, Black or white. Now all of a sudden it's a bigger deal to us than it was to people whose, like, parents fought, you know, their, they have, they had grandparents who fought in the Civil War or died in the Civil War. They were okay with it, and yet for us, what? The wounds of the Civil War are fresher or more raw for us than they were for people a century ago? It makes no sense. How are we less able to be objective and non-emotional about the Civil War than people who, who had family member... I mean, slave, ex-slaves were, were still living back then. Um...
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think it's because it's just, like, a religious ideology. Like when the Taliban started blowing up those ancient statues of Buddhas. Do you remember that?
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
B- because, like, they could... Like, they destroyed things that were a part of human history that we would have studied for thousands of years.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they destroyed them because they didn't go along with their religious ideology. And I think part of the woke thing is this religious ideology that has to be followed, and you, you cannot stray from the lines, you have to stay inside whatever this ideology is promoting and telling you what to do. And one of the things was that you had to take down all these statues of terrible people, and I remember Trump saying at the time, "Well, the problem with that is, like, eventually they're gonna take down George Washington." And everybody thought he was crazy. Like, that's a crazy thing to say. But once they got past Civil War people, then they got to who owned slaves, and then they got to taking down... They wanted to take down statues of Thomas Jefferson and eventually did get to George Washington.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. And that was always, it was always gonna go that way, because George Washington... The Founding Fathers owned slaves. Uh, not only that, but they were rebels, you know, rebelling against a governmental authority, and if they had lost then they all would have been, uh, hanged as traitors and that's how they'd be remembered. Thankfully they didn't, but... So there's a... It's actually, there's a, there's a... It's not that far of a leap to go from, from one to the other, and of course the issue is that everybody who lived on Earth prior to about, certainly prior to 100 years ago, is racist by our standards today. Every single one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
There was no one who lived on Earth 100 years ago who w- we would not consider racist. Anywhere, of any race. Um, if you go back 200 years or, or earlier than that, almost everybody either owned slaves or was okay with slavery as an institution. You go back 500 years, and there was nobody on the planet who, who considered slavery to be wrong fundamentally. They might have had issues with how slaves are treated in some contexts, but it took, like, thousands of years for it to ever even occur to a single human on Earth that slavery is actually fundamentally wrong. Uh, which is a crazy thing, and that's actually an interesting thing we could, you could talk about and, and think about, like, why is that? How could it be that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
... it's so obvious to us, but the, some of the greatest minds of history, they never thought of it? Uh, but we can't talk about that because we have to talk about slavery and racism as if they're exclusively white Western phenomena.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, v- I've had friends that have a different perspective on the Obama situation, and, uh, my friend Willie was talking to me about this, and he was saying that what happened was when you... Look, one thing that we can be sure of is that racists are real. There are real racists in this country. There's real anti-Black racists, anti-Asian racists, there's certain people that have hateful ideology in this country, just in, a certain percentage of them in the world, so th- those are real. And when Obama became president, those people became more emboldened, and he said that he saw a lot more of that online and a lot more attacks and, especially in uncensored online forums like 4Chan and places where you can kind of get away with saying whatever the fuck you want. He said he saw a lot more of that on the streets, and he said this is probably why he believed Michelle Obama didn't want to run for president, because she experienced so much of that hate while they were in the White House. Forget about hate for their...... their policies and w- what you think about them as president and vice- and- and first lady. But the- the racism hate. So, his perspective as a Black guy was like, you had to be a Black person to realize how angry people were that there was a Black guy who was president, because that was real too. It was real that racism in America and racial relations in America had changed radically since the 1960s, certainly since the 1920s and '30s, and- and over the years, just kept getting better. But i- in his mind, there was something that happened where when, uh, Barack Obama got into the White House that the real hardcore racists got very vocal. And he experienced it. And I think this is akin, in some ways, to what's going on with antisemitism online because, uh, I think there's always been a certain amount of people in this country and in the world that are like, deeply antisemitic and, uh, they just don't like Jews. And when something happens where all of a sudden now it's okay to criticize Jews because of Israel's position in Gaza and what they've done, now you see antisemitism just pop out of the woodwork. I think there's- there's something like that where people feel emboldened to talk about things. So- so like, maybe we just don't have an accurate account of how fucked up some people are. But the general population, and whether you're conservative or whether you're a l- liberal, everybody kind of agrees that racism is a stupid thing. There's amazing people of all ethnicities and colors and you should judge people, like Martin Luther King said, by the content of their character. We all agree with that. But there's a certain amount of people that are always going to be racist. But when you start looking for it everywhere and saying everything is racist, first of all, you are... It's an insult to real racism. It's an insult to the people that are the victims of real racism when you consider microaggressions or cutting in line in front of you to get ice cream. That's a vic- there's people that are real victims of racism. And pretending that everything is racist just minimizes that and in fact makes, probably makes more people racist. It's gonna make a bunch of dumb liberals like- like- drop to their knees or give you money for reparations. But it's gonna make a bunch of other people really resentful and it just polarizes us and- and drives people further and further apart.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just genuinely stupid.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and I- I think that's- that's true, um, uh, what- what he said about... I'm sure that when there's a Black president that... We know there are real racists out there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MWMatt Walsh
There are anti-Black racists, there are anti-white racists, but they're out there and social media was also really coming online around that time so people had a- a forum to express this kind of stuff and-
- JRJoe Rogan
And anonymously.
- MWMatt Walsh
Anonymously. And so yeah, those people come out of the woodwork. I'm sure... That did happen, I don't deny that. The difference though is that, uh, that kind of racism is personal and individual. It's not systemic. It's not in the system.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
And also, it's absolutely rejected, uh, by society. It's absolutely rejected by polite society. So, there's a reason why they had to go to 4chan or whatever to express those views 'cause you can't come out in public and say it. Uh, with... And if you do, it'll be like the end of your- whatever your career is. It's probably the end of it. Uh, and that's kind of... That's the most you're gonna... When it comes... As you said, there's never gonna be a time when there's no racists in the world so the most you can do is, "Okay, we're not gonna have this stuff systemically. We're gonna- the system's gonna treat everybody equally, great. We've crossed that off the list, we've already done that. Um, actually we've gone too far because you have affirmative action where now you're discriminating against white and Asian people but... So anti-Black racism is out of the system. Fantastic, that's good. Uh, it's not accepted by mainstream society. Great." And then... So that's kind of it. I mean, what else can we do with this? Uh, you can't- you can't get inside people's hearts and make them not feel things. Those people are gonna be out there. They know that it's not accepted in mainstream society and uh, and I- I kind of think y- you- you could sort of move on from it culturally to other issues. It's not a major issue anymore. Um, but they won't allow it, and you're right that then it's got this pendulum thing where okay, well if you go after white people and you demonize them relentlessly, and you do it practically from birth now through the school system, some of those white people are gonna end up being s- stricken by guilt or they're gonna walk around feeling like they're guilty for something. That's the- the white guilt liberal thing. But then you're gonna have others who, uh, kind of become exactly what you accuse them of being because they're like, "Oh, you know what? If you're gonna call me racist anyway then you know what? Fine." Um, and there's been a resentment that builds up and- and you actually create more of it, which I think they're happy about. If- if actual racism i- is increasing in society, I don't know if it is or not, but I think the people that call themselves anti-racists are quite happy about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, business is booming, but the other thing is like, think about Robin DiAngelo who you said l- just lives in her own bubble and really doesn't- didn't know who you were and didn't catch on at any point in time that-
- MWMatt Walsh
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... n- any of this stuff was ridiculous. Like these people that this... If that's all you think about and that's all you kind of... Like I have friends that, uh, live in California and every now and then I'll talk to them and w- some politics issue will come up and they give me this fucking CNBC, they give me this MSNBC, this fucking propaganda viewpoint on something that's so wrong which is so... And I just go, "Okay. I- I can't." Like you're- you're in. You're- in your bubble, there's no... there's no real discourse.
- 25:33 – 31:55
White guilt as leverage: ‘Race to Dinner,’ anti-racism in schools, and moral coercion
- MWMatt Walsh
That's rewarding for them. The, the, the more interesting thing is, what about the people who go to those people and consult them as moral gurus? I mean, in the movie, we have this race to dinner, where you've got these white women who sit around a table and they invite these other two women, Cyber Rauh and Regina Jackson, to come to dinner. They pay them to come to dinner and call them, them racist for two hours. And it's like, why would you subject yourself to that? It's, it's so, it seems like the most miserable experience to volunteer to be broken down and insulted and degraded, which is what happened to these women. I mean, I saw it. They were, it's like two hours of them just getting, "You're racist, you're racist, you're racist."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
They had to go around the table, confess their racist sins, uh, and then they all, they each go and they say what their racist sin, like, what, what's a racist thing you've done recently. They all confess. And I'm listening to it, and it's like, "None of you have actually done anything racist. I listened to all your stories."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
"None of that is racist." There's a, there's a woman who said that, uh, she's married to a Black guy, and she...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MWMatt Walsh
He, he's loud and she tells him to quiet down sometimes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh.
- MWMatt Walsh
What wife has not said that to their husband?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
So, uh... So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- MWMatt Walsh
What do, what-
- JRJoe Rogan
I get that once a month.
- MWMatt Walsh
Right. So what do they-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think my wife is racist.
- MWMatt Walsh
(laughs) She, she could be.
- JRJoe Rogan
She could be.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, sexist, sexist against me at least.
- JRJoe Rogan
She's racist against me.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or, actually, sexist against me.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, so what are they... Why... What are they getting out of it? And I think it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they're getting out of it... First of all, they're terrified of being called racist. So, they jump the gun. So, they, they headed off at the path. Like, "I'm gonna make sure I'm not racist, so I'm gonna become an anti-racist." You know, I talked about this before, but when my kids were young, like, um, uh, my youngest was pretty young when, um, they started doing this anti-racism thing at the school, where they said, uh, "It's not enough to be not ra-" This is actually right after we left. So, it was right after, like, the George Floyd things popped off. They said, "It's n- not good enough to not be racist. You have to be anti-racist."
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're talking about some of these kids in that school are six.
- MWMatt Walsh
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what are you saying?
- MWMatt Walsh
It's not enough at six, you gotta-
- JRJoe Rogan
What are, what are you saying? Are you saying a six-year-old has to be an anti-racist? Can't they just play with their toys? Can't they just go to the park and hang out with their friends? Can't they just play sports? Can't they just enjoy each other's... Six-year-olds don't give a fuck what color somebody is. They don't. They all just play together. They just want to play with the people who are nice to them and who they have fun with and laugh with. And here you've got some fucking grifter who latches themselves onto some school system that's filled with all these terrified liberals that are just terrified of being called out for anything. And then all the rules are changing and everybody's like, "Oh." And so they bend the knee, they bend the knee.
- 31:55 – 44:58
Online life, bullying, and psychological damage: from outrage addiction to snuff videos
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Um, k- college kids love to do that. The moment they're out of their house, the moment they don't have their parents telling 'em what to do anymore, now they can tell other people what to do. And it's just like ... It's ... One thing that you see online (clears throat) from people who have been bullied in the past, um, people that have been picked on and fucked with, boy they like to do it to people, like o- online, on Twitter mobs. They like to jump in. And I know a lot of people that have, that I've, I've known a lot of people that have engaged in these things. I've, I've known them personally. These feeble, weak, terrified men and they say the most heinous things about people. Like, uncharitable, not knowing, you, y- like, what, what kind of response these words are gonna have in that person. And they, they bully these people because they've been hurt. You know? It's that hurt people hurt people thing. That's what it is. But they don't think it's a violent ... They don't think it's as bad as bullying, like, in real, real life bullying's terrible. You're gonna hit somebody? How dare you, you fucking monster. Well, you're emotionally scarring people online every day and you think you're doing it through this ... When y- it's like, one of the things ... Elon's talked about this, that one of the things that woke does i- it allows really mean people, this ideology allows really mean, shitty people to have a, a virtuous way of expressing that.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. I think that's, that's right. And, and also the internet ... I mean, the whole idea that the internet isn't real, we hear it all the time. That's why I hate it when people say, uh, "Well, Twitter isn't real life." But ... And I understand what's meant by that when people say that, but it actually is real life because these are, these are human beings who are communicating with each other. Now, there are bots too, but if you're a human being on Twitter saying something, that's real life. It's not, it's not fake. This isn't happening in some kind of dream world.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
Um, so but then people think that, "Well, okay, if I just say this on Twitter, I put it, put it in a YouTube comment section, and it's this heinous, awful thing, it doesn't count, doesn't mean I'm a bad person, 'cause it's not real life." Which is like, that's like writing on a loose leaf paper, calling someone a piece of shit, and handing it to them, and then they get mad at you and you say, "Hey, man, it's the paper. It's not real life."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
Like, it just, it just happened on the paper. It's a, it's a, it's a method for communicating.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MWMatt Walsh
And, uh, and so I think people have been conditioned that in this world it's like a moral exception so you can s- do and say whatever you want and you don't have to feel bad about it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
And then it turns people into sociopaths after a while, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it does too. And I also think it ramps up anxiety in a huge way for the people that are actually engaging in it. You know? The people that actually do it, I think they're just fully anxious all day long and I think it's terrible for mental health. Even if you're, like, quote/unquote winning these verbal battles online that you're engaging in, I think it's terrible for everybody. It's really terrible for the people that are just, like, all day long negative. Like, there's ... And arguing with people. Like, why do you want that in your life? That's, that's a very unusual position to be in, where all day long you're in conflict. That's only war. In the real world, most of the day there's no conflict. That's why conflict is so uncomfortable, 'cause it's so unusual.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you're used to conflict with people all the time and you see some guy and he's like, "Fuck you." "No, fuck you." But if you're not used to someone saying, "Fuck you," and then all of a sudden, "Hey, fuck you," and you're like, "Uh, what?" Like, you're terrified, you're freaked out, like, "What's going on? Oh, my God, this is conflict." The kind of conflict, uh, verbal conflict that people engage in online all day long has the same sort of effects on your psyche. You are perceiving the world to be this ... This, this is one of the things that's so polarizing about this particular election, right? That people are willing to accept propaganda because it feeds into their view of the world, which is that they're engaged in this moral battle, v- good versus evil. And both sides think they're good and both sides think the other side is gonna be the end of the world. And it's accentuated heavily by mentally ill people that are on Twitter all day long.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah, I'm one of them. So, uh ...
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You seem fine.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, but I, I mean, I, I am guilty of some of this. I do. I'm on it way too much, first of all. But I ... But then I have my excuse, which is it's part of my job.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's part of your job.
- MWMatt Walsh
Uh, I do often think if I didn't do this for a living at all, I, I don't think I'd be on any of this stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think I'd be off everything.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
If I was not a quote/unquote public figure, I would be off everything.
- MWMatt Walsh
'Cause I have n- I don't know if you have a pro- ... If I go on vacation or something and I'm, and I'm taking Time Out, I have no issue putting it down. I don't, I have no compulsion to look at it. In fact, I have to, when I come off vacation, it t- I- it's effort to get back in it. It's like, "Okay, I gotta get back into this again."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MWMatt Walsh
It takes me a couple days. Then after a couple of days, now it's a compulsion again. But-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MWMatt Walsh
... I have to, I have to reignite this weird compulsion to constantly look at my phone.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but I, I have a problem too in that I'm a comedian and that I'm also a gold miner. Right? So what that means is when I'm going through my newsfeed, my newsfeed is the thing I'm the most addicted to. I'm mining for gold. Like, "What's going on here? What'd they do? They did what? They, (laughs) they fucking what?" And I, I need those. Those are really important to me, 'cause, like, those can be my next hour of standup. Those can be... Th- they're chunks.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- 44:58 – 50:33
Bots, propaganda, and manufactured consensus: how fake discourse becomes real movements
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's also who knows who's doing it. And at this point in time, we have to accept the reality of propaganda, and that there ... You know, we've talked about this ad nauseum, but I'll say it again. There was a, an FBI, uh, former analyst did, um, some sort of a study on Twitter where he was, uh, estimating the amount of bots versus ... This is be- like right around the time when Elon was saying that it's more than 5%. He said he thinks it's about 80%. He thinks 80%-
- MWMatt Walsh
80%?
- JRJoe Rogan
... of the accounts. Yeah, 80% of the accounts are fake accounts, which just stop and think about if you're in a country, okay? Let's imagine you want the politics of America to swing in a certain direction, 'cause we most certainly do this in other countries. I mean, w- we don't have to educate people on the long history of interventionist foreign policy, where we have gone in and installed new leaders of countries and organized all kinds of shit. So, we do it, and we do it, and we know they do it, but isn't it, like, the cheapest way to do it, wouldn't it be to do it on social media?
- MWMatt Walsh
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And if you did it, why would you do it with, like, one account? Why wouldn't you have a million accounts? I would have a million accounts. Like, uh, just gotta get a computer that keeps making new accounts. And you run a program. It's not the most difficult thing to do. For people that know how to actually code operating systems. You don't think there's someone out there that can code a computer program that can operate millions of different Twitter accounts, and you run it through some sort of a AI that you've developed, some large language model on things to say about MAGA, or things to say about abortion, or things to say about conservatives, or things to say about liberals, and you put a fucking American flag in your little bio and ... Or you put a pronoun thing, he/hur/zis/zir, whatever it is. And then you just flood the internet with fake anger and fake discourse, and you lie about people, and you ... A- anytime there's a post about anything controversial, you insert something in there that gets people even more riled up. You could get people ... You could swing the vote. You could swing the vote in one way or another, especially with fence-sitters, with people that are not sure, like, "I don't know. Is Trump really the answer?" And then you get online, and you see a- a- all this hateful shit, or you might get on a MAGA forum, and you go, "Oh, the, the, the ... There are, they are eating cats. He was telling the truth. ABC's biased." And you could swing it one way or the other, and I think they're all trying to manipulate it. All these foreign governments, and I think internally in the United States, I'm sure there are groups that are doing it too, that are manipulating things in one way or the other in a disingenuous way because it's available. And I don't know how to stop it. I think the only way for you to not personally be really affected by it is you have to understand that it exists, and then you have to recognize that, you know, some of these takes are not even real human beings. So, instead of saying, "Jesus Christ, people really think that way?" Go, uh, "Maybe not." Like, maybe this isn't ... Maybe there's a few people that think that way, but you're being led to believe that it's a huge movement of people when it might not be. But the problem is when it b- ... Even if it's fake, people are so stupid that even if it's a fake thing that becomes a bit of a movement online with fake, dumb people will jump in there, and then it'll become a real thing.
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you aware of, uh, (laughs) the, uh, the free bleeding movement that 4chan pushed?
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah, I think I heard of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
But then it, it became kinda real, didn't it?
- JRJoe Rogan
It became real! That's what I'm saying. Or flat Earth. It's the same thing. It became a joke. Uh, people were fucking around at first. We've known the Earth has not been flat for a long-ass time-
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then-
- MWMatt Walsh
But now that's totally real, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Now it's totally real. Now there's massive groups of people that think the Earth is flat.
- MWMatt Walsh
Which isn't ... I, I can't.
- JRJoe Rogan
I can. I can't-
- MWMatt Walsh
I don't know how that ... Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you can't, but the thing is, that's how dumb people are, that you can have a fake thing and say it enough times and enough people jump in and be on board with it, and then it becomes a real thing. And then you don't even have to, like, uh, use propaganda anymore. These morons are doing it for you.
- MWMatt Walsh
The thing that gets me about the flat Earth thing is, uh-... 'cause I didn't realize that it was a real thing until, I don't know, a few years ago, I did... I wrote s-... I posted something about it.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
And all these comments from, from real people, that, uh, that, uh, that... Eh, what, what gets me is... Well, yeah, the people that say, "I think the Earth's flat," and that's ins-... You're just, just really stupid. But what I... I was more fascinated by the, like, 80% of people who... 80% of the f-... of the flat Earth crowd, 80% of them, their take was, "Well, I'm, I don't... I'm not saying the Earth is flat, but I'm, I'm open to it. So I'm-"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MWMatt Walsh
"... I'm open to the possibility." How are you... I, I get it if you're just completely stupid and you got sucked into this cult thing, but what I don't get is, how can you be... (laughs) how can you be on the fence about whether... about the shape of the Earth?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's just people that really are not educated. That's, that's number one. And people that believe that there's a collusion that's so large that all of the space agencies, from Japan, from China, from Russia, all of them are liars. That all of them are colluding together to hide the true shape of the Earth, because if we really knew the Earth was flat, then we would... it would... i- it always is connected to some sort of a Bible thing. Like, it's the firmament and they believe that, that we're, we're hiding the fact that God is real and somehow there's some mass conspiracy that all these world governments and e-... a- every person that ever was involved in the space agencies, they've all hid from us.
- 50:33 – 1:41:06
Moon landing skepticism: Van Allen belts, missing data, and what counts as evidence
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah. A- and the m-... The... Your moon landing, you're not a... You, you believe in the moon landing, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
I used to believe in the moon landing.
- MWMatt Walsh
You don't anymore?
- JRJoe Rogan
I had a joke in my act about it, that before COVID, I would have told you vaccine's the most important invention in human history, and after COVID, I'm like, "I don't think we went to the moon."
- MWMatt Walsh
Yeah, I know that was in your act, but do you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MWMatt Walsh
You actually think that?
- JRJoe Rogan
I think there is a less than zero possibility that we did not go to the moon.
- MWMatt Walsh
Oh my gosh.
- JRJoe Rogan
I know. Why do you think we went to the moon?
- MWMatt Walsh
Well, 'cause it's exactly what you just said about... Well, there's a lot of reasons, but the main thing is what you just said about the Earth. The, the, the vastness of the conspiracy that would be required to fake that, it's so vast that it's just... It's, it's a lot more incredible to believe that we faked it than to believe that we just went. And going to the moon, don't get... I... It's a ma- massive achievement. Um, eh, w- I w-... But I, I think the greatest human achievement of all time. But even so, to fake it would be even more massive, uh, because not only would you need all of these, you know, space agencies and all the different, whatever, people in Amer-... eh, eh, American, eh, American institutions to be colluding, but you'd also need w-... foreign governments, including adversarial foreign governments, who at this point certainly would know we faked it, and for some reason haven't blown the lid on it. So they're, they're letting us, like, take this achievement that they know... Like, why haven't the Russians s-... come out and said-
- JRJoe Rogan
All those things you're saying are true.
- MWMatt Walsh
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I don't, I don't argue with any of the things you're saying. But one of the things that I think you have to consider is, if it's not possible for human beings to safely go through the Van Allen radiation belts and out into deep space without much protection, and face the temperatures that are on the s-... the surface of the moon, which get up to 250 degrees, and 250 degrees below zero in, in the shadows, it's a... there's no environment there. It's, uh, eh, hostile beyond belief. Micrometeorites are flying into the moon all the time. They're flying through space all the time. We've never had a single biological organism go out into deep space, past the Van Allen radiation belts, and then come back to Earth and come back alive, except human beings during the Apollo missions. Every single space station mission, every th-... single space shuttle mission, all of them are inside 350 miles from the Earth's surface. The only time human beings have ever been past that and through the Van Allen radiation belts was the Apollo missions. And we were the only humans that were ever d-... able to do that. The Russians never figured out how to do it. No one else figured out how to do it but the Apollo astronauts. And we did it seven times, six successfully, from 1969 to 1972. If you told... If you said to me, "Do you think that they could fake the moon landing today?" I would say, "No." I would say, "No, no, no, no. People are gonna be able to track it. They're g-... Th-... It's, uh, very easy. They have satellites. They're, they're gonna know everything." But in 1969, the technology was so crude that the fir-... When they first showed the Apollo 11 landing, they didn't even show a direct feed to the networks. So, like, if you're on CBS News, you don't get a direct feed. What you do is you point a camera at a projection screen. So that's why the, the film looks so shitty. The camera's pointed to a projection screen where you see the astronauts jumping around on the moon and you see this weird grainy, eh, third generation image, right? And we did it, and we have never done it since. And we've always said we're gonna do it, and no one's ever even come close. No one's ever even gone into deep space since 1972.
- MWMatt Walsh
We also haven't been trying.
- JRJoe Rogan
We haven't been trying.
- MWMatt Walsh
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
But we always talk about going back, uh, including... Herbert Walker Bush talked about going back, uh, George W talked about going back. They, they all talk about going back, but nobody ever gets anywhere.
- MWMatt Walsh
Well, I think that's 'cause we lost the, the spirit, uh, and hunger for discovery, which is a, is-
- JRJoe Rogan
We didn't just lose that. We lost all the technology from the Saturn V rocket. They don't even have that anymore. In fact, they don't even have the original film. They, they erased all the original footage of the Apollo missions, so you just-
- MWMatt Walsh
So you-
- JRJoe Rogan
... have copies of everything.
- MWMatt Walsh
Y- you could develop the technology again. You can do all that. If, if-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure you could. If you can get through the r- Van Allen radiation belts-
- MWMatt Walsh
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... into deep space with human beings and have them safely come back.
- MWMatt Walsh
But I, I think what you're describing, to me, it... All that does is highlight th-... how incredible the achievement of... was-
- JRJoe Rogan
If they did it. Right, if they did it. But-
- MWMatt Walsh
Right. But there's... But I don't... Eh, well, here's the main point. I don't... I... There's no, there's no evidence, because saying that it was a hoax is an assertion of a d-... It's not, it's not... You're not just denying an event. You're a-... you're asserting a whole other event that you say happened instead. And-... there is evidence that we went to the moon. Now, now, someone who's a skeptic might say, "I, it's not enough evidence," or, "It's not good evidence." There's, like, evidence. There's eyewitness te- (laughs) there's people that went and came back and told us. There's, uh, there's footage. There's a lot-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
Episode duration: 2:39:42
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Transcript of episode v2B28O6YjI0
