Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 27: Joe Rogan vs. Douglas Murray vs. Sam Harris vs. DTG

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

We immerse ourselves in the dark waves of the discourse to bring you treasures beyond mere mortal ken. Supplementary Material 2700:00 Introduction & Australian Holidays03:53 James Lindsay's New Revelations07:20 Michael O'Fallon's Conspiracy Hipsterism09:41 Trump, Bukele, and Transparent Conspiracies11:53 The Whitehouse declares the Lab Leak is a FACT14:42 The conspiracy leak treadmill: UFOs, RFK assassination, and lableak21:26 The Rise of the Idiots: Grimes on Transformers Cinematography29:17 Lex vs. Flint: The mask slips33:21 The Iron Curtain falls on Lex's Subreddit35:18 Subreddit Moderation Choices41:46 Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan46:36 Darryl Cooper's Nazi Apologetics, the Role of Experts and JAQs57:25 Strategic Disclaimers & Convincing Apologetics01:03:28 The Rogansphere and Media Power01:07:30 Murray on the Lab Leak01:12:19 Murray's Anti-Establishment Hypocrisy01:19:10 Standards in Journalism01:22:42 Alternative Media's Double Standards01:28:33 Douglas Murray joins Sam Harris01:29:26 The Psychology of Religious Extremism01:36:04 Radicalisation and Extremism01:41:24 Murray's 'Criticism' of MAGA01:44:32 What is even the Right Wing?01:55:11 What about Elon Musk?02:05:40 AfD isn't that bad, and Elon has promoted Douglas too!02:16:10 Rogan and the Moon Landing02:17:16 Sam is still a bad judge of character02:19:29 Isn't everyone a hypocrite?02:23:16 Free Speech Debates02:26:58 The role of Moderation02:31:37 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (2hr 32 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesSam Harris Episode 410 Douglas Murray: The Whole CatastropheJoe Rogan Experience #2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas MurrayFlint's post about Lex FridmanGrimes on Transformers' cinematographyJames Lindsay on being used by NazisNathan Barley on YouTubeWhitehouse website on the Lab LeakJoe Rogan Experience #2307 - Tim Dillon

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary materials. The anthropologist Chris Kattner, me, the psychologist Matthew Bryan over there, him. G'day Matt, g'day. How's it going? Good afternoon Chris. It's going well. It's It's the fourth day of an ultra long weekend What is it no, it's Easter that was a Queen's birthday doesn't matter either way we get the days off

Which is fine, even though I don't really have the day off because what am I doing Chris? I'm Writing books about gurus and recording with you. But, you know, I'm not complaining. I love it. The battle never ends, Matt. You're there. And the Queen's birthday. So I granted the Queen and Jesus, you know, both deities in all respects. Do you still get to celebrate the Queen's birthday now she's dead? No, no, I misspoke. It's not the Queen's birthday anymore. It celebrate the Queen's birthday? No, she's dead. No, no, I misspoke.

It's not the Queen's birthday anymore. It's the King's birthday. It's the King's. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So give that up. Stop celebrating the Queen's birthday. You need to change the calendar.

When is King Charles's birthday? You know, the funny thing about that is that so whatever, this is one of the public holidays and Australia's like love public holidays, right? We've got a lot of them and we cherish them. But what happens is, is there all these random public holidays accruing and no one's going to give any of them up. But also we don't actually care about the thing that the holiday is for. So nobody actually cares about the birthdays of monarchs. So the holiday has long been shifted to a day

which is convenient for Australians to have a holiday. Because you get this problem with these random holidays that could be at any time of the year and they could all be bunched up or they're on a Tuesday, not convenient, because what you really want is a long weekend. So all of these holidays have been disconnected from their sources, but we still have them.

This is the important thing. We still have the holiday and it's now tacked on to any convenient Friday or Monday to give us holidays, long weekends, all throughout the year. That's what Australians want, basically. How interesting. So like King Charles's birthday probably won't be on his actual birthday. That's what I think. I've never checked this. Like I've never Googled. King Charles's birthday. Well, you can you can let us know. I'm pretty sure it's not today. King

Charles birthday. Look at this. I'm Jimmy and you right now. It is November 14. Actually near my birthday. So November 14th. So there you go. That's a fair distance away from today. Isn't it? No, but today's not his birthday. Anyway, that's right. You've proven nothing.

No, what happens on November 14th? And that'll cover it. Now, so there's many things that have been happening. I've got a wide repertoire of things that I could introduce you to. Some of them slightly amusing, or let's see, some of them slightly more dark. We do need to cover and some details.

Douglas Murray's appearance on Joe Rogan and subsequent appearance on Sam Harris. But before we get to that, do you remember somebody called James Lindsay? James, yes, I do indeed. I know about James. He's coming. Conceptual James. Conceptual James. Yes. I know about James. He's coming and conceptual James. Conceptual James. Yes. He's quite quite an arc. So, well, a bunch of people were sending me that he tweeted out.

I have a lot of my work over the past decade to repent of. The Nazis use me and I knew for a long time they were using me or at least glimpsed it. It's heavy. Sadly, it's also real AF. OK, Michael O'Fallon of Sovereign Nations response. For those of you just joining the conversation, James is referring to the Claremont crowd and those ministries and organisations that are now jumping on the Nazi-esque unbound executive anti-liberty movement. And James Lindsay replied, I also mean the real Nazis on the Nazi esque unbound executive anti-liberty movement.

And James Lindsay replied, I also mean the real Nazis on the shadowy global stage behind these, you know, forces and whatnot. It's cut off there, so I can't see what exactly he said. But he's clarifying. No, you know, not just them, also real Nazis. But, you know, the people were like, oh, is this another turning off the wheel for James Lindsay? You know, is this his redemption arc?

And no, probably not, right? James Lindsay is someone who was big in the EFES scene, them was big in the kind of, I mean, I say big, I just mean, that's what he was big into it. Not that he was actually influential, but yes, he was, he was an atheist. And then he was an anti woke person. Then he was like a MAGA, sycophant, Then he was like a MAGA, antifaxer person. And now he's like still on all of those. But now he's claiming that the kind of, you know, Kurdish Arvind type are themselves like woke right.

That's the, you know, the term that he's been using. They're identarians, aphoritarians. Actually, he's basically said that they are themselves not communists, they're right-wing communists. Like they're using, you know, communism in the right-wing garb. Yeah, once again, demonstrating the remarkable flexibility with which he uses terms.

I mean, they're bad, but you know, this is his thing. You know, anything you don't like is communism. Yes. It's like the flip side of everything you don't like is fascism, right? Yeah, I'm with you. It speaks more to James's personality. I think he would genuinely have recognized for some time now that he is functioning effectively as a tool for the extreme right in his heart of hearts. He probably recognizes some dissonance there with what he is supposed to be about.

And this is kind of a this this woke right thing is like a way of squaring the circle, right? All of these add them to the list of enemies, fight with more people. So I'll hand it to him in an incredibly small way, I suppose, at least he's, I don't know, recognising something. He's feuding like in fighting with some of the MAGA people, yes. And I also happened to have a look by Michael O'Fallon was doing, because, you know, we were talking, would he be a Trump and Mike apologist? And it's interesting because he is a Trump guy, right? But he also has to have like his bespoke conspiratorial takes.

So it's it's kind of like you think this is the real issue, but this is actually it. Right. And I saw like, just for example, when he was talking about the lab leak, there was no lab leak. There was a lab in Wuhan and something measurable was strategically released. The response was strategic. The lockdowns crushed the economy and free trade. The entire event was alchemical. Fauci was just a role player in a much larger scheme.

That is, that is a hipster. That is a hipster, you know, move isn't it? He's one, you know, you think you're a critical thinker, you think you're onto things by, you know, saying there's a lab lake, but actually there's levels beneath this. You've got to dig deeper. Yeah. I saw he was getting very upset about the possibility of introducing official ID at airports like they have in Singapore. It's all automated, a lot more efficient, but he of course sees this as the beginning of global domination of the New World Order and whatnot.

So in this respect, he's actually more consistent than Alex Jones because Alex Jones likewise has portrayed all those things as the end times, the New World Order and whatnot. But like any of it that is associated with Trump, he's basically apologetic for, but O'Fallon seems to like value his conspiracy hipsterism more highly than that, which is possibly why he's still such a minor figure with no real influence except for M. James Lindsay. So yeah. Yeah, interesting. Interesting colourful characters, Christian except for M. James Lindsay. So yeah. That's it. Yeah, interesting, interesting, colorful characters.

Christian Dominionist and conspiracy theorist, globalism warrior, but not specifically a mega guy. And you know, it is interesting because like you saw recently about this spectacle of Trump with the president of El Salvador in the White House doing a press conference and them mocking the idea of returning this person who was deported right to the gang prison over there, like kind of flown out at night with no due process, right?

And then it may have been an error. They've acknowledged it might have been an error, but both of them, the president of El Salvador and Trump giggling that despite a unanimous Supreme Court decision that they have to facilitate the return, that they can't do it because they're both washing their hands. But the president of El Salvador is dressed in all black, right, with like a very neatly manicured beard. And they're essentially laughing about the fact that, you know, they're not going to be engaging in any due process. And Trump was then, you know, saying there, maybe you need to build five more prisons to put some homegrown Americans, right? The troublemakers that we have. And if you were, you know, a conspiracy prone person, it does look a bit like the villains are right there. You know, they're behaving like villains.

They're cackling in public dress, they're all black, one of them looks like Dracula. And they're laughing about, you know, oh, there'll be no due process. Don't worry about that. And and yet this doesn't seem to cause that much consternation amongst, you know, the the conspiratorial free speech loving pros. Yeah, no, no. I think a lot of that stuff is just skin deep, isn't it? Then, you know, yeah, like the high minded ideals or even the conspiracies, like

the stuff that they purport to be worried about, like government overreach, for instance, it's clearly not, it's clearly not something that really bothers them. As long as it's by the guys they like targeted at the right people. I think, I think the same is probably true of people with political opinions across the spectrum to some degree, to be honest. The thing that is on the tin isn't really the thing that drives you. Yeah, because you know what? They were all very upset about this overreach from government meddling in science and just unanimously declaring science and just unanimously declaring that this is the way the science is, you know, follow the science, all that stuff that got marked on the right.

So just recently, the White House changed. Like, you know, if you go to anything about COVID-19 or whatever, it used to take you to these websites, giving you information about the virus and measures to take. That's all being redirected now to a site that has the header Lab Lake, the true origins of COVID-19. There's a very stylized presentation with Trump walking in the middle of the Lab Lake and COVID-19 written and signed font. And it's a sleek website basically declaring that the true origins of COVID-19 are definitely from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It was a virus manufactured there, released, Dr. Fauci covered it up, all this kind of thing. So it's basically a high production value conspiracy website. And this is just announced by

Fiat from the Trump administration. And so you would imagine that these principal defenders who don't want government meddling in science, right? The L'Ablic advocates, they are the kind of people that are very worried about this politicizing of issues and whatnot. They would all come out against this, of course, right? And say, no, this is not. We think the scientific evidence supports this, but we do not, this kind of, you know, political overreach and, uh, no, they didn't, Matt, none of them did. They were all just sharing around stuff as per usual. They seemed quite happy that the issue is back getting the attention because of this.

So yeah. Yeah. Well, that's sort of, yeah, the heterodox thinking moves very quickly from the position of look, we just want to have an open discussion about this. It should be okay for alternative viewpoints to be expressed. You know, don't, don't try to cancel us and stuff for, for, for wanting to suggest this. We want a real discussion, public discussion of the evidence. It segues from that to, to what you just described incredibly,

incredibly easily. Now, not that they did, but imagine if the Biden or Obama administration had done something like that in the other direction. You know, there would be gnashing of teeth, ranting of garments. So yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's it. The yellow thing is you might wonder who would be swayed by this. I mentioned this before this happened, that the White House is full of conspiracy theorists now. The Trump administration is a conspiracy administration. So it will obviously come out and basically endorse various conspiracies. But you remember there was that big lead up to the RFK documents being released,

the assassination all being released. Funny, you didn't hear much about that after all those documents were released. Like it's almost as if they didn't provide any of the revelations that were supposed to be there. So that's right. I'd forgotten about that. I remember the buildup to that kind of thing. What about the UFO documents too? Wasn't there meant to be some release of those? Did that happen? Yeah, well, it doesn't matter because like, this is the thing. Invariably, McWest is correct. It's simply just hearsay or people say, and I once saw a million spacecraft in this thing, and nothing is ever provided

apart from shaky footage and stuff that McWest can then deb So it's it's very much just the discourse around it that matters. And you might be wondering, Matt, like what kind of Lizzie Fekker would see this White House, you know, website and then take it as like compelling evidence. And let me just remind you of one Joe Rogan. Very passionately. They're right. You're wrong. No one is ever questioning anything. No one ever questions science.

No one goes, wait a minute. I think it's healthy to every now and then go, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, there was just something that got released today that showed, they just released today that showed that COVID-19 definitively came from that lab thousand percent one hundred percent proof it came from that lab I read it a little bit of it on the way here yeah it's yeah nuts it's nuts man it's nuts these fucking people they just got roped in to this and it was a man completely man-made 100% disease 100% and they knew that from the moment it leaked the moment it happened They just lied and Fauci is just out there walking around

That's an interesting. It's an it's an interesting case When someone like that in that position Repeatedly lied to people about the origins of that. Yeah. And is allowed to just be free. And faces zero consequences. Meanwhile, they were trying to put Trump in jail because he-

Inflated the price of a condo. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, okay. So there's still, I mean, obviously Joe Rogan is, he's not even sure if we landed on the moon. So look, that is not surprising, but it does illustrate like an incredibly common thing, which you'd expect better from people, which is this inability to pass the difference between second order or third order comment and opinion, or straight up propaganda like this from actual novel primary sources

of evidence. And so we've seen it again and again with this where someone from some newspaper, some journalist takes into their head to reiterate some things from years ago, you know, reinterpreting an opinion that's that's been delivered by an intelligence agency or something. And everyone is like, well, this changes everything. And of course it changes nothing. All it's changed is that a journalist has written an article about stuff that was already out there. Likewise, this thing by the Trump administration, of course they're, of

course they're going to do this, right? They're going to pronounce it, but that's all they're doing. They're not offering any genuine evidence. So you've just got to keep a clear distinction in your mind between something that is new. And it could be new, not in the sense of primary, someone's gone and gathered more data. But it could be a careful re-analysis or a synthesis

or some kind of meta-analysis that's been done by an authoritative, independent source or a researcher. But it's, but stuff like a journalist's opinion article or a public press release by a government organization which doesn't provide any details or any extra evidence, that just doesn't count. That is not new information. I know you would think that goes without saying, but it somehow doesn't. It hasn't quite penetrated Jorgen. It's not even adding new information in the sense of, oh well, before we didn't know what Trump thought and now we do.

Right? You even already knew that's what he thought. All that's happened is it has gotten some people to create a flashy website to encapsulate what he thinks. Yeah, that is, it would be like, you know, he's not that concerned with this night, but if the white house put out a website that was like Obama was actually not an American, there's a lot of questions around his birth certificate and what not right now the White House official position.

Yeah, which is, it is the White House's position because that's what Trump argued for many years and I'm sure if you asked him he would say, you know, well, I just had questions. But like, it wouldn't then mean, oh, this is, have you seen this new thing that's come out that says Obama? It's like, it's proven now, but Joe Roganan. And like this is the thing, you know, we've seen this so many times with Joe Rogan, but his stance on this is entirely dependent on whatever the particular conclusion which says if it's something he doesn't like, he's like, these sources whose fundiness is this like George Soros backdoor, like, where's there evidence from and we can't trust these guys. And if it's something he does like, he's just like, oh, I've seen it on Twitter the other day. There's this thing. No, it's 100% proven.

So crazy, man. This stuff, actually, that's incorrect. He's like, but yeah, I'm sure there's still, it must have been something else or whatever. So he is impossible to penetrate whatever conclusion that he particularly wants to reach at a given time. We know that about Jorgen. We'll hear a little bit more about that kind of thing when we see him talk to Douglas Murray. But Matt, there's one other thing. This is a little bit looser, a little bit less. I just saw this today. It's not even that important, but it struck me. There was this TV series that was popular in the UK called Nathan Barley. It was kind of like a pizdeck out of like vice and hipsters. That was the thing that it was making fun of at that time, you know, edgy journalism

and whatnot. So it was actually kind of targeting not necessarily left wing, but like, you know, very hip urban culture, this kind of hipster kind of stuff. And in it, you had a journalist, Dan Ashcroft, who was lamenting the rise of the idiots. Right. But then somewhat ironically, he became like a figure of, of admiration amongst those people. Right.

It's a, it's a good series. Only six episodes. You should watch it if you're interested in that kind of thing. But I saw a tweet this morning by Grimes, Elon Musk's ex partner and also musician of some note. Right now. This is what she said. Grimes, just to watch Transformers, I was not prepared for this to be the greatest cinematography ever, just like

it is absurd, but it's incredibly majestic to behold. The cuts, the edits, the color is so fantastic. And then on top of seeing the top of the craft, there is also a transformer destroying the pyramids, and that is actually really unexpectedly, emotionally intense symmetry. I knew Michael Bay was good because I lifted some of this popular shot techniques in past music videos, but wow, I kept all punctuation intact there. And she's put clips of her watching the various scenes. It's from Transformers 3.

It's not even Transformers 1. Well, now you know how I feel when you're waxing lyrical about Ghostbusters or something. I guess I do. Ghostbusters is a good movie. But no, I know what you mean. I think we're both genuinely puzzled about what's going on here because there's multiple options, right? One option is it's a symptom of just the dumbing down of modern culture incredibly, where an idiocracy type scenario. Get off my where, you know, an idiocracy type scenario, you youngsters,

yeah, Huxley's brave new world, right? We're very, you know, very basic. PAP is, is kind of savored like it's fine wine, you know, or it could be that this is like some sort of irony thing where it's an ironic. Yeah, I'm I'm calling this fine art when it's obvious to create a shit like, but I'm not so ironic that that makes it insightful. What I'm saying, I get this because you know, sarcasm operates on this font. But the thing is Grimes is not somebody that's noted for her, you know, high level sarcasm or with it.

She's usually not talking at multiple levels. No, she might think she is. She might think she is, but not. And if you look at the comments under it, you know, when people respond and they're like, oh, wow, you know, but she is responding enthusiastically. And like, you know, as you said, Matt, I enjoy like stupid movies, you know, with big things. I liked the first Transformers movie.

I thought, you know, it was okay, like perfectly enjoyable, stupid, you know, Hollywood blockbuster. But as they went on, they became increasingly bad, right? Increasingly noted for just pure green-skinned spectacle. Michael Bay, Leeds the Edge Michael Bay, you might describe it as. So describing it as a beautiful, like look at the composition, look at the free him as the giant transformer rolls over the CG pyramid. Or just the pure emotional gut punch of the CGO transformer, you know, smashing up a pyramid.

I remember that scene. Part of that scene is that there's a bunch of transformers that come together to form Destroyer. This is a character from the Transformers franchise that is made of lots of smaller Transformers. And in the movie, he forms up and they're fighting on the pyramids and all this kind of thing. And then one of them looks up and part of the Transformer machines that have combined together is swinging two large, like Korean demolition balls in between the legs of the transformer as it's, you know, battling, right? So it's a joke about it, like testicles. Right. Yeah. Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. Right. So it's kind of on the same level as Idiocracy's Ouch My Balls. That's kind of like it's just it's the.

So this this is probably part of the explanation for why Grimes and Elon Musk were able to get on so well for so long. It does actually know the piece of the puzzle falls into place. And yet Grimes wrote that one good song. I don't even know what that is. But I feel like song writing competence is entirely independent from like intellectual rigor. That's my take. Come on. You're a good counter example. That's a good counter example. But I don't know, Matt, like you would hope that it's irony drenched trolley, but it doesn't seem to be. It doesn't seem to be. And

the fact that there will be millions of people or at least hundreds, thousands, whatever the case might be that read that and don't think it's ironic. Right. But I don't think, I genuinely don't think Grimes has that the B, that meta ironic. I literally think she just watched Transformers and was like, whoa, wow. Like, yeah. There's a third explanation you haven't covered yet, which is just the influence of drugs. I mean, that's a fair point. I would, I would kind of allow that, but like that's, that's actually the best. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's okay.

So if it is that we'll give her a pass, but, um, not for all the rest of the stuff she does, like, but you know, for that specific thing, I think she's also, you know, Curtis Sharvin and whatnot fans. So Well, whatever whatever Matt I had a bunch of transformer toys as a child I'm not kept I did you I was super into them and I have not seen a single transformers movie and I never ever would Did you not see the one from the 80s the animated one? That's that's very good. Like I saw the cartoons I think yeah. Yeah, I saw the cartoons, I think. Yeah, yeah, I saw the cartoons. Not an adult, Chris, an adult watching. But you know my opinion about this stuff. I don't understand

why anyone would watch a bloody superhero movie either. But there's a 19, I don't know, I think it's Lear D.D.'s cartoon, which has a bunch of people doing voice acting. I think Leonard DeMoy, Orson Welles, the Orson Welles fan, he was in the 1986 Transformers movie, so are you gonna slack him off? Well, his career really took a dive after the alcohol took its toll. Yeah.

It's a classic. It's got emotional scenes in it. So no, I'm crying. But my defense is I was a child. When I watched that, but yeah. Yeah. So that's Grimes. Good job, Grimes.

You're really doing, doing well there. And now last thing, Matt, last thing before we get to, um, you know, Douglas Murray, the main course, I just want to keep note of this because it's useful to keep track of what Lex is up to, Lex Friedman. So Lex was extolling how open-minded he is, how incredible he is. He's willing, he won't be pigeonholed. He listens to experts on all sides.

And Flint Dibble got a little bit, I read it this cause he responded saying, is ghosting an expert you're invited on and instead having on the pseudo scientist, an effective way to host long form discourse about topics of public interest. Right. So this is Flint Dibble calling out Lex that he hosted Graham Hancock after he invited Flint on, you know, to basically shit on Flint. And just like Rogan also who brought Graham back on

and brought on Graham's orbiters, all of them that complained about Flint. So you can understand he's a little bit salty, right? But Lex responded and subsequently deleted this, by the way, and all his other responses on this day where he was on a bit of a rampage. But I think this is the way and all his other responses on this day where he was on a bit of rampage But I think this is the real the real Lex crying

Laughing emoji. Wow, that's dishonest. The world doesn't revolve around you. I didn't ghost you I've been nothing but friendly and accommodating. I said let's chat when I'm in London next. I haven't been to London yet I've talked to awesome mainstream archaeologists and will talk to many more. Recorded a great one recently actually. But now you just ensure that you are not one. There are a lot of great scientists, archaeologists, paleontologists, et cetera, out there who are smarter and kinder than you. I'll talk to them. Kissing emoji. We need humanity to regain trust in the scientific community and experts. People like you are the reason people are losing trust in the first place. Do better.

Yeah, that is Lex. That is Lex. That's my flex. That is a true version of Lex. Yeah. That is a true version of Lex. Yeah. Yeah. Goading about his platform and how big it is, you know, how lucky you are to get on it and little like snide, you know, digs, you know, I'll talk to the other people, but you just lost your big chance.

And then even do better, Matt, even do better. Now, I think he's possibly, you know, using that as whatever, but the whole message is do better. Right. So like, it's the kind of thing that would normally cause people like Lex to go into a shit fit. Now, Flint responded just to highlight here what actually happened. And he said, haha, in our chat, I reached out asking for an update.

You never replied for over nine months. In that timeframe, you allowed someone to trash my reputation on your podcast and still didn't reach out to me. I'd call that ghosting by any standard, but sure, you be you. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Lex's version, not entirely honest. So Lex, in the meantime, he had Graham Hancock on as well, did he? Is that right? Oh yeah, he had Graham Hancock on shortly after he appeared on Rogan and he invited him, what do you think about Flint Devel? Lex brought up that topic for Graham to essentially

explain what a terrible person Flint is and how wrong he was, how dishonest he is. So yeah. Yeah. So it seems like a fair criticism. Lex not promoting responsible understanding of archeology. I think that is a fair thing to say, but you know, Lex is a decider. Like he's gonna be Joe Rogan one of these days. People need to come crawling to him. Academics will bow to him.

That's right. He's the cannon waiting. Good God. Frightening thought. It is. But the thing about that as well, Matt, that we'll just update people on, Lex ruled his subreddit with an iron fist or sorry, a bunch of anonymous mods who purely post Lex's episode and you know replicated his grievances with people that had criticized them on Twitter or elsewhere in Reddit. So very motivated mods that do nothing except promote Lex's episodes. Yeah, and police his subreddit with an iron fist. Yes. Yes.

That was nothing to do with Lex as he described. They're completely independent, right? They're all independent. Unlike most other mods on Reddit as well. They don't actually seem active anywhere else, but nevermind. Nevermind. I'm sure some of them are. It's just, you know, they just have a specific interest. Yeah.

They wouldn't be sock puppets, but they definitely... No, no, no, no, no. I suspect the real people, but real people that Lex might have some control over, shall we say. But in any case, Lex's subreddit, which was already a draconian land where criticism shall not be uttered, only Prius and Lex allowed, only positive feelings, has now become even more lockdown. He's got full love career, has he? positive feelings, it has now become even more lockdown. To the extent you're not allowed to post. If you go now and look, New Threads, they'll be like, you know, all 45

days old because the only ones that are allowed to be posted are his episodes. So any New Thread is deleted unless posted by a moderator. So Lex is a big fan of, you know, free speech, free expression. He wants to hear critical feedback. I'm not on his fucking cell phone. Oh God. That's so funny. That's so funny. I mean, it's a bit like that mask off thing. Like, I mean, it should be obvious that his saccharine, schmaltzy sentiments are not bona fide, right? But it only takes a moment to look behind the curtain

a little bit and you see what the real deal is there. I mean, I gotta say, not to pat ourselves in the back, but just by dint of contrast, Chris, this is one other way you could run a subreddit is, or not run it rather, is say, okay, look, there's a Decoding the Guru subreddit. That's fantastic. We're not going to have anything to do with it. We're not going to exert any control with honorary mods on it.

It is a robust place where there is a fair bit of criticism as well as people saying nice things and a whole bunch of random off topic stuff, because that's what Reddit is. But, you know, it's not normal is what I'm saying for people who have a podcast or do anything to do that kind of thing. That's what I'm saying. Oh, I don't know. Because like the so some nuance there to that is that there are various subreddits where the people who create the podcast or whatever are involved or in some way or other control the community. And this is sometimes, I think sometimes useful because it means that they can orientate things towards, you know, whatever way they want their communities to be, which I don't think that the absolute free for all model is

always the best option. And it can be the case that you end up with like this phenomenon called snark subreddits, which are like dedicated heater subreddits. Now this usually happens organically, like Joe Rogan's one is sort of a hater subreddit and Sam Harris's one is mixed. Like Sam Harris has claimed they absolutely all hate him, but it's much more a mixed one. Dave Rubin famously ended up with like a hate subreddit. And there's one called The Fighter and the Kid, which is like, I think 150k subscribers, but they all hate the podcast that that is. It's not even that popular of a podcast. It just predominantly dislike the person involved. So it's funny. Yeah.

So but like the other one I'm thinking of is reply all it wasn't run by the people but it had a fairly stringent policy on like what is allowed or not or ask a historian. Right? They have these rules which can be more or less tightly enforced. In the case of ours, the subreddit is moderated by the moderators as they see fit, but they tried to make it reflect the general,

I think, like tenor of the podcast. You can see whether they do that successfully or not when you go look at it. But in any case, so Matt and I are moderators by dint of the person who made the subreddit who's now not active, like me, Keenet. But I do think it's useful to have some say over that. Because just imagine one of the moderators became like a mega maniac, right? Like a hard right neo-Nazi and then like started promoting content that was like that, but under the podcast meme associated with you and me. We weren't like that, right? So you want

to have, like I can understand people that have an interest in how they're... Oh yeah, I hear what you're saying. I agree. Look, I agree with all your nuance, of course. I didn't want to give the impression that, you know, you're not allowed to have any influence, or, you know, you can't do moderation or anything like that. I mean, the good thing about Reddit is that it's kind of let a thousand flowers bloom, right? There's all kinds of subreddits, each with their own sort of policies. Some of them are very strict, some of them are very loose, and there are pros and cons to all of them. You and I, of course, have opted for the hands-off one,

maybe partly on principle, but mostly just because we're lazy and we don't want to. It's laziness. It's laziness. It's primarily laziness though.. It's, I'm married. But to clarify my point, Chris, I think the issue with what Lex is doing is, is not like, if you want to create a subreddit and you want to call it decoding the gurus and you want to say, no one else is allowed to post on this, it's only going to be promotional stuff for the show.

That's, that's the deal. Right. Then you can, right? You probably won't have many people subscribing to it. That's fine. But you know, that's the deal. The issue with Lex is this free speech, level free speech, always looking for feedback, all that kind of thing, pretending that he's not doing what he's doing. Like I've never heard him address the Lex Fridman subreddit thing. Like it's a curtain has been discreetly drawn. Yes, an iron.

So it has been. Yes. And well, on the subject of disclosures and that kind of thing, but so I will say that, you know, we are mods so we can see. I know you never have seen the more discussions that are in better and good God, those people like suffer, right? Like, you know, the life of a subreddit moderator is not something you would wish on your worst enemy in terms of like the shit that they, they have to deal with. But in, in that case, we don't moderate. I never banned anyone,

never taken any action. But I have responded to the moderators whenever they've asked, what do you think about this? Is this okay or whatever? And I've said, this is my opinion. And I'd imagine Matt's opinion, but it's up to you guys. Moderate it as you see fit. So that is the extent of our influence. I've given our opinion and I've also said in the subreddit when I'm there, obviously we have an interest and invested interest in the subreddit, but in essence, we are just people with a particular opinion on it, right? Like we can say, this is the way we would want it to be or, but that doesn't actually mean that's the way it's going to go. Right.

As you can see, why do you go and look at the content that it goes up in the subreddit? So there's like stuff that I'd want to be kind of promoted more, but you're not Elon Musk or whatever, right? Like people respond to what they're going to respond to. And if you make a thread about Destiny or Hassan, it's going to get like lots more interaction than somebody about us like doing a book review on COD. Right? That's the nature of the internet. That's fair. That's fair. We can't force people to engage with threads on COD. This is true.

Yeah, that's it. Much as we'd like to. Much as we'd like to. We refrain from that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. Public disclosures and all that kind of thing. Now, Matt, on to the main course, if you will. So there's, there's been a bit of buzz around the Guru sphere, the internet as well, because Douglas Murray appeared with Joe Rogan a little while back. Right. And it was notable because he appeared with a comedian. I'll put that in inverted commas.

But comedian Dave Smith, who's a libertarian comedian in the US who rose to prominence from being promoted on Joe Rogan's podcast, like so many other fantastic people in the discourse. And Dave Smith, in particular, in recent years has focused on the Israel-Gaza conflict, has no actual relevant expertise or anything, but strong opinions there. And he was contrasted with Douglas Murray, who likewise is extremely prominent in that whole conflict on the Israel side. Right. Like he is essentially a propagandist for the Israeli government. There's hardly anything it can do or say that he won't defend.

So this is, this is the setup for the Joe Rogan thing, right? Is Dave Smith is going to be the pro-Palestinian voice. Douglas Murray is going to be the pro-Israeli voice and they're going to engage in dialogus on front of the Great Can. Now, the reason it got attention, because that went much less you would expect. Douglas Murray was arguing kind of everything that you would expect him to argue for Israel. Focus on October 7th downplay atrocities being committed, present Netanyahu. His extent of apologetics is like even Netanyahu is regarded as a great, very principled man who has the full support of everyone in Israel and is doing fantastic.

who has the full support of everyone in Israel and is doing fantastic. All of those protests about taking away the independence of the judiciary before October 7th, that was actually damaging Israel, making it weaker, vulnerable to attacks. That's part of the justification. That's where Douglas Murray is on that issue. And Dave Smith, on the other hand, is very much in the Hassan Piker wing of the presentation of Hamas or this kind of thing. So he would say it's not apologetics, but it's very much downplaying atrocities or both are doing their role. You know what their positions are on that.

And that section goes as you would anticipate. But the introduction section displayed uncharacteristic confrontation of what Joe Rogan does from Douglas Murray. So let me play a little bit of clips from this. So this, this is from right at the start of that episode. Since the war in Israel began and since the war in Ukraine began, you've had quite a lot of people who are very against both in different ways. Yes.

Do you think you've had enough people on who are supportive of either war? I don't know that word enough if that's a good word. Let's say, let's say enough people who are on the side of Israel, instead of wild critics. Well, I've had a few. I mean, I believe God's side is on the side of Israel. For sure. Jordan is on the side of Israel. You had Mike Baker, Coleman Hughes. Yeah.

Coleman did it for 20 minutes. Why is he here? No, I mean, none of them, none of them is why they're here. You know, it's a good question. Do you think you've tilted one way? Um, me personally? If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus. Once you do, you'll get access to full length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows,

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