Comedian Ricky Gervais continued his ongoing crusade against cancel culture last week by denouncing it for the effects it has on people’s livelihoods.
Speaking with Metro, Gervais said that it’s simply “not cool” to rally a mob into getting someone fired for saying something that someone found offensive.
“If it is choosing not to watch a comedian because you don’t like them, that’s everyone’s right. But when people are trying to get someone fired because they don’t like their opinion about something that’s nothing to do with their job, that’s what I call cancel culture, and that’s not cool,” the comedian said.
“You turning off your own TV isn’t censorship. You trying to get other people to turn off their TV because you don’t like something they’re watching, that’s different,” he added.
Gervais even said that society, especially the U.K., has gotten “dangerously” close to putting legal pressure on people who say the wrong things that offend the wrong people.
“Everyone’s allowed to call you an a**hole, everyone’s allowed to stop watching your stuff, everyone’s allowed to burn your DVDs, but you shouldn’t have to go to court for saying a joke that someone didn’t like. And that’s what we get dangerously close to,” he said. “If you don’t agree to someone’s right to say something you don’t agree with, you don’t agree with freedom of speech.”
Last month, Gervais said that the kind of political correctness pervading Twitter and other social media is a new kind of fascism.
“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,” Gervais said.
“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,” he continued.
Prior to that, Gervais told Times Radio that “The Office,” the original BBC show that he created, would be destroyed in today’s environment because woke mobs take everything out of context.
“Now [The Office] would suffer because people would take things literally. There are these outrage mobs who take things out of context,” he said. “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.”
A whole chorus of celebrities have come out swinging against cancel culture, both Right and Left. Last Thursday, singer Kelly Rowland (formerly of Destiny’s Child) said that cancel culture has given people a god complex.
“In this ‘cancel culture’ we live in, I am SO grateful God NEVER canceled me, and I’m sure he could’ve many-a-times!” Rowland said on Instagram.
Advising people to withhold passing judgment, Rowland concluded with the hashtag #StopTryinToBeGod.
“Let us TRY to remember NOT to judge others,” she said. “We HONESTLY don’t have the space nor authority too [sic]! Let us remember to lead with love & kindness, the world has enough negativity, for you to pour more into it!”
Related: Singer Kelly Rowland Rips Cancel Culture: ‘Stop Tryin To Be God’