In an interview with Metro UK this week, British comedian Ricky Gervais criticized cancel culture and the recent trend of trying to get people fired and blacklisted from Hollywood for having opinions that don’t conform with leftist groupthink.
“Everyone’s got a different definition of cancel culture,” Gervais said. “If it is choosing not to watch a comedian because you don’t like them, that’s everyone’s right. But when people are trying to get someone fired because they don’t like their opinion about something that’s nothing to do with their job, that’s what I call cancel culture and that’s not cool.
“You turning off your own TV isn’t censorship,” he continued. “You trying to get other people to turn off their TV because you don’t like something they’re watching, that’s different. Everyone’s allowed to call you an assh**e, everyone’s allowed to stop watching your stuff, everyone’s allowed to burn your DVDs, but you shouldn’t have to go to court for saying a joke that someone didn’t like.”
Gervais continued: “And that’s what we get dangerously close to. If you don’t agree to someone’s right to say something you don’t agree with, you don’t agree with freedom of speech.”
Gervais recalled a recent tweet he sent out, quoting Winston Churchill’s views on freedom of speech. Before long, Twitter users were telling him that Churchill was a “white supremacist” who shouldn’t be held up as an icon.
Gervais’s reply: “Not in that tweet he isn’t.”
“It’s like if someone did something once that’s wrong, everything they did was wrong,” the comedian said. “You are allowed to have things in common with bad people as long it’s not the bad things. I’m a vegetarian and I love dogs, like Hitler. But the only thing I have in common with Hitler are the good bits!”
Yeah, but of course the modern left has no inherent capability to see shades of gray. Taking a page from Islamic fundamentalism, they see themselves as the true believers and everyone else as infidels. If Gervais had found a quote from Churchill saying “trans women are women,” we’re sure that “he’s a white supremacist” dude would have kept his mouth shut. These cretins are waging a war that has everything to do with power and absolutely nothing to do with ethics, morals, logic, or sense.
And no, they certainly do not believe in freedom of speech. As should be painfully obvious by this point.