Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) wrote a message of support for American podcaster Joe Rogan this Wednesday (2). The comedian is known for his history of speeches considered prejudiced and, more recently, he was the subject of a complaint from scientists for presenting false data about vaccination against Covid-19 on his talk show, the most listened to on Spotify.
The case has led to requests from musicians such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and David Crosby to have their music taken down from the platform.
Na mensagem publicada em inglês no Twitter, Bolsonaro diz que não sabe o que Rogan pensa sobre ele ou seu governo, “mas que isso não importa”. “If free speech means anything, it’s that people should be free to speak their minds, whether they agree or disagree with us,” he wrote.
The president still asks the comedian: “Stay strong!”. And he ends the tweet with the expression, unusual in English, “Hugs from Brazil”.
Bolsonaro marked Rogan’s profile in the message, but, until the publication of this text, he had not received a response from the American.
The podcaster, which accumulates fans and critics perhaps to the same extent, has a multi-million partnership with Spotify – according to The Wall Street Journal, the company paid more than $ 100 million for the exclusivity of the program.
In January, a group of scientists and health professionals reported an episode of the podcast to the platform for presenting false data about vaccination and Covid-19. Rogan’s three-hour interview with American immunologist Robert Malone drew parallels between Nazi Germany and today’s US, saying society is being “hypnotized” into believing in immunizations and sanitary measures to fight the pandemic. The video of the interview was taken down by YouTube.
Rogan has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, as well as over 14 million followers on Instagram and 8 million on Twitter. He says he hates political correctness and identity politics in general, but he has some positions on the left — he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, an independent senator seen as more to the left of the Democratic Party, for example.
He has been criticized for comparing a black American neighborhood to the movie “Planet of the Apes” and has a habit of quoting words considered racist by African Americans during his interviews. He also made a series of comments considered transphobic and interviewed the leader of a white supremacist group, the Proud Boys, who defended on the program that Muslims should not mix with the West.
Commenting on Spotify’s controversy with musicians who preferred to leave the platform if the podcast remained on the air, Rogan defended continuing to welcome guests with “controversial points of view”, but said he was open to balancing these perspectives. “I don’t want to show just the opinion that is contrary to the current narrative. I want to show all opinions, so that we can understand what is happening. And not only about Covid, but everything”, he said, in a post on Instagram.
On the same day, Spotify announced that all podcasts that mention Covid will include links to factual, scientifically proven information about the pandemic.
Source: Folha
