Dwayne Johnson, the actor and former wrestling star known as The Rock, has retracted what had seemed his unconditional support for Joe Rogan, amid continued fallout from the controversial podcaster’s use of racist language.
Rogan apologised after the singer-songwriter India Arie posted to social media a video montage of him saying the N-word about 20 times on his podcast. The video includes Rogan making a joke about the movie Planet of the Apes and Black neighbourhoods.
Johnson had publicly praised Rogan’s response to a growing Spotify boycott triggered by the dissemination of Covid misinformation.
But in response to a tweet from the author Don Winslow, reprimanding him for defending Rogan, Johnson, who has almost 16 million followers, wrote: “I hear you, as well as everyone here 100%[.] I was not aware of his N-word use prior to my comments, but now I’ve become educated to his complete narrative. Learning moment for me.”
Rogan said he was wrong to use the N-word but insisted he was not racist.
“I can’t go back in time and change what I said. I wish I could. Obviously that’s not possible, but I do hope this could be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn’t realise how offensive that word could be coming out of a white person’s mouth, in context or out of context,” Rogan said in a video statement.
That mea culpa did not stop the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang defending the host – at least briefly.
The tech entrepreneur and politician, who appeared on Rogan’s show in 2019, during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, published and then apparently deleted a tweet defending Rogan.
“I don’t think Joe Rogan is a racist – the man interacts with and works with black people literally all of the time,” Yang said on Sunday. “Do I know black friends of Joe’s who would swear by him? Yes I do.”
Yang did not immediately explain why his tweet had disappeared.
The racism scandal comes on top of growing pressure on Spotify to censor Rogan for including on his podcast dangerous Covid misinformation including anti-vaccine content, as the US pandemic death toll has hit 900,000.
Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are the most prominent musicians to remove their music from Spotify in protest. Backlash against Covid misinformation knocked more than $2bn off the streaming platform’s market value last week.
While Rogan’s guest lists have long included a wide variety of political and “expert” opinions, white men have been given disproportionate airtime.
Over the weekend, Spotify deleted about 70 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience. The company’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, later said it was the host’s decision to remove them after the racist slurs were broadcast.
In a statement on Sunday, Ek said: “While I strongly condemn what Joe has said … I want to make one point very clear – I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer … We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but cancelling voices is a slippery slope.”
Rogan, who signed an estimated $100m exclusive deal with Spotify in 2020, reportedly brings in an estimated 11 million listeners per episode.
