Conservatives are fighting for free speech across western culture, even if many liberals don’t know it.
It’s why left-leaning podcaster Joe Rogan made news by saying Fox News and Co. had his back during his Cancel Culture crisis.
'Liberal' Joe Rogan Praises Fox News for Support During Spotify Controversy https://t.co/zuH5nlIRlI
— Joe Rogan Headquarters (@joeroganhq) June 1, 2022
He’s right, of course.
The Left and mainstream media outlets salivated for Rogan’s podcasting scalp, while conservatives rallied to his side despite his political leanings. The same has held true for attacks against left-leaning comics like Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle.
Slowly, surely, old school liberals like Rogan are seeing the truth. It’s the modern Right that wants to protect our First Amendment rights. The Left? It now stands for censorship, full stop, using Cancel Culture as its cudgel.
Stephen Merchant apparently got the memo.
The British “Office” alum, now in charge of the Amazon series “The Outlaws,” opened up about his fellow “Office” mate, free speech and more during a recent interview with The Independent.
Merchant praised Gervais for being “brave” in battling comedy scolds, something he has less interest in doing on or off social media.
“I don’t want to have to defend a tweet from 10 years ago. It’s not interesting to me to spend time defending a point of view or a glib joke that I made at 2am.”
Merchant also observed how those attempting to silence Gervais, and fellow comics, now hail from the Left. That wasn’t always the case.
“This obsession with trying to police what people say, you know? It’s funny [because] when I was growing up, Mary Whitehouse was the version of that. The uber-religious [person] trying to get TV shows banned and newspaper articles retracted, and she was very much seen as a right-wing figure. Now it feels like it’s a lot more coming from the Left, and that suddenly the champions of free speech are Right-wing nutters. How did that come about? I don’t want to side with those people!”
“Those people” may help artists like Merchant surviving the woke revolution. And lumping everyone on the Right together with its extremist wing is a mistake, of course. Much like saying the average liberal, like Merchant, Rogan, Chappelle or Gervais, isn’t ready to defend free speech.
They are. It’s the far Left that applauds Big Tech censorship, sensitivity readers and more.
Still, Merchant’s observations about the Left/Right divide on free speech, combined with Rogan’s comments, are bound to become commonplace moving forward.
Now? It’s still an anomaly.
