Viewpoint: Why is Neil Young portrayed as a hero for challenging Joe Rogan’s anti-vax rants while promoting crop biotechnology disinformation himself?

Credit: Michael Schwartz via Getty Images
Credit: Michael Schwartz via Getty Images

Neil Young doesn’t make the kind of music I enjoy. Instead I was familiar with his name because he was the cranky dude who made an entire album railing against Monsanto. He also hates biotechnology and farmers who don’t farm organically.

Yet all of a sudden, he became a hero for the science crowd.

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Young’s hypocrisy was stunning. He was upset that [Joe] Rogan did the exact same thing he did a number of years ago. Because whether it’s spewing disinformation about vaccines or biotechnology, it’s all cut from the same cloth.

I was pleased to see I wasn’t the only person who took notice of Young about-face. But some writers who recognized it thought it was fine to brush off Young’s past comments.

…

Except we can’t. We shouldn’t. Vaccine misinformation is bad. So is misinformation about biotechnology, animal agriculture, and pesticides. I wish that folks would’ve stood up against Young the same way they did Rogan (other than myself, of course). Not to cancel him or end his career, but to push back on the wrong information and encourage him to learn more.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.

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