Joe Rogan Experience #1684 - Abby Martin
Narrator, Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Abby Martin (guest)
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Narrator, Joe Rogan Experience #1684 - Abby Martin explores abby Martin Exposes Empire: Israel, Militarism, Media Control, And UFOs Joe Rogan and journalist Abby Martin dive into U.S. foreign policy, Israeli-Palestinian realities, and how mainstream media narratives are manufactured and controlled. Martin argues Israel operates an apartheid, settler-colonial system backed and shielded by the United States, while Palestinian voices are only now breaking through via social media. She details how U.S. militarism, from Yemen to Cuba to environmental destruction, serves empire and corporate profit rather than freedom or security, and describes efforts to legally suppress boycott movements like BDS. The conversation widens into censorship, big tech, UFO disclosures, climate change, and how structural propaganda shapes what Americans believe is true or possible.
Abby Martin Exposes Empire: Israel, Militarism, Media Control, And UFOs
Joe Rogan and journalist Abby Martin dive into U.S. foreign policy, Israeli-Palestinian realities, and how mainstream media narratives are manufactured and controlled. Martin argues Israel operates an apartheid, settler-colonial system backed and shielded by the United States, while Palestinian voices are only now breaking through via social media. She details how U.S. militarism, from Yemen to Cuba to environmental destruction, serves empire and corporate profit rather than freedom or security, and describes efforts to legally suppress boycott movements like BDS. The conversation widens into censorship, big tech, UFO disclosures, climate change, and how structural propaganda shapes what Americans believe is true or possible.
Key Takeaways
Independent documentation has radically shifted global perception of Israel–Palestine.
Martin argues that smartphone footage and grassroots media from Palestinians have exposed home demolitions, shootings of protesters, and life under occupation, eroding the long-dominant U. ...
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BDS is being actively criminalized in the U.S., despite strong First Amendment grounds.
She describes signing requirements in 30 U. ...
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U.S. foreign interventions often create or worsen the threats they claim to counter.
From supporting Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen to sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, Martin contends these policies deepen humanitarian crises, strengthen extremist groups, and serve strategic control rather than democracy or human rights.
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The Pentagon is a central but under-discussed driver of ecological collapse.
Martin and Rogan highlight research showing the U. ...
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Mainstream media structure and incentives systematically favor imperial narratives.
Referencing Chomsky’s ‘manufacturing consent’ model, Martin points to concentrated ownership, advertising dependence, reliance on official sources, and “flak” against dissenters as mechanisms that keep imperial, pro-Israel, and pro-military frames dominant.
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Recent UFO/UAP transparency may be weaponized to justify further militarization.
While both find many incidents credible, Martin questions why intelligence and political figures are suddenly legitimizing UFO reports now, warning that fear of unknown craft could be used to sell Space Force expansion and new defense spending.
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Challenging empire begins with changing public consciousness and demilitarizing identity.
Martin maintains that Americans must see themselves as citizens of an empire whose global footprint is a policy choice, not an inevitability, and that real change requires dialogue across political divides plus organized resistance to militarism and censorship.
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Notable Quotes
“They can no longer say that they're acting in self-defense… This is part of a settler colonial attitude.”
— Abby Martin
“There are 30 states in the U.S. that have passed legislation that says you cannot make money at a state institution… unless you sign a contract saying that you will never advocate the boycott of Israel.”
— Abby Martin
“Even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be headed towards total disaster for one major reason: the Pentagon.”
— Abby Martin (quoting Barry Sanders’ research)
“We are living in a highly polarized, highly politicized society… and it's never been worse. We're siloed off into our own echo chambers… and that is not the way that we need to be.”
— Abby Martin
“It doesn't have to be this way. And it starts with demilitarizing our mind, our consciousness.”
— Abby Martin
Questions Answered in This Episode
If independent footage from conflict zones can so dramatically shift public opinion, how should we rethink the role and credibility of legacy media in shaping foreign policy consent?
Joe Rogan and journalist Abby Martin dive into U. ...
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At what point does foreign lobbying for laws like anti-BDS contracts cross the line into unacceptable interference with domestic civil liberties?
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How can environmental and climate movements practically integrate anti-militarist demands when the Pentagon is structurally protected from scrutiny?
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Is there any realistic political path in the U.S. toward meaningfully reducing overseas bases and military engagements without triggering the very security fears Martin describes?
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Given the history of psychological operations and threat inflation, how can citizens distinguish between genuine UFO transparency and narratives designed to rationalize new defense initiatives like Space Force?
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Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, Abby Martin, how are you?
I'm great, how are you, Joe?
You're my favorite hardcore lefty.
(laughs) Thank you.
(laughs)
Thank you very much.
Yeah. 'Cause, uh, at all... You know, all the podcasts that I ever do, whenever I do a podcast with you, I'm like, "Okay, this one's gonna be interesting."
(laughs)
There's, there's gonna be some shit that's gonna disturb me that I don't know about.
Hell yeah, man. That's how I like to do it. Well, a lot of the stuff is depressing and it's not for everyone, but, you know, you try to, you try to just go balls deep, because I, I grew up in the YouTube generation, and I learned so much and I wanna be that source for a lot of people, you know? I wanna, I wanna guide people through the journey of learning about real education and all the sinister shit your government's doing.
Sinister shit all guns- governments are doing. You know, I remember one of the first times... No- not one of the first times, but one of the, one of the biggest times that I got blowback from having you on was your s- your personal experience interviewing people in Israel.
Mm-hmm.
Interviewing, um, Israelis and interviewing Palestinians and, and trying to sort through, like, what is really going on over there? What is the real attitude about people over there? And I remember go- because... Fucking cam- it must be a, an email campaign. It must've been-
Yeah.
... a campaign, because it was, like, the same letter over and over and over again I was receiving in my inbox. It must've been, like, a website you could go and then sign it and then send it to me. But n- now, don't you think that, like, the tide has shifted in that subject, where now people are realizing, like, they're going, "Hey, like, this is not as simple as the mainstream media wants everybody to, to, to look at it"? The way mainstream media was portraying it in this country, it was always that Israel's the good guys, the Palestinians are the bad people. That's how it was. But the mainstream perception now has v- very much shifted, don't you think? Like with this last-
100%.
When you see, like, that Iron Dome and you're seeing these rockets being fired out of Palestine and they're all getting detonated in the air, and then you realize, like, "Oh, this is, this is a, kind of a crazy situation." Like, one side has this insane technology and the other side is kind of in an open-air prison camp, in a way. Like, you can't go anywhere.
Right.
Y- you're kinda stuck.
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