TheQuartering [2/7/2023
Joe Rogan has been accused of “casually spouting antisemitism” on his hit podcast while trying to defend under-fire progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar from the same charge.
The UFC commentator was discussing how certain terms led to people getting canceled when he decried the Democratic “squad” member getting booted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for her past anti-Semitic comments.
He highlighted Omar (D-Minn.) “apologizing for talking about it’s ‘all about the Benjamins,’” he said of the congresswoman’s 2019 message about American support for Israel.
“It’s just about money — she’s just talking about money,” Rogan said on an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” posted on Spotify Saturday.
“That’s not an anti-Semitic statement, I don’t think that is,” Rogan insisted of the term widely denounced as a racist trope.
“Benjamins are money. The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza. It’s f—ing stupid. It’s f—ing stupid,” he said.
Rogan then said that “whether you agree with her or not,” Omar had shared “a bold opinion.”
“And that opinion is not her own — there’s many people that have that opinion, and they should be represented,” he said.
However, he soon found himself under attack, with some critics even tagging Spotify to ask whether the streaming service was “happy” that its “multimillion-dollar podcaster” was “casually spouting antisemitism.”
UK comedian David Baddiel — the author of a book about anti-Semitism called “Jews Don’t Count” — also accused the podcaster of spreading a “racist myth” on the show “with a big grin.”
“I actually want to stop banging the ‘Jews Don’t Count’ drum at some point but hard to do when a racist myth about Jews is just … said, breezily, on one of the biggest podcasts in the world and no-one gives a f–k,” Baddiel tweeted his 880,000 followers early Tuesday.
