The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Douglas Murray Challenges Rogan Guests On History, Hamas, And Responsibility
- Joe Rogan hosts commentator Douglas Murray and comedian-podcaster Dave Smith for a tense, extended debate on Israel–Hamas, Ukraine, World War II revisionism, and the role and responsibility of popular podcasters. Murray repeatedly criticizes Rogan and Smith for platforming non-experts who, in his view, mainstream fringe or dangerous historical narratives about figures like Churchill and Hitler and contemporary conflicts. Smith pushes back that expertise has been badly discredited (e.g., COVID, Iraq) and argues that ordinary people and podcasters have every right to question foreign policy, NATO expansion, and Israeli conduct in Gaza. The conversation circles around whether criticizing Israeli policy is tantamount to enabling antisemitism, whether Israel’s war in Gaza is morally or strategically justified, and how much blame Western interventions bear for today’s wars.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasLarge platforms carry real responsibility for who and what they amplify.
Murray argues that Rogan and Smith, by repeatedly hosting non-expert history podcasters like Daryl Cooper, help mainstream fringe or revisionist views (on Churchill, Hitler, and the Holocaust) that can fuel darker online subcultures, even if that’s not their intent.
Expert failure doesn’t justify a total free‑for‑all on complex topics.
Smith points out that the ‘expert class’ disastrously mishandled COVID and Iraq, but Murray counters that while experts have failed, some baseline standards, evidence, and historical scholarship still matter and not every hot take deserves equal weight.
NATO expansion and U.S. policy are seen very differently by the guests.
Smith leans on Kennan, Burns, and others to argue NATO’s eastward push and U.S. meddling in Ukraine and Georgia were clearly provocative to Russia; Murray insists Russia’s invasion is fundamentally driven by Putin’s revanchism and Ukrainians’ desire for protection, not just Western actions.
They fundamentally clash on Israel’s responsibility for civilian deaths in Gaza.
Murray frames Gaza’s devastation as a tragic but law‑of‑war consequence of Hamas embedding in civilian areas and launching October 7; Smith argues that when Israel knowingly bombs buildings full of civilians, it is morally responsible for those deaths, regardless of Hamas’s tactics.
Hamas’s 2005–2023 rule in Gaza is a central point of moral disagreement.
Murray emphasizes 18 years of misrule, tunnel‑building, and rocket fire instead of state‑building as the core Palestinian failure; Smith counters that Israel’s blockade, periodic wars, and earlier occupation also structurally doomed Gaza and that most Gazans never truly chose Hamas.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotes“If you mainstream very, very fringe views… at some point, that view that was so fringe will be what eager, very disconnected, unhappy people are gonna start playing with too.”
— Douglas Murray
“There’s danger when the establishment and the institutions are all caught with their pants down, having sold a bunch of very consequential policies based on lies. Then people go, ‘What else have they been lying to me about?’”
— Dave Smith
“It is almost like there’s a cost to pay for, instead of living in peace with your neighbor, constantly trying to wipe them out.”
— Douglas Murray (on Hamas and Gaza)
“If you drop a bomb knowing that there were women and children in that building, you’re taking an action knowing that these innocent people are gonna die. Then that is by definition intentional.”
— Dave Smith (on Israeli strikes in Gaza)
“We walk through life in a fog… When we look back, we see the man and we see the path, but we don’t see the fog.”
— Douglas Murray (quoting Milan Kundera to explain historical hindsight and ‘what‑ifs’)
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