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Bill Maher used his platform on HBO Friday to lecture his fellow progressives about the insanity of critical race theory and cancel culture.
He began his monologue by pointing out what should be obvious: no one — including those on the left — is safe from the looming, inescapable grip of a society bent toward total ideological purity.
Maher urged his listeners to “stop apologizing” for their every perspective or misstep out of line with the far left “when the woke mob comes after you” for some “ridiculous offense.”
During his talk, the HBO host referenced Emmanuel Cafferty, the Hispanic man fired from his job at San Diego Gas and Electric last spring because of a photo showing one of his hands stretched out of a work truck in an “OK” position — a symbol some have argued is a sign of white supremacy.
Cafferty has repeatedly defended himself, saying there was “no racist intent behind it,” adding he was simply cracking his knuckles.
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“Is this really who we want to become?” Maher asked. “A society of phony, clenched [expletive] avatars walking on eggshells, always looking over your shoulder about getting ratted out for something that actually has nothing to do with your character or morals?”
“Think about everything you’ve ever texted, emailed, searched for, tweeted, blogged, or said in passing,” he continued. “Or now even just witnessed: ‘Someone had a Confederate flag in their dorm room in 1990, and you didn’t do anything?’ ‘You laughed at a Woody Allen movie?’”
Maher referenced a Cato Institute survey showing 62% of Americans say they have a political perspective they are too afraid to share.
He went on to defend fired “Mandalorian” star Gina Carano, who was axed by Disney and Lucasfilm after she shared a meme warning that the demonization of people with different perspectives is what ultimately led to the rise of Nazi Germany.
“She made a Nazi analogy; who doesn’t these days?” he asked. “‘You’re like the Nazis’ is the new ‘I don’t like you.’ It’s always OK when Trump’s the Nazi.”
“By the way,” Maher added, “you can’t work in Hollywood if you don’t believe what we believe? Yeah, in the 1950s, that’s exactly what the left complained they were being told.”
He also ripped leaders in San Francisco who are determined to remove the names of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from public school buildings — an effort that has been temporarily tabled after the San Francisco city attorney sued the school district for failing to prioritize reopening classrooms for students.
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“The land of Lincoln might cancel Lincoln,” he said. “Memo to social justice warriors: When what you’re doing sounds like an Onion headline, stop.”
Maher also spoke with podcast host Megyn Kelly, who explained why she and her husband, Doug Brunt, decided to pull their children out of their school in New York.
“We were in the New York City private school system,” she told Maher. “And they were definitely leftist. We’re more center-right, and that’s fine. … Then they started taking a really hard turn toward social justice stuff.”
The former Fox News and NBC News anchor said that her 8-year-old son was exposed to a “three-week experimental trans-education program,” which only “confused the kids.” And her kindergarten daughter “was told to write a letter to the Cleveland Indians objecting to their mascot.”
Maher went on to read a letter from a school that reportedly claimed things like, “There’s a killer cop sitting at every school where white children learn.”
Clearly angered by the over-the-top and racially charged rhetoric, Maher said: “There [are] racist problems in this country, but this is hyperbole. And this is making people crazy. This is not the way we get to the Promised Land.”
Kelly, for her part, agreed with Maher, telling him she feels the push toward critical race theory is “divisive” and “racist” and not reaping the supposed intended result.
“Everybody gets divided into ‘oppressed’ or ‘oppressor’ on racial identity, on sexual identity,” she said. “I mean, this is really damaging, and, as you get older, what the studies show is, these sort of implicit biased education efforts bring out racism. So, if somebody’s having racist thoughts in the back of their head, it brings it to the frontal lobe, and more people act on their latent racism than they otherwise would have.”
The two agreed that — while there are real issues regarding ethnicity — this current culture is more about embracing a victimhood mentality.
“That’s the push now: to lean into victimhood,” said Kelly. “And it’s not just a race thing. I see it in my fellow women. … But we don’t have to lean into victimhood, even when we might be victims. Even if you are a real victim, which I’ve been in the past, too. It isn’t psychologically helpful to lean into it.”
“I always use the word ‘target,’” she added. “I was the target of certain men — that didn’t make me anybody’s victim. And the more you wallow in that mentality, the more you veer toward negativity and attract more of it in your life.”
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