Gad Saad

https://x.com/Saul_Sadka/status/1915422390495965213

Gad Saad Left Me No Choice But To Wade Into the Rogan Swamp For a number of months, it has become obvious that one of the most influential men alive, Joe Rogan, has graduated from harmless but silly conspiracism about ancient civilizations—via the gateway drug of anti-vaxx—to full-on Nazi revivalism. Darryl Cooper, the host of the Martyr Made podcast, is a pseudo-historian first brought to prominence by Tucker Carlson, who prefers Hitler over Churchill. That Carlson would give a megaphone to a Nazi—and yes, if you like Nazis, you are indeed a Nazi—is unsurprising, since Tucker needs to make a living, and it has become increasingly obvious who is paying him. But Rogan doesn't need money. Rogan is one of the most influential people alive. His pre-election show with Trump might have tipped the election in his favor, changing history. So a softball interview with a man like Cooper is all the more extraordinary. Gad Saad has been on Rogan's show on a regular basis since at least 2014. The two are friends, according to reports from both sides. Rogan respects Saad as a "genius." Gad Saad is certainly a unique person: he regularly outputs engaging content, with a strong focus on bravery and telling the truth, no matter the consequences. So, as his friend Rogan descended on his path towards insanity, surely he would put his principles into action. Instead of merely picking on the irrelevant antisemitic trolls that all Jews on X know well, he would take a view on Rogan's behavior—because he, the "Honey Badger" (his coinage for the brave culture warrior he promotes), doesn't care whether he gets invited back on his friend’s show or loses access to the Kool Kids Klub (KKK, just a coincidence) of meathead influencers that surround Rogan at the top of the podcast circuit. But for months, even though he is Rogan's closest Jewish associate, he said nothing. Not such a Honey Badger, perhaps? Or perhaps he was trying to have influence behind the scenes? But it turns out that wasn't the case. It took Douglas Murray's visit to Rogan—where he was pitted in a debate against Dave Smith, a vile know-nothing grifter—to bring the issue of Rogan's descent into lunacy to the fore. Immediately, pundits flooded the internet with noise about how Murray was trying to shut down debate, was appealing to credentialism, and other issues. The issue, though, was Rogan's lunacy. Rogan can hand the biggest megaphone in history to anyone he likes—it's his megaphone, after all—but at the same time, people have the right to critique him for doing so. Indeed, they have a moral obligation to do so—especially his friends, especially those who make a big show of speaking truth no matter what the cost. And this is no small issue. If the American right falls into the gutter of Nazi apologia, which some have already done, the knock-on effects for the world are enormous, and the Jews of North America, among them Gad Saad, will feel it first. And still, if Gad Saad had kept his mouth shut and cowered away while Douglas Murray took one for the team—burning his bridges with Rogan and his fans for the sake of doing the right thing—I would have said nothing. But Saad didn't stay silent. Instead, he saw an opportunity to build his own audience among Murray's mostly Jew-hating critics, and spent three days obsessively posting and talking about the Rogan debate, distorting the discussion, strawmanning Murray's position, and playing the victim as people criticized him.

And yet, while he found time to critique Murray and all who defended him, our brave Honey Badger couldn't squeak out even a word of criticism against Rogan. He was proving his loyalty to Rogan and trying to curry favor with his moronic fans. Saying nothing is one thing, but to try to shift the debate in the wrong direction, and for obviously venal and cowardly reasons? Shameful. If at first I thought that he was simply acting out of personal shame—that Murray had stood up and done what so clearly he should have had the cojones to do—it was becoming clear that Saad was just chasing clout off his back. It's been a year and a half since I was active on social media, and about a year since I first realized the huge influence that a carefully worded and timed post can have on a global debate—and even on geopolitical affairs. So over a few days, I bit my tongue. Do I really want to say something against Saad? I didn't. But after his seemingly twentieth clout-seeking post on the topic, I realized I had no choice. What, after all, had chief Honey Badger Gad Saad always told us? You need to put principles over venal personal interests and clout. And so, in a series of posts, I gently suggested to Saad that, at minimum, if he doesn't possess the bravery to call out his most powerful friend, he should keep his mouth shut when others do. That at some point he had to choose between principles and access. He can't, on the one hand, rail against antisemitism on the left and within Islam, but stay silent when his own friends on the right become the main vectors for Hitler apologia! I know he read my posts, though he was too busy replying to anonymous trolls calling him slurs to reply to my nuanced points—since he blocked me. In total, my posts about him reached over two million impressions, and I got Gad Saad trending, so he saw it all. So while I certainly burned some bridges, and will never get invited on the Gad Saad Podcast, and no doubt will one day endure an awkward interaction when I inevitably meet him at some event, I feel I did the right thing. I did to Gad Saad what Sad Saad should have done to Joe Rogan: call out venality, stupidity, hypocrisy, and cowardice—whatever the personal cost. As Mordechai told Esther as she sat at the heart of the Jew-hating palace: "If you are silent at this time, salvation will reach the Jews from somewhere else." Because if nobody stands up to all this, it will take over. It will destroy the Western right—and perhaps the West itself. Nazism must be nipped in the bud. It mustn't be allowed to blossom because the world's most influential people are morons, and everyone wants to ride their coattails to fame, no matter the cost.