Actor and comedian Ricky Gervais has sparked a debate as he slammed the ‘cancel culture’ and suggested that ‘wokeness’ is a “weird sort of fascism.
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Previously, in January, Gervais, the writer and the director of The Office, took an aim at the ‘woke’ Hollywood and the elites during the 2020 Golden Globes.
In his speech, Gervais slammed the elites and stars for their connections with controversial companies and figures as he said: “Apple roared into the TV game with ‘The Morning Show,’ a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing made by a company that runs sweatshops in China … So you say you’re ‘woke,’ but the companies you work for — Apple, Amazon, Disney — if ISIS had a streaming service, you’d be calling your agents.
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Following his controversial comments, Gervais explained the reasoning behind his words in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment in which he said:
“It was quite zeitgeisty. I suppose because people were tired of being lectured by multimillionaires telling them to recycle when they’re flying around in private jets. So I think people were tired of the hypocrisy.”
Now, the controversial comedian has once again opened up to slam the hypocrisy and the ‘cancel culture’ that is sweeping over the world.
“There’s this new weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and what you can’t and it’s a really weird thing. Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean you’re right,” the 59-year-old actor told talkRadio.
“There’s this new trendy myth that people who want free speech want to say awful things all the time. It just isn’t true, it protects everyone.
“If you’re mildly left-wing on Twitter, you’re suddenly Trotsky, right? If you’re mildly conservative, you’re Hitler and if you’re centrist and you look at both arguments, you’re a coward. Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Just days earlier, the director of The Office also claimed that his hit TV show would struggle to air these days due to its content and said broadcasters are now afraid to risk the outrage of viewers when it comes to sensitive content that people may find offensive.
“Now [the show] would suffer because people would take things literally. There are these outrage mobs who take things out of context,” Gervais said in an interview with Times Radio.
“This was a show about everything — it was about difference, it was about sex, race, all the things that people fear to even be discussed or talked about now, in case they say the wrong thing and they are canceled.
“The BBC have got more and more careful, people want to keep their jobs, so would worry about some of the subjects and jokes, even though they were clearly ironic and we were laughing at this buffoon being uncomfortable around difference. I think if this was put out now, some people have lost their sense of irony and context.”
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