Podcaster Joe Rogan and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. marveled at how the United Kingdom has become one of the countries most infamous for cracking down on freedom of speech.
During their discussion on Friday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, RFK Jr. argued that the modern Democratic Party, which he left in 2023, had become increasingly pro-censorship. The former Democratic hopeful said this is a stark contrast to the Democratic Party he grew up with.
RFK Jr. and Rogan were both aghast at how online censorship had seemed to become normalized in both the United States over the past decade and across the Atlantic.
“And then you look at what’s happening in England now, you know, with people going to jail for Twitter posts,” RFK Jr. said.
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“Twelve thousand people this year,” Rogan agreed, citing a report, “12,000 in the last year.”
“And then this, where the Magna Carta was, you know, written,” RFK Jr. lamented. “Now it’s just a dictatorship.”
The Magna Carta was a legal document that emerged from a medieval civil war in which rebellious barons forced King John of England to accept limits on his power. It established the principle that even the king was subject to the law and laid the groundwork for basic rights like due process, trial by jury of one’s peers and forbidding taxation without consent.
Over time, the Magna Carta became a cornerstone of English law and later inspired the Founding Fathers as they shaped the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. But even jury trials, in some cases, as Rogan noted, are in the process of being scrapped by the modern U.K.
Late last year, David Lammy, the U.K.’s deputy prime minister and justice secretary, announced plans to scrap jury trials for offenses that carry a likely prison term of less than three years.
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“Well, they got rid of trial by jury except for murder and rape and a couple other things,” Rogan noted. “Now it’s just a judge. So, you know, whatever it is, if it’s a social media infraction, there’s no reasonable, you know, judge by a jury of your peers. No, you’re getting judged by a judge.”
“It’s the Soviet system. It’s like Kafka,” RFK Jr. warned, referring to Franz Kafka’s famous dystopian novel “The Trial,” in which the main character is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious authority, but he is never clearly told what crime he is accused of.
Rogan shared his shock at how quickly social media arrests in the U.K. have spiked in recent years, usually over criticism of mass immigration. He argued that the British government, rather than solving the crimes that have been caused as a result of mass migration, are instead punishing people for complaining.
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Rogan argued this is an existential threat to the very freedom of thought, saying the United Kingdom’s censorious government is “getting nuts.”
“Like anything that you deem might incite violence or, like, outrage, people are outraged. They have a right to be outraged. If you can put them in a cage because they’re outraged, that’s nuts,” he said.
