In keeping with his career-long tradition of performative activism, 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 writes Louis Anslow in an opinion piece for The Daily Beast,
Spotify purchased the rights to stream the The Joe Rogan Experience in 2020 for $100 million. Critics have argued Spotify is culpable when Rogan casts doubts on vaccines, features vax-skeptical guests, or touts unproven COVID medications to his millions of listeners.
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. The Monsanto Years is a studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young and the American rock group Promise of the Real, released on June 29, 2015 on Reprise Records. A concept album which criticizes the agribusiness company Monsanto, it is Young's thirty-fifth studio album and the third by Promise of the Real. The group is fronted by Willie Nelson's son Lukas, and the album also features Lukas' brother Micah.
The anti-GMO movement—which rose to prominence in the mid 1990s and early 2000s—attained a key legislative win in 2014 when Vermont mandated GMO labeling of food.
Activists insisted it was vital information for consumers to make informed choices, despite wide scientific agreement that they’re safe for consumption. In fact, not only were GMOs not a threat to human health, they’ve been a boon to it, much like the penicillin that has kept Neil Young alive for most of his life, opines Anslow. Vitamin A-enriched golden rice, for example, saved millions of lives and helped prevented child blindness, when not stymied by anti-GMO activists.
The new Vermont law threatened to be a pointless and impractical nightmare for food manufacturers, so trade groups sued the state. But with Big Business fighting the mandate, its repeal was easily framed by the anti-GMO movement as an affront to consumer safety and democracy. This framing was eagerly adopted by progressive politicians and amplified by the mainstream media.
As the case garnered coverage, the anti-GMO crowd was re-energized once more. And Neil Young seized the moment, releasing The Monsanto Years and embarking on a tour of the same name. At one pre-show press conference, Young pledged $100,000 to the legal case defending the GMO labeling law.
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