The fight over "Woke Right" explodes over Rogan podcasts (04-23-2025--Hour3)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Talking about the quote unquote woke right, I don't know another name for it. It's the name that James Lindsay I think branded this particular strain, and there isn't another name for it, so that's what I'm using. I know people bristle at this idea. I've seen it conflated with national national Christian or Christian national sorry Christian nationalism. But I don't know if it precisely maps. There's a lot about all of this stuff that I don't know. All I know is that I have been seeing I shouldn't say all I know. What I do know is that I have been seeing these little brush fire skirmishes, if you will, around the right wing media landscape for about a year or two, and it's now become it's now become a brush fire. It's now like it's taking off. The fire is out of control, and people are being pressured to sort of take sides and say where they are on this strain that people are trying to identify and label, and James Lindsay and I went over who these people are, So I'm not going to go back over all that. If you want the backgrounds, listen to the last hour on the podcast. But James Lindsay from New Discourses, he's the one who came up with this term, or at least it's attributed to him, and he calls them the woke right because they are exhibiting all of the same tactics and the same sorts of underlying philosophies as the left right. This victimization, this oppression, the blaming of one group of people for all of the problems. And I think that that is why you have this growth in this quote woke right strain occurring after the October seventh attacks. And part of it is also wrapped up in the notion that we don't trust any of the institutions any longer to tell us the truth. So when people come forward and they say, this is really why it's happening, and people want to try to make sense of the unknown and chaos, and so they then start following some of these people, some of these quote unquote influencers in the podcast world, and some of these people have built very large followings, and they have now turned those platforms that they have built into platforms that either flirt with or outright foment anti Jew bigotry. That's how I see it. You may have a different opinion, and I'm not talking about questioning Israel. This is one of the rhetorical slights of hand that a lot of anti Semites will use. And if you criticize Israel, I don't automatically think you're anti Semitic. I think you're anti Jew if you just say I don't like what Israel's doing this and that. However, if you are an anti Semite, you usually do say those same things, which is why then you have to have the discussion with somebody to understand what is motivating their criticism of this one nation in particular. Right, and there are people all along this continuum, you know, from virulent anti Semite to people just asking questions right, Like, there's all these different degrees of it. So I'm trying. I'm not naming people by name to say I think they are anti Semitic or anything, because I don't know what's in their heart. All I can see is they are what they are putting out there for content. And this is something that I do know a little bit about. How to build a show, how to build a podcast, how to curate content. I do know something about that. And so these are things that the hosts are, you know, actively thinking about and creating a show and creating content to advance a certain point of view or certain guests or whatever. Again, every one of these hosts are individuals and they're all making their own decisions for their own shows. However, you can also see that certain things get them the clicks and get them the money, get them the followers. I know this. I work in this industry. I've worked in this industry for twenty five years longer actually, so I understand the structure of how this stuff works. And you end up there's a thing called audience capture where you say things as a host because you know your audience wants to hear that, and you may not even agree with it. You are captured by the audience, a very real thing. It's a difficult thing for hosts to have have to navigate. You don't ever really want to be arguing with your audience all the time because then they'll leave and then you'll be out of a job. You have an incentive not to hack off a large chunk of your audience. I know this firsthand. In twenty fifteen, I was arguing with my audience all the time over the Trump candidacy in the primary. So it's not a comfortable place to be. It's easier to just say what you think your audience wants to hear, or what your audience says to you, and messages or on phone calls demanding what you know, you need to talk about this and you need to talk about that. And the problem for me in that scenario, although it has redounded to my benefit, which is that I'm a bit of a contrariant in case you haven't noticed. So when people demand that I blame the Jews for everything, like, I'm not gonna do that. Well for principled reasons as well, because it's just a class of people. It's just a group of people that share you know, an immutable characteristic, and I like, I don't do that for any other group, Why would do that for them? So this all start? I think not this all started, but this, this anti anti Semitism that has been percolating among the woke right really burst forth after October seventh, and it empowered a lot of people that were harboring or at least putting it out on social media, harboring anti Semitic ideas and views. It allowed them the freedom to now say these things. This permission structure was now granted, and people took full advantage to attack everybody, as you know, in the pocket of Israel that the Jews are telling you to say that and all of this. And you had hosts that leaned into that and still do. And so when Douglas Murray goes on to the Joe Rogan podcast to debate Dave Smith, it created this this nexus, right because Murray being a pro Israel guy in my estimation, and Smith being not a pro Hamasque guy but mainly an anti Israel, anti war he would say, I'm sure and he would probably bristle it my oversimplification of that, but that's what sort of triggered this and then yesterday Jordan Peterson went on Rogan's podcast and he talked about the psychology behind some of what we're seeing with this woke right. So when we come back, I'm going to talk about an analysis, a brief analysis of that Murray David Smith debate real quick, because they both did well and they both made mistakes, as you would imagine in a three hour conversation. And then or on the psychology and the psychopathology that we're seeing in the woke right strain of the media ecosystem. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. 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He thinks it's better to associate with anti semites who agree with him about some elements of foreign policy than non bigots who disagree with him on those issues. He's more likely to denounce somebody whom he thinks is too pro war using his framing, than someone who engages in Holocaust denial, for example. I think that's wrong and morally bankrupt. But it's not the same category as Owens and Carol. Joe Rogan is a different animal. I think he's someone who doesn't like bigotry, but he doesn't pay enough attention or is aware enough to recognize it from someone like Owens or Carol. He takes them at their word, despite them obviously lying once you exis amine it that it's, you know, just a coincidence. So much of their craziness and dishonesty is aimed at Jews. He just likes to have what he perceives as interesting conversations. Rogan does. But the thing is that he does have a huge microphone. So where Douglas Murray is right is an encourage. He's encouraging Rogan to use his platform responsibly. That's not censorship, despite people pretending otherwise. In the same way that Rogan insisted that Dave Smith be on the show with Douglas Murray, he could have insisted that somebody who understands the information behind conspiracies that Ian Carroll promotes should have been on with Ian Carroll. After all, that's why he had a physicist on with Terrence Howard when Terrence Howard the actor was claiming one times one equals two and that physics gets everything wrong. But he didn't do that when Ian Carroll came on because he didn't see and likely still doesn't understand the harm of not put pushing back on Carol's conspiracy. So I assume Murray's goal, aside from promoting his book, was to encourage Rogan to use that large platform more responsibly. In such cases, specifically, a key underlying point is that if we are going to spend so much time criticizing the media and others for misleading the public, then those with large platforms should also develop some standards to make sure that the information they are sharing is accurate and worthwhile. The problem is that Rogan understandably viewed it as somebody telling him what to do, and so he got defensive. And that's why I think it backfired on Douglas Murray. He might have scored points and even been right, but he didn't convince somebody with that platform that he should be using it to push back on some of the stuff. I think Gag Hamilton, by the way, here is exactly right, exactly right. I think he would have been better off focusing on on his book and then having a private conversation with Rogan to try to explain why pushing back on people like Daryl Cooper, who just wrote a blog post about how he's friends with anti Semites but doesn't like that they are obsessed about it, and Ian Carrol who have ulterior motives that Rogan might not recognize. He says, I realized people have mostly abandoned their shared facts and shared realities, but I think there is a legitimate danger in what certain characters are trying to normalize right now, it would be better to encourage those like Rogan to use their platforms to counter that, even if it feels more righteous to attack them for insufficiently having done so thus far. I think that's some good I think that's good advice. So to this point of the platforming, when Jordan Peterson was on yesterday with Joe Rogan, although it was recorded, I guess before yesterday he talked about platforming people who are politically psychopathic. You also set that conversation up, but it poked up and made itself manifest in that conversation. And the issue is how do you identify the psychopathic pretenders and it's even worse now and then make a barrier right now. The right was calling for the left to do that for decades and they didn't and they couldn't. And the left is not good at drawing barriers, partly temperamentally. The right is somewhat better, but there's no shortage of monstrosity there. And so then the question is how do you how do you draw the line? And that's kind of what I was because I've been watching these right wing they're not right wing these psychopathic types manipulate the edge of the conservative movement for their own gain, and a lot of that's cloaked and anti Semitic, guys. There's plenty of anti semitism on the left too, by the way, So it's not unique to the right. But now, yes, yes, yes, particularly now. And so you know you've let your cureuriosity guide you, your curiosity and your desire for knowledge, this quest. You've let that guide you as a podcaster. And I'm, by the way, I'm trying to work through exactly the same sort of thing. How do you know, given your rap radical increase in stature over the last ten years, how do you know when your curiosity and even your skepticism about the fact that things aren't the way that people say they are, because that's certainly been demonstrated in the last ten years. How do you how should anyone decide what guardrails to put up? Like, what do you look for? Do you have a conceptual system worked out for that? He did not spoiler. He did not explain how he's on guard for that. It's very difficult to do, Rush Limbaugh, You ever noticed Rush never had guests that was an intentional thing. And he explained why. He said, guests are not invested in the success of his show. And when you host a show, people ask to be on the show all the time, all the time, because you are simply a vehicle. Now some people are asking because they're you know, they have an important message. They're part of a cause or charity, good stuff, right, like, you want to elevate that message. You want to help this person or this organization, And so no problem, they're doing it for the right reasons. They're trying to get on the air because they're trying to you know, make positive change. They're trying to get redress of some kind, they have a funny story to tell, whatever. But there are other people out there and they simply use you as a host in order to spread whatever message they want to spread. This is why callers get themselves banned from shows. Well, I will only speak for my show. I have banned callers from my show for this very reason, because they are trying to use this platform in order to spread something with which I disagree, and I doubt that they are doing it for anything other than personal reasons. And so it manifests itself in different ways. But a really good one would be you know, racist, antisemitic, like I don't want to hear from I have no desire to hear anything you have to say, because that's the kind of stuff that gives permission structure to others, like oh, well I heard this on the radio. Yeah, that you didn't hear it on my show because I ban that caller. I won't have and oh, Pete, now you're censoring. You can call that whatever you want. That's totally fine by me, right, I don't have any problem if I am set answering a racist from my show. Guilty is charged. I'm totally fine with you accusing me of that. I will own it. But that's part of the responsibility that we have that I have, that I perceive that I have, and other hosts have different perceptions of responsibility and they are free to have them. All Right, If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Here's an email from Joseph who says, yeah, Peterson is calling out such right wing extremists as psychopaths like Mike Cernovich and Glenn Greenwald. He actually did not do that, Joseph. I don't know what did you listen to the entire three hour podcast, because I did, and the only name that I heard him mention was Andrew Tait, who I think definitely fits the bill for a psychopath. He talks about psychopathology or psychopaths being four to five percent of the total population. That's it. He didn't name. I don't believe he named anybody else specifically, if I recall correctly, I never heard Cernovich's name, and I never heard Glenn Greenwold's name. Glenn Greenwold's a lefty. Not that there can't be psychopaths on the left either right. So if you split psychopaths half and half between left and right, you're talking two percent. Like I said, the only one that he mentioned was this guy, Andrew Tate. And if you know anything about that dude, like I said, he fits the bill in my non clinician opinion. Joseph goes on to say, a growing portion on the right field the same way about the Middle East as we do Ukraine. We don't care the millennia that doesn't make that. See, this is the problem, this is what this is exactly what James Lindsay is talking about and what Peterson is talking about. They're mapping these issues onto what like onto their desire, their narcissism, their psycho pathology. They're using these issues to grow their influence, and they're saying these things and the ideology does not matter, The positions do not matter. They don't care. That's the that's the premise here. Psychopaths don't care in the pursuit of power that the the the ideology is irrelevant. That's what Peterson keeps saying. He keeps saying the same thing about this, And so, Okay, you will agree with them on Ukraine. Okay, you agree with them on endless wars, foreign wars. Great, that doesn't that doesn't mean they're not co opting you or attempting to. And if it means then that you have to like, oh, well, you know, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe the Jews are to blame for everything in the world. Like, then that's that's the play. The millennia old blood feud in the Holy Land means no more to us than the Intraslavic family feud in Eastern Europe. The US is basically funded both sides of conflicts and most hotspots all over the world. You'd be shocked if we and our money disappeared, how fast those hot spots would cool off. Yeah, I think that's a bit conceited. I think those hotspots would continue to be hot. They would just use different weapons because, as you just said, Joseph, it's been going on for millennia. They will bash each other's heads in with rocks if they are not provided javelin missiles. Right, Bob says, both speakers, writers and listeners, Both speakers and listeners, writers and readers are somewhat lazy. I seldom trust one man's opinion other than my own, unless that man is Rush Limbaugh or Pete Calender. Well that's very good, that's my truth. I'm sticking to it. Right, let me play this clip now before I run out of time. Also, this was Jordan Peterson appearing on Sean Hannity's Fox Show I Believe last night. Well, I think the most important thing to do first is to draw a distinction between the political and the psychological and not to collapse them together. Right, So imagine this. Imagine that there's a group of individuals, about four percent of the population, who have a set of personality characteristics that have been described as dark tetrat So they're machiavellian, they use their language to manipulate, they're narcissistic, they want unearned social status and reputation. They're psychopathic, which makes them free of empathy and parasitical and predatory, and they're sadistic, so they take positive delight in the unnecessary suffering of others. Now, those people also use false cries of victimization, let's say, to manipulate, and they're entitled. They seek vengeance when it's unwarranted, and they protest loudly and make very public cries for reparations that would be self serving. Okay. Now, the way those people operate is they look for what patterns of belief form groups that they can infiltrate and then capitalize on. And that happens on the right. We did a report the same group on the use of Christ as King as a manipulative strategy by bad actors hypothetically on the right, and this report identified the same sort of people on the left, but it's not primarily political. They're wolves in sheep's clothing who look for where there's power and value and then adopt those beliefs as a surface camouflage so that they can elevate their moral status. Now, and this has become worse in recent years as far as I'm concerned, because the evolved strategies that we have for dealing with these psychopathic types. Psychopathic narcissistic types don't work well online, and so the psychopaths can get away with their terrible manipulations online and they can find like minded people and they can escape from any reputational consequences. And so there's always been psychopaths. Those are the pharisees, for example, that Christ points to the religious pretenders. Those are the people who use God's name in vain and claim moral virtue and even religious devotion, while all they're doing is feathering their own nests and furthering their own narrow interests. And the web social media anonymity enables them to organize and also hides them much more effectively. And this is a problem in religious organizations, it's a problem in political organizations, and it pathologizes the whole culture. You know, most people, eighty percent of Americans agree on virtually everything. And then there's these fringe people and they're not political. They're psychopathological narsisssists who cloak themselves in political guys. And we all have to learn to distinguish between the political and the psychological. We're not good at it. That's the key. That's the key. It's not political, it's psychological. We have to learn, we have to be better at identifying it. The false cries of victimization, and these people look for unguarded stores of value. The university system is the perfect example. These institutions. They had money, they had credibility, prestige, they controlled access through their credentialing with diplomas and such, and they were unguarded for what the left psychopaths did. They came in and they just feasted on this carcass because it was unguarded, because they were ill equipped and ignorant to the threat. Right, that's the case that that Peterson is laying out. Why would you not think that could happen on the right? Like, to me, that's the obvious that's the obvious question that sort of proves the point, which is, if people of this kind of disorder, of this kind of psychopathy, if the politics or the issues don't actually matter, why would you not think that when the right builds up a store of value of some kind, like the podcast world, the new media, why would you not think that they would go in there and do the same thing. They would just say different things because they don't care about what the politics are, what the issues are, The ideology doesn't matter to them. What matters is satisfying their own needs. All right, So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos slides? Are they preserved? Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generations to come. I urge you do not wait until it's too late this spring. Celebrate your past. Visit Creative Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the love and care that it deserves. Creative Video Preserving Family Memories since nineteen ninety seven. Located in mint Hill, just off four eighty five mail orders are accepted to get all the details that createavideo dot Com. So this walk, right, I don't know what to call it, a flare up, this eruption into sort of the more into the public. Because again, as I said earlier, I don't know if it was this hour or last, but I have been aware of these skirmishes that have been occurring. But they were naming people that I didn't really know about, and then every now and again and be like, oh my gosh, what did that person say? Like what what are they saying? And then if I don't know enough about it, I'm not going to bring it onto the show. And so yeah, I started seeing stuff about Candice Owens years ago, maybe like a year or two ago, stuff she was saying, and and I try to get people the benefit of the doubt. But when you give me example, example, example after example, well, now I'm going to believe that like, Okay, this is whatever brand you're trying to build, this is part of your brand. And when you know every explanation boils down to the Jews, then I'm going to draw a certain conclusion from that brand, from your branding effort. And that's not my faults, that's yours, especially for professional communicator, I'm pointing her out. I will note that online over the last twenty four hours there have been a surprising number of people who thought Jordan Peterson was calling them a psychopath, even though Jordan Peterson never mentioned anybody by name except for Andrew t I don't know what Andrew Tate's views are on Israel. I have no idea, okay, don't. I do not give that man a clique. Ever, I understand like he lured a lot of people in and for some reason they think that he is just the BEA's knees on stuff. I do not what I've limited views of him, and what I've read of him, and the things he has said, and the charges against him. It gave me enough of a I think, a basis to say I have nothing that I want to learn from this man. So I don't waste my time, because my time is valuable. It is a unit of my life, and so I am not going to waste it listening to him or occupying my time with thoughts of him. He was the only name that I mentioned, but for some reason, in the last twenty four hours, a bunch of people on the right seem to think that they were called a psychopath, which, guys, that's kind of what a psychopath, That's what a narcissist would think when you hear when you hear Jordan Peterson say four to five percent of the population have these tendencies and they go in and they feast off of the carcass of stored value in an institution. And you think he's talking about you, Well, like, that's kind of one of the symptoms. I'm not saying you're the psychopath. I'm just saying that that's one of the symptoms. That's one of the things that somebody who was doing that would probably think. Also, they're making it about themselves, and now they're victimized because they were called this mean word, woe is me. It's sort of like the old saying that if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that gets hit is the one that yelps. Not that I am advocating throwing rocks at dogs. I'm not saying that. I'm just pointing out that the saying exists for a reason, and what I think Peterson is trying to do and others on the right and James Lindsay, and I know he's not of the right guy's like an atheist. I think he may even be libertarian. I don't even know. But what these guys are trying to do is to warn the followers, the fans of these people to beware because the fall will come, because it always does with psychopaths. And I thought Peterson's comments there were spot on that. In the past, if you're in, you know, an organization and you run into one of these types of narcissistic psychopathic personality types, you learn very quickly what kind of person they are, and then like there, you know, the people in the group, either you know, toss them out, like get out of here, we don't want you in here. You're you know, a toxic presence in our club or whatever, or you just avoid them, you shun them, right. But in today's age with the Internet, that becomes much more difficult to determine. That's what Peterson was talking about. We haven't figured this out yet. How to keep these kinds of toxic personalities from feasting on on the store of value, the unguarded store of value. How do you do that? And when these people go too far, when the psychopath goes too far, and they eventually will because that's kind of their jam. They're going to take a lot of people with them, and whatever good and whatever cause that you think this person is helping you with, they're not actually trying to help you in that cause, because again they're psychopathic, and so they're just using the cause for their own goals, and when their fall occurs, you will go down with them. I believe Satan took a whole bunch of angels with them. So that's the warning. You know, be careful who you are following, Be careful who you are promoting, and if you're a podcaster or a radio host, be careful who you are platforming, because you don't know, right, you just don't know about these people. And by the way, you know, I like, I'm here every day for three hours hopefully and people can call in and we can have conversations, and hopefully people will recognize I'm not a psychopath, but that is what a psychopath would say. Hmmm. Makes you think all right, all right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.