Joe Rogan's dystopian theory about why Mark Zuckerburg could transform America into 'dictatorship'

Daily Mail​

11 hours ago

Joe Rogan laid out a nightmare scenario where social media giants turn the US into an oppressive dictatorship, and warned that the first steps have already taken place.
During an interview on his podcast with professional mixed martial artist Cory Sandhagen, Rogan steered the conversation towards social media and his fears, triggered by recent attempts to censor speech in America.
The host of the Joe Rogan Experience singled out Mark Zuckerberg 's Facebook as one of the platforms silencing people he said were posting 'factual information' during the COVID-19 pandemic.
'That was scary to me. Because that's very, very un-American,' Rogan declared.
The podcaster revealed that his friend and new owner of X, Elon Musk, told him about the social media platform allowing the US government to censor posts from private citizens.
He then unveiled his vision of a 'dangerous' future where platforms like Facebook work together with the government to eliminate all forms of protesting online.
Rogan claimed that the entire tech world leans toward a 'very progressive left-wing ideology,' and feared that if the same thing happened during a conservative right-wing presidency, democracy would be lost forever.
'The problem is then what if the f****** right gets in place and they use the same rules that you used on them. Now we don't have a country anymore. I know now we're f*****. Now we're just like every other dictatorship,' Rogan exclaimed.
Rogan has previously revealed how the US government, scientists, and social media critics allegedly attempted to 'cancel' him over his support for controversial COVID medicines like ivermectin.
He also claimed that CNN edited a video to make his face look green after taking ivermectin, something the podcast host said made him consider suing the media outlet in 2021.
'Because I'm friends with Elon, I knew what was going on at Twitter behind the scenes. I knew how the government was stepping in and silencing posts,' Rogan said during the interview released on Thursday.
In March, House Republicans issued subpoenas to officials at Google, demanding the tech giant turn over company information tied to the censorship of Americans during the Biden presidency.
Republicans have long accused the Biden Administration of pressuring major companies into censoring free speech during and after the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans launched an investigation into government censorship after reclaiming the House majority in early 2023.
Before Biden left office in January, Zuckerberg publicly confessed that both Meta and Facebook censored conservative opinions on an industrial scale during this time.
Zuckerberg said the Biden Administration 'repeatedly pressured' the company to remove posts government officials claimed were 'COVID misinformation,' even if the posts were just humor or satire.
Rogan compared the shocking levels of censorship in the US during the pandemic to other countries, which have been accused by nonprofit watchdogs of suppressing free expression.
According to the political advocacy group Freedom House, 45 countries arrested their citizens for their COVID-related speech online.
Twenty-eight countries were found to have censored websites or social media posts during the pandemic, a list that has now been confirmed to include the US.
Other nations confirmed to have silenced public discourse included China, India, Turkey, Egypt, and Thailand.
Countries in the European Union, like Germany and the UK, have also been accused of censoring online speech through regulations like the EU Digital Services Act.
'This is f****** dangerous man,' Rogan said Thursday.
'If they get a real grip on social media... you no longer can protest about things and express yourself about things, including a lot of things that happened to be true,' he added.
That's when the podcast host, who publicly endorsed President Trump in 2024, focused his argument on the progressive left.
'All tech is primarily left and they have a very strong ideology,' Rogan claimed.
He alleged that Democrats in the Biden White House and tech giants justified their actions by claiming that anyone who disagreed with the administration's COVID policies was not just wrong, but also attacking democracy.
'When they were in control and they were silencing things, I think the attitude was this is good because we're right and we need to stop these fascists or whatever we want to call them,' Rogan explained.
At this point, President Trump and Republicans have not made any public statements that support the censorship of Americans on social media.
Musk added in 2024 that he wanted X to 'maximize free speech' and opposed any form of content suppression unless the comments were explicitly illegal.
Since Zuckerberg's admission about Facebook, the social media platform has officially shut down its third-party fact-checking program in the US on April 7.
Meta also adopted Community Notes, a crowdsourced content moderation feature that allows users to add context, corrections, or clarifications to posts online, just like X does.
Zuckerberg also promised to move the social media platform's content moderation teams from California to Texas to address perceptions of bias.
However, former Facebook employees told The Guardian their teams were already in Texas before January 2025 and the promise was made to win over President Trump.