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Ricky Gervais slams ‘cancel culture’ and PC ‘wokeness’ as a ‘weird sort of fascism’

15 July, 2020
Oliver Down

The outspoken comedian Ricky Gervais has once again criticised the so called ‘cancel culture’ as he spoke on the use and future of free speech in a round of new interviews. Gervais, who is 59 delivered a number of controversial jokes at the 77th Golden Globes awards ceremony back in January of this year. At that ceremony Gervais described ‘wokeness’ as “a weird sort of fascism”.

‘Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean you’re right’: Ricky Gervais slammed ‘cancel culture’ as he defended the use of free speech in a new interview (pictured in January)

In one interview Mr Gervais has told TalkRadio : “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. If you’re mildly left-wing on Twitter, you’re suddenly Trotsky, right? If you’re mildly conservative, you’re Hitler and if you’re centrist and you look at both arguments, you’re a coward. Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean you’re right”.

Cancel culture is a new phrase that is being used to describe the mob mentality that targets certain products, people or programs. Gervais has also spoken to Times Radio has said : “Now [The Office] would suffer because people would take things literally. There are these outrage mobs who take things out of context. 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 cancelled. 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”.

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