Seth Dillon SLAMS censorship of satire: 'If the popular narrative is off limits, then comedy itself is off limits'

Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon addressed the crowd at Turning Point USA’s Amfest on Monday, stating that there is an "all-out war on reality, reason, and truth" in today’s society.

"So what can you hope to learn today from an expert online troll? Probably not very much. But I do have a wealth of experience in at least one area that I think is relevant to everyone here at the moment. I'm talking about my experience with absurdity," said Dillon.

"As the CEO of a comedy site that’s been repeatedly fact-checked, smeared, and censored, and that’s seen nearly 100 of its jokes come true as if they were prophecies rather than punch lines, I think I have a somewhat unique perspective on the insanity that’s resulted from our culture’s all-out war on reality, reason, and truth," he added.

Dillon continued on to say that this was not a "hyperbole," and that "I just think we’ve become so accustomed to the madness that we’re losing sight of it."

"We need to resist that tendency. I think we need to continually remind ourselves that the craziness around us is not normal or good or deserving of acceptance. It must be consciously and consistently resisted."

Dillon noted that despite people’s assumptions that there is "a lot of material to work with" as a satire website nowadays, "imagine if your job was to make jokes that are funnier than what Democrats are doing in real life. Imagine if your job is to write jokes that are funnier than a Kamala Harris speech."

Dillon said that it is "genuinely tempting to view a lot of the opposition to the Bee as an attack on comedy, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate."

"The attack is really aimed at truth and our right to speak it."

"The further we zoom out, the more it looks like comedy may just be collateral damage and a much larger conflict," said Dillon, noting changes to Facebook’s rules in 2021 relating to satire.

"Facebook announced they'd be changing the way they handle satire. They said they'd allow it. But with new limitations that prevent satirists from making jokes about marginalized people who lack power and privilege. True satire, they said, does not punch down," he said.

"They made it clear that they’ll consider jokes that punch down to be hatred considered as satire," Dillon added.

Dillon said that Facebook’s goal wasn’t to "kill comedy," but rather to keep bad ideas alive that "comedians mock so effectively."

"So what are these bad ideas that can’t survive a little mockery?" Dillon asked.

These ideas include gender ideology, which has "led to the denial of the most basic facts of human biology, facts we all agreed upon right up until 10 minutes ago."

"It's an ideology loaded with wild, extremely mockable ideas. We are told by people with straight faces and grimy blue or purple hair… that men can become pregnant, that women can become men. We're told sex is assigned at birth rather than observed as if doctors just make their best guess whenever they see a newborn baby."

"These are not fringe ideas that are promoted by radicals on Reddit," said Dillon, who later added that these ideas have "gone from mainstream to mandatory. You can’t criticize."

"And now, thanks to hateful conduct policies, major social platforms that prohibit punching down, you can’t even joke about them."

"In order to prop up an insane worldview that can't be defended, or even coherently articulated, you have to insulate it from criticism, especially the comedic kind that employs mockery to expose foolishness."

Dillon continued on to talk about the viral post made by the Babylon Bee in March of 2022, naming Rachel Levine, United States Assistant Secretary for Health and transgender woman, "Man of the Year," after USA Today named Levine "Woman of the Year."

"So this was an insult to women everywhere so we fire back in defense of women and sanity with this satirical headline: We said 'the Babylon B's Man of the Year is Rachel Levine.'"

"Twitter didn’t think that was funny," said Dillon. The Babylon Bee’s account was locked for "hateful conduct," with the website being told that they would have access to their account again if they deleted the tweet.

"We refused. We did not delete the joke. As a result, we spent the next eight months in Twitter jail."

Dillon later added, "this is how the system is rigged to safeguard bad ideas. Big tech is defending a fantasy world where two and two make five by censoring anyone who so much as jokes about what reality is actually like."

"It's even worse than that, though. Twitter executives went beyond censorship when instead of taking down the Rachel Levine joke, they required us to delete it and admit that we engaged in hateful conduct. They wanted us to click a button that said delete when you delete this joke, you admit that you engage in hateful conduct. That is not mere censorship. It's subjugation."

Noting a portion of Twitter’s Terms of Service, which states that "Twitter’s mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information and to express their opinions and beliefs without barriers," Dillon noted the rest of the policy, "which prohibits misgendering, dead naming et cetera."

"If comedians and satirists are supposed to be punching up at the powerful, then I fail to see how we've neglected our duty. If it's not punching up to ridicule ideas like that, then what is? The comedian's job is to poke holes in the popular narrative. Whatever the narrative might be, if the popular narrative is off limits, then comedy itself is off limits and that’s basically where we find ourselves today."

Dillon said that these circumstances are why late-night television is "not funny anymore," with hosts going "for applause, not laughter."

"They're propping up the popular narrative instead of poking it. They dare not subvert it."

"So how did we get to this point?" Dillon asked. "How did we get to a point where insane ideas are not just popular, but sacred? How did we get to a point where it's considered hateful to tell the truth even in jest?"

"I think the answer is as simple and straightforward as this: we took bad ideas too seriously. Instead of laughing at absurdity, we accepted it. Instead of ridiculing bad ideas, we tolerated them. The absurd has become sacred only because it hasn't been sufficiently mocked," he said.

After posing the potential question of whether mockery is cruel, Dillon said, "We're not talking about mockery for the purpose of tearing people down and making them feel bad about themselves. We're talking about using it as a tool to expose foolishness for what it is so that it isn't taken seriously. Mockery of this kind is a moral imperative for the obvious reason that bad ideas taken seriously have catastrophic consequences."

Dillon noted the cases of detransitioned people who regret going through their gender transition, biological female prisoners who are housed with a biological male that identifies as a female, adding, "it’s good to laugh at that. Imagine if these ideas had been laughed at instead of lauded."

Noting a podcast episode from the Babylon Bee in which Elon Musk said that wokeness is a "mind virus," Dillon said, I agree with him and that’s why we target wokeness with so much of our humor. Bad ideas don’t just need to be refuted, they need to be ridiculed. They need to be mocked."

"So many things are off limits in comedy now. People think it represents progress to make things off-limits in comedy. They think we've improved morally because we make fun of fewer things. I could not disagree more strongly. I, in fact, think the opposite is true. I think we are more depraved than ever, because we are affirming and accepting what we should be ridiculing and rejected."

"At the Babylon Bee, we are just satirists, or comedians, or humorists. We write jokes on the internet for a living. Every day we try and we often fail. You know, we don't always do this successfully because it's hard to stay a step ahead of reality. We try to produce fake news that's funnier than what's happening in real life. That's our humble calling."

"But somehow we found ourselves on the frontlines of the battle for the preservation of freedom and the restoration of sanity. I have no idea how that happened. I do know though, that satire is never more necessary than when reality and rationality are under attack," Dillon added.

In closing, Dillon said that every time people cave to the cancel mob, they "make it stronger."

"We are hurting everybody else and affecting their rights speak freely, because we're giving more power to the tyrants instead of taking it away. Take it away, speak the truth boldly. Make them laugh, and while their mouths are open, pour truth in."