Add Ben Stiller to the list of artists eager for free speech restrictions.
The Zoolander star is all for President Donald Trump’s removal from social media platforms, regardless of the results or consequences.
And he’s far from alone. A gaggle of stars, including Sacha Baron Cohen, are cheering how platform after platform is dumping Trump. They’re similarly silent as conservative voices are being erased from the digital arena.
For Stiller, it’s the right call.
“What some celebrity might say about another movie, or even what I might say about Trump — whatever — that doesn’t really matter that much, but if there’s somebody who’s in a leadership position and who’s out spouting this divisive rhetoric, I mean, we’re seeing the real-life consequences of it, and that’s what’s upsetting to me.”
Not only does Stiller absolve his fellow stars from the consequences of their speech, he ignores the reams of hate and incitement coming from his own party … even his beloved Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“If I wasn’t governor of New York, I would have decked him. Period,” Cuomo said of Trump. “I mean he was attacking me, he was attacking my family, he was anti-Italian. Every nasty thing.”
Joe Rogan offers a refreshing take on Big Tech censorship.
Rogan weighed in on the frightening rise of censorship in President-Elect Joe Biden’s America on his podcast, now heard exclusively on Spotify.
“What percentage is spreading hate? What are the numbers? Is this wise that we shut down all discourse that you disagree with?” he rhetorically asked. “Like, it’s not good if someone gets on there and they’re talking about violence against individuals or they’re spreading racist ideas or whatever the f**k they’re doing that disturbs people. You’re right. That’s not good.”
Rogan quickly plays out the consequences from this approach, and it isn’t pretty … or American.
“It sets a precedent where the people that are in power can decide that something is ‘wrong speak,’ something is bad and that you can just eliminate it completely,” he added. “And then when things like that happen, they keep going. They don’t just stop at things that we can all agree are terrible. They go to things that maybe you don’t think are terrible, but other people do. And then they keep going further.”
He’s right, of course, and we don’t have to wait years, months or even weeks to see that taking place.
Consider how quickly Big Tech snuffed out Parler, a freer speech platform, for sins regularly seen on every other platform, including Amazon, but emanating from the Left.
[Cross-posted from Hollywood in Toto.]
