Joe Rogan, the podcast king who recently moved his show, and its millions of listeners, to Spotify, treated them to a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory this week by asserting that “left-wing” activists are behind the wildfires currently raging across the West Coast. After insinuating that Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters’ nightly clashes with police in Portland “[crowd] madness,” Rogan, without citing any evidence or official accounts, said that authorities have “arrested people for lighting forest fires up there. They’ve arrested left-wing people for lighting these forest fires.” The host, who made the comments on Thursday, went on to accuse the media of not “widely” reporting on the supposed antifa arsonists arrests, before concluding that if he could talk to Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, he would tell him, “These people want your head and they want blood, and they don't seem to be willing to settle for anything less.” 

In fact, there has actually been significant media coverage on anti-fascists’ involvement with the forest fires—or, more specifically, their nonexistent involvement in the fires and how conspiracy theorists are causing headaches for local authorities who are constantly forced to debunk the claims. “Oregon Officials Warn False Antifa Rumors Waste Precious Resources For Fires,” read one NPR headline over the weekend. “No, antifa supporters aren’t setting fires in the West,” stated another by the Washington Post, while the Los Angeles Times mockingly put the rumor to rest: “What caused Oregon fires? Just blame antifa.” 

Given how fast this conspiracy theory has spread, both on fringe right-wing sites, social media platforms, and now hugely popular The Joe Rogan Experience, local and federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly been forced to publicly shoot down the claims. “Conspiracy theories and misinformation take valuable resources away [from] local fire and police agencies working around the clock to bring these fires under control,” stated the FBI last week. “Please help our entire community by only sharing validated information from official sources.” Douglas County, Oregon, sheriff’s office noted on Facebook that these absurd rumors are “[spreading] just like wildfire and now our 9-1-1 dispatchers and professional staff are being overrun with requests for information and inquiries on an UNTRUE rumor that 6 antifa members have been arrested for setting fires.” The Ashland, Oregon, police chief called the conspiracy theory “100% false information,” and the Oregon forestry department stated that there is zero evidence of a “mass politically influenced arson campaign.”

On Friday, Rogan admitted he “fucked up” in claiming “people got arrested lighting fires in Portland.” “That turns out to not be true,” he continued. “I was very irresponsible not looking into it before I repeated it. I read one story about a guy getting arrested for lighting fires turned out to be true, but the other shit I read about people getting arrested for lighting fires in Portland was not true. I repeated it without looking into it and it was a really fucking stupid mistake that won’t happen again. I’m sorry."

Rogan, who has said his podcast receives roughly 190 million downloads per month, has a history of giving fringe and far-right conspiracies legs by promoting them on his highly influential show. In 2018, he repeated a talking point from the so-called "white genocide" conspiracy theory, telling Anthony Bourdain’s former producer that all he has “been hearing about Africa lately is what’s going on with white farmers in South Africa. It’s very scary stuff, where people are encouraging people to attack white farmers.” He has questioned whether or not ADHD is a real disorder, saying, “Didn’t someone just say that they invented that? And that it’s not real?” More recently, Rogan was criticized for interviewing an anti-trans author in July, repeating the author’s idea that being transgender is a social “contagion” and seemingly equating its “groupthink model” to what occurs with cutting. “[It] does happen to kids,” he said, “It happens with cutting. It happens with even suicide pacts. It happens with a lot of weird stuff that kids—particularly kids that feel like they’re outcasts and they’re depressed."

Spotify, which reportedly gave Rogan a $100 million-plus deal last May, removed episodes with some notorious right-wing figures, like Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes, according to Entertainment Weekly, when the host officially made the jump earlier this month. Some Spotify staffers have objected to transphobic remarks from past shows making the jump, according to Vice’s Motherboard. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek defended keeping the transphobic content in an all-hands meeting earlier this week, the site reported.

Rogan’s controversial comments came under scrutiny earlier this year when he expressed support for Bernie Sanders, an endorsement promoted by the campaign. After Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Rogan said he’d rather vote for Donald Trump and interjected himself into the 2020 fray this past week by proposing he moderate a debate between the two. Former MMA fighter and outspoken conservative Tim Kennedy, with whom Rogan proposed the debate idea, tagged the candidates in a Sunday tweet pitching the four-hour face-off. Trump, for one, is all in: “I do,” he responded.

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