Joe Rogan is once again stirring up controversy. During the latest episode of his podcast, Rogan and his guest, comedian Tom Segura, discussed homelessness in Los Angeles, which took a dark turn as Rogan floated a particularly not great solution to the problem: Shooting them. After the potentially dangerous remarks were recently shared on Twitter, unhoused advocates have been publicly denouncing Rogan’s comments, and you can see why below:
Nothing like a couple of rich fucks setting around smoking cigars and criticizing people at their rock bottom.
And that last line? “Maybe you should just go S**T the homeless people” pic.twitter.com/eCp1HSkJj4—
_Imposter_
(@Imposter_Edits) July 16, 2022
Via Variety:
Tom Segura: When you see stuff like that on the streets, at least in Los Angeles or California, that’s protected property. Like by law. That’s that’s person’s property by law.
Joe Rogan: Oh, a homeless person’s property is protected?
Segura: Absolutely. If you were to try to move that or take that—
Rogan: You’d get arrested. Hilarious. But they wouldn’t arrest you if you shot somebody. Maybe you should just go shoot the homeless people.
Segura: I like your ideas.
Rogan: And if nobody claims it. I mean nobody does anything about violent crime in LA anymore.
Considering Rogan’s podcast reaches an audience of millions who swallowed his controversial opinions on the COVID vaccine, there’s a legitimate potential for violence following his remarks.
“It’s repulsive,” unhoused advocate Theo Henderson told Variety. “It’s infuriating because it’s not only out of touch, but the reality is that unhoused people are targeted by housed people. To advocate trying to shoot at unhoused people or just giving these dog whistles to people that do not see unhoused people as human beings — I can’t believe you’d advocate for it.”
Andy Bales, who runs the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles, voiced similar concerns.
“I’m surprised and saddened,” Bales said. “The comments about beginning to kill homeless people hits too close to reality for any comfort, because murders of homeless people in Los Angeles went up 47% last year over the previous year…. There is a bit of an unfortunate vigilantism already in Los Angeles towards people devastated by homelessness and they don’t need any encouragement.”
(Via Variety)