The effort to take down podcast king Joe Rogan is increasingly being seen as a coordinated campaign to silence an influential figure with a massive audience and an independent streak.

That campaign seemingly started in mid-January, when a group of scientific experts sent a letter to Spotify accusing Rogan of spreading misinformation on his podcast episodes about COVID-19. It escalated this week with the emergence on social media of a video splicing together racist language Rogan had used in the past, drawing fierce reactions from both Rogan’s defenders and detractors.