Neil Young, Colin Kaepernick, and the Nature of Protest

Addressing the political and epistemological issues

Neil Young caused a stir recently when he demanded that Spotify cancel Joe Rogan’s podcast, or he would pull his music. Spotify went with Rogan, and Young pulled his music. Other artists immediately followed suit, and Spotify responded by changing their policy to post disclaimers on podcasts that might contain misinformation. Rogan responded by posting a video on Instagram, presumably because that is public in a way that his podcast is not. I don’t know much about Rogan, but I watched the video, and he seemed reasonable. At the very least, he seemed willing to engage in dialogue, and he was respectful of the concerns of his critics. If that’s taking him at face value, that’s because watching one video is about all the time I want to spend listening to Joe Rogan.

This episode reminds me of Colin Kaepernick’s protest a few years ago, when, as a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, he knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and mistreatment of minorities. I sympathize with Kaepernick, I understand where he’s coming from, and I agree with his goals (we also have the same birthday). As a longtime anti-death penalty activist, I am very familiar with the problems of the American criminal justice system, particularly the treatment of minorities. It’s a terrible situation with a very long history of being terrible. 

But I was initially skeptical of Kaepernick’s protest, because I wasn’t sure how effective it would be. In my experience, there are two kinds of political protest. The first kind is very broad, the mass protests you see when thousands or even millions of people march, usually on one day, in support of a cause. The message is usually something like “We are good people against bad things” or “We are good people in favor of good things that other people think are bad.” There’s rarely a specific goal, and what most participants get out of it is a feeling of empowerment. Or maybe they meet some new people, or are inspired to take action on their own. The best example is the March on Washington, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech. 

The second kind of protest takes aim at a specific target, or has a specific goal. There are usually only a few people involved, but they take concrete, directed action, generally making a specific request, and targeting people or organizations who can change a particular policy or law. It’s much closer to a negotiation, but outside the halls of power where political negotiations usually take place. The best example of this kind of protest is Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Everyone has heard of her. What some don’t know, though, is that her protest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, during which African Americans didn’t take the bus in the city of Montgomery. It lasted over a year, and took a lot of coordination and planning. It was targeted at a specific group of people in power, and the protesters had a specific, concrete demand. Ultimately, it worked.

My issue with Kaepernick’s kneeling protest was that it wasn’t either of these kinds of protest. It wasn’t a broad protest that took place once with lots of people. It was him and a few others, with no definite end. He had a clear target. But he wasn’t targeting people who could actually change the situation. NFL teams, as rich as they are, don’t control the city councils or police oversight boards that could make a difference in how police treat minorities. Meanwhile, there was a backlash against him. He raised awareness, but he hasn’t been an NFL quarterback for several years. I wasn’t sure it was an effective protest.

But then other athletes started following his lead. Did they collectively make an immediate difference? It’s hard to say, but probably not. Will they make a difference in the long term? It’s impossible to say, but there are people who know who Colin Kaepernick is who know nothing about his NFL career (like me), and it’s very likely that there are athletes who are more politically aware and involved because of Kaepernick. So, looking at the long term, I reevaluate my initial skepticism, and judge his activism a success.

Neil Young’s protest fell much more squarely in the second category I outlined above, targeting a specific authority, and making a demand that they could, in fact, meet. Like Kaepernick, Young immediately inspired others to follow. Joni Mitchell quickly withdrew her music from Spotify. I’ve seen comments about individuals deleting their Spotify accounts. Some people removed their podcasts from Spotify. All of this has a direct, immediate impact on Spotify, which is why it had to respond quickly. Neil Young on his own removing his music is not a threat to Spotify’s business. Too many doing the same, though, becomes a big problem. A big reason why they can do so, of course, is that there are other options for streaming their music. I personally don’t listen to Spotify, because I have other options, like Apple Music and YouTube. Bonus for Neil Young, I haven’t seen any kind of backlash against him. It’s his music, so of course he’s free to do whatever he wants with it. So, unlike Colin Kaepernick’s protest, Young’s protest, despite the fact that he initially lost when he pulled his own music, was an immediate success: he sparked a debate, he forced his opponents to acknowledge the legitimacy of his arguments, and he inspired others to follow him.

But. Young was protesting Rogan’s tendency to spread “misinformation” on his podcast by interviewing people who were skeptical of what seems to be accepted medical advice on how to deal with the coronavirus, particularly whether or not people should get vaccinated. Apparently this is personal for Young: he had polio as a child, because he was born before the polio vaccine was available. So he cares about this in a way few people can appreciate.

But one thing that Rogan mentioned in his response is that the science is changing so fast, what might be misinformation at one point might be accepted as sound medical advice merely months later. He makes a good point. In this age of fast-breaking news and almost-as-fast changes in technological and scientific knowledge, it has become difficult for the average citizen to keep up. When members of the public usually hear about scientific advances, the theories and ideas have gone through years of review, debate, and evaluation, so by the time the ideas enter the public debate, the science is clear and settled. Many times, scientific knowledge shows up in public when it is used to actually accomplish something, and that accomplishment is successful. Scientists spent decades studying flight and propulsion before rockets took off. When the World Wide Web became a public phenomenon because Netscape launched a browser, the Internet already existed, and it already worked. 

In the case of the coronavirus, what we’re seeing is science being developed in real time, and the line between what scientists know and what the public knows has been blurred. This is as much an epistemological problem as it is a political one. Epistemology is also known as “theory of knowledge,” and is the branch of philosophy that asks how it is possible to make claims of knowledge and truth. As someone familiar with epistemology - if I had gone on to get a Ph.D. in philosophy, it would’ve been in epistemology - I’m comfortable with scientific uncertainty. I don’t have a problem figuring out which sources of information I’m willing to listen to and take advice from. But I’m also unusual in that respect - I don’t know a lot of other people who have studied epistemology. OK, I know almost no one who has studied epistemology. 

Neil Young’s protest was a failure for him financially, because he lost a revenue stream (although I doubt he was making very much from Spotify), but a success politically. But epistemologically, I’m not sure his protest was a success. Neil Young challenged Joe Rogan because he believed Rogan was spreading misinformation. But the very idea of misinformation implies that there is a clear distinction between what is true and what is false. At this point, we seem to have enough information about the efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines to make a determination that they are effective. They don’t block transmission of the virus perfectly, but they do block it at least somewhat, and they seem to be good at reducing the impact on people who get covid. When they were first introduced, however, we did not have that data, because, of course, it had not been introduced on a wide scale. There had not been much time to test the coronavirus vaccine. We had to assume that it would work because vaccines have worked in the past. Many people, though, had lots of questions about the vaccines. How were they developed so quickly? Pharmaceutical companies have developed a reputation for focusing on profits over health; was that the case here? Personally, I didn’t have any questions about the efficacy of the vaccines, or whether or not I should get vaccinated. I trust the scientists and doctors, and I’m comfortable figuring out whether or not I should trust them.

Scientists and politicians tried to answer these questions, but the debate immediately got tangled up in debates about other kinds of “misinformation,” particularly Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen. Fox News has been a tragically flagrant disseminator of both Trump’s lies and misinformation about the coronavirus and efforts to contain and deal with it. 

But - yes, here’s another “but” - Joe Rogan is not on Fox News, and Spotify does not have an ideological agenda. As far as the culture wars in America, Spotify does not have a dog in the fight - particularly because it is Swedish. It was easy for Neil Young to target Joe Rogan on Spotify, because they are both on Spotify. Young can’t make a similar demand of Fox News, because he has no relationship with Fox News. 

So even though Neil Young’s protest was, and is increasingly proving to be, effective in raising questions, inspiring others to follow his lead, and sparking debate, he didn’t address the much more challenging issues, both political and epistemological. Politically, the questions are: how do we reestablish trust in institutions which are trying to serve the public good, like the CDC and the National Institutes of Health? Those issues are hard enough, but I have at least a little bit of faith in Joe Biden’s ability to actually get things done in a way that is fair to as many Americans as possible, and to speak to the American public in a way that will ultimately inspire many people, even those who disagree with him, to listen to him. That won’t solve the problem, but hopefully it won’t make it worse.

The epistemological questions are much harder to address, and not just because very few people even know what epistemology is. Colin Kaepernick’s protest started out as a binary proposition - should he kneel or not? It has morphed into a multidimensional, multifaceted debate, even around just Kaepernick himself. Despite not being an NFL quarterback any more, he’s still a celebrity, and the debate has moved into other areas and onto other platforms. Ava DuVernay directed a TV series about him. Nike, a company not always known for its progressive politics, signed him to a lucrative endorsement deal. And then, of course, the killing of George Floyd ignited the debate around these issues in ways no one could have foreseen. What started out as a binary proposition - to kneel or not to kneel - sparked many debates on many issues in many places. 

Neil Young’s protest has similarly morphed from a binary proposition - forcing Spotify to choose Young or Rogan - into a multidimensional, multifaceted debate. Young’s choice of Rogan’s podcast on Spotify is like Kaepernick’s choice of kneeling during NFL games - necessary but irrelevant. Each protested against an organization they had a relationship with - the necessary part. But in targeting those organizations, they protested against people who couldn’t have a dramatic impact on solving the problem, so they were, initially at least, irrelevant. NFL teams can’t directly address police brutality, and Spotify can’t solve the problem of people asking questions and not knowing who to trust for answers. 

The first moral of the story is that we need to learn that protests rooted in binary propositions rarely stay that way - they can grow quickly into complex phenomena with lives of their own. The second moral of the story is that we should be glad that these debates transcend the limitations of the original binary propositions, because those propositions do not have the potential to solve the problems being addressed. The third moral of the story is that we should acknowledge the limitations of the binary proposition, particularly the tendency to frame the issues as right-vs.-wrong, and good-vs.-evil. It’s easy for liberals and progressives and liberals to demonize large capitalist organizations, like NFL teams or audio/social media distribution companies, as being distrustful at best or forces of evil at worst. But such characterizations and demonizations do not advance the cause. So one benefit of the transition from a binary proposition to a multidimensional debate, ideally, is a diffusion of blame. It’s important to separate the lies about the election being spread by Trump and his supporters from the confusion of many people, some of whom listen to Joe Rogan in search of answers, not least because he’s willing to ask questions. There are times when asking questions is a tool of demagoguery. One of Trump’s favorite tactics is to ask deeply offensive or blatantly dishonest questions, and then deny that he is saying something offensive or dishonest because he’s “just asking questions.” But there are also times when people ask questions because they are just flat-out confused. And there should be nothing wrong with that.

The final moral of the story is that we should recognize how complicated these issues are, and how little can be accomplished by a simple, direct protest, but how much can be accomplished by a more wide-ranging, and more nuanced, debate. Sometimes - many times - the best way to win an argument is not to respond quickly and forcefully with derision and dismissal, but to listen carefully and respond with empathy.