Comedian Ricky Gervais has long been one of the more outspoken people on the degeneracy of political correctness and cancel culture, describing the latter as a "weird sort of fascism," according to the Daily Wire.
With the obvious exceptions of libel and slander laws, Gervais has spoken out about the importance of freedom of speech, rejecting the viability of criminalizing certain kinds of speech that someone may find offensive.
Gervais shared with talkRadio that "The Office"—a BBC original show that he made—would never be allowed in the cultural environment today because of "these outrage mobs who take everything out of context."
He continued: "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."
"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… that there’s this new trendy myth that people who want free speech want to say awful things all the time. It's just isn't true, it protects everyone," said Gervais.
"If you're mildly left-wing on Twitter, you're suddenly Trotsky, right? If your mildly conservative, if you're Hitler and if your centrist and you look at both arguments, you're a coward."
"Just because you're offended it doesn't mean you're right," he added.
Gervais has not backed down from his views on freedom of speech despite the backlash and criticism he has received. His 2020 Golden Globes monologue was a perfect example of this, where Gervais unapologetically went after Hollywood stars, drawing worried looks from a number of attendees, including Tom Hanks.
Gervais said that his monologue 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."
"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."
The same goes for the American version of "The Office," where Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, says outrageous things due to his ignorance on a number of issues, which is what makes it comical.
Gervais noted that the state of comedy today has been simplified "two tribes of people screaming."
"I genuinely think I don't do anything that deserves to be canceled. Some people now don't care about the argument or the issue, they just want to own someone, they want to win the argument."
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