Joe Rogan’s controversial decision to invite a prominent antisemitic conspiracy theorist onto his show earlier this week underscored how the popular podcast host is increasingly handing his megaphone to extremists while failing to challenge their claims, lending legitimacy to a range of false and incendiary views.

Rogan, whose lucrative podcast has more than 14 million subscribers, faced backlash on Wednesday for hosting a friendly discussion with Ian Carroll, a self-described journalist with a sizable following who has frequently spread antisemitic conspiracy theories — claiming that “Israel did 9/11” and that the U.S. is controlled by a “Zionist mafia,” among other baseless assertions.

During their nearly three-hour conversation, Carroll pushed another of his fixations, alleging that Jeffrey Epstein was just an “employee” of “organized crime rings” with ties to “the CIA, the Mossad and British intelligence.” The disgraced financier, he added in an incoherently worded insinuation, “was clearly a Jewish organization working on behalf of Israel and other groups.”

Elsewhere in the discussion, Carroll also rehashed the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which imagined a child sex-ring linked to Democrats run from a pizza parlor in Washington, claiming a cover-up.

Rogan, meanwhile, never seriously challenged his guest, at one point offering words of encouragement as Carroll continued to invoke a range of antisemitic tropes about Israel, including a claim that the country had been founded by “organized crime figures in America” with ties to “the Jewish mob” as well as “the Rothschild banking family.”

“What’s interesting is you can talk about this now, post-Oct. 7, post-Gaza,” Rogan mused in response to such claims. 

“Ian Carroll has a troubling history of spreading toxic conspiracy theories and disinformation, especially related to the Jewish community and Israel,” added Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence. “It is difficult to understand why Joe Rogan would offer his platform to further disseminate these ideas at a time when the Jewish community is facing increased vulnerability due to rising incidents targeting them.”

In the coming days, Rogan is also set to host Darryl Cooper, a known Holocaust revisionist and a Hitler apologist who produces his own history podcast. In a recent entry published on his Substack newsletter, Cooper said that he would soon be “going to Austin to” join Rogan’s show. Cooper’s appearance would come months after he drew widespread backlash over an interview with Tucker Carlson in which he downplayed the Holocaust and called Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II.

Several leading Jewish and pro-Israel groups spoke out against the podcast on Thursday, raising alarms over Rogan’s behavior amid a surge in antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel.

Holly Huffnagle, the American Jewish Committee’s U.S. director for combating antisemitism, said in a statement to Jewish Insider that “now is the time to decry antisemitism, not platform those who spread it.”

“Ian Carroll has a troubling history of spreading toxic conspiracy theories and disinformation, especially related to the Jewish community and Israel,” added Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence. “It is difficult to understand why Joe Rogan would offer his platform to further disseminate these ideas at a time when the Jewish community is facing increased vulnerability due to rising incidents targeting them.”

Mark Mellman, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, said that Rogan “has offered his platform to antisemites on too many occasions,” referring to past episodes in which he has hosted the far-right pundit Candace Owens and former mixed martial arts fighter Jake Shields, who have both trafficked in antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories about Israel.

“Now, we find him hosting Ian Carroll who has lodged vile attacks against Israelis accusing them of wanting to rape his children,” Mellman told JI. “Mr. Rogan should help stop burgeoning antisemitism in this country by denying purveyors of antisemitism a platform on his show and by acknowledging it was wrong to host Ian Carroll.”

“Since Oct. 7, overt antisemitism has become more normalized and mainstream,” said Gunther Jikeli, associate director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University. “The fringes have become part of the mainstream and the mainstream has increasingly included views that were on the fringes not so long ago.”

Rogan’s team did not respond to a request for comment from JI on Thursday, nor did Spotify, which last year inked a multiyear agreement to renew its partnership with the podcast host for an estimated sum of $250 million.

Experts who track online extremism suggested that Rogan has little to no incentive to apologize or even acknowledge scrutiny, noting that his choice to host Carroll, whose bigoted views are well known, conforms with a wider trend in which antisemitism is becoming an accepted element of public discourse in the U.S. and beyond.

“Since Oct. 7, overt antisemitism has become more normalized and mainstream,” said Gunther Jikeli, associate director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University. “The fringes have become part of the mainstream and the mainstream has increasingly included views that were on the fringes not so long ago.”

Such “taboo-breaking,” Jikeli added, “is attractive, finds a market — and can be monetized in today’s social media world.”

In addition to Carroll, other high-profile purveyors of antisemitic rhetoric have also found mainstream audiences this week, including Owens — who joined the comedian Theo Von’s podcast and received high praise from the sports commentator Stephen A. Smith after she sat down for an interview with him. Andrew Tate, the alleged sex trafficker, appeared on a popular podcast, where he complained that “speaking out against the Jews” is forbidden in American discourse and a hindrance to free speech. 

Armin Langer, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Center for European Studies who specializes in contemporary antisemitism, said Rogan’s choice to host Carroll “without challenging his antisemitic conspiracy myths reflects a troubling trend where podcasters amplify hate speech under the guise of free speech.”

“In the profit-oriented digital landscape, controversy drives engagement, and antisemitic content — whether coded dog-whistles or overt conspiracy myths — can spread easily because of the algorithmic amplification and the lack of moderation from hosts and the platforms,” Langer told JI. “I see an urgent need for accountability, not just from the podcasters but also from the platforms that profit from their shows, before hate speech becomes further entrenched in the mainstream.”

For his part, Rogan previously faced accusations of invoking an antisemitic trope in 2023 when he claimed that “the idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous,” while defending comments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that were widely condemned as offensive to Jews.

More recently, he has drawn scrutiny for arguing that Israel was committing genocide amid its war with Hamas, suggesting that the Jewish state was enacting a “small scale” Holocaust in Gaza. Facing pushback from a podcast guest on another episode, however, Rogan later indicated that he was willing to change his views on the matter.

“What we are seeing now,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told JI, “is the end result of a yearslong effort to create a permissive environment for antisemitism and racism, driven by brain-rotted, bad-faith actors who now have their hands on the levers of power.”

Susan Benesch, executive director of the Dangerous Speech Project, an independent research group, and a faculty associate of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, observed that “Israel’s bombing and besieging of Gaza have been a big present to antisemites, who take advantage of the deep sympathy that many well-intentioned, non-hating people have for Palestinian civilians.”

“They mix criticism of Israel and antisemitism, which allows the latter to circulate more widely,” she told JI.

While Rogan has long shown a penchant for indulging conspiracy theories and been relatively indiscriminate in choosing guests for his podcast — spanning the gamut from vaccine skeptics to serious public intellectuals — his recent invitations to both Carroll and Cooper suggest a broader turn toward extremism for the polarizing podcast host as he further engages with antisemitic figures on the right.

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, characterized such engagement as “just the latest example of how mainstream these deeply antisemitic conspiracies have become in recent years.”

“What we are seeing now,” he told JI, “is the end result of a yearslong effort to create a permissive environment for antisemitism and racism, driven by brain-rotted, bad-faith actors who now have their hands on the levers of power.”