Neil Young demanded in a (since-deleted) open letter on his website that Spotify either remove his music or Joe Rogan’s podcast from its service—in the name of quelling COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
For his stance, Young is basking in praise as a principled musician willing to sacrifice his own streaming revenue in the name of science, technological progress, and public health.
This is the same Neil Young who in 2015 released an entire album, The Monsanto Years, that’s wall-to-wall songs from an anti-biotechnology point of view.
Young’s anti-GMO rhetoric helped fuel a narrative that made it easy to spread fear and distrust about COVID vaccines, most of which used novel biotechnology methods and some of which use genetic engineering.
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Young’s Monsanto album release and media tour doubled as activism—amplifying misinformation about GMOs to large mainstream audiences. He released a short anti-GMO documentary aptly named Seeding Fear. Most notably, and ridiculously, was an appearance on The Late Show with Steven Colbert.
Colbert asked Young about the scientific evidence showing GMOs were safe. But Young dismissed it out of hand, retorting: “That must be a Monsanto study that didn’t notice the terrible diseases and all of the things that are happening.”
