Right wing cancel culture at it again.

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

This really is a scary time for free speech.

Another example right wing hypocrisy when it comes to free speech:

Jimmy Kimmel Live! suspended indefinitely after host’s Charlie Kirk comments https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/18/jimmy-kimmel-live-suspended-indefinitely-after-hosts-charlie-kirk-comments?CMP=share_btn_url

It’s so depressing watching the UK royal family and PM grovel and curtsy to Trump and watching the democrats kiss Rep arse in the US, that I resorted to asking Chat GPT for some honesty:

1. 2028–2032

• If the right wins again in 2028, especially after a populist 2024 administration, the transformation could deepen.
• Long-term judicial appointments, voting system changes, and purges of civil institutions could tilt the balance of power for a generation.

1. 2032 and beyond

• If U.S. democracy weakens institutionally (via emergency powers, surveillance, limits on dissent, etc.), far-right dominance could harden into a more permanent form of illiberal governance.

True structural dominance would likely take 8–10 years, assuming successive administrations follow a populist-nationalist agenda.

Social media is a plague - in particular social media that favours visibility of certain posts over others. Mumsnet so far has been ok for me because you can write full posts and there is fairness in terms of visibility on threads. Apart from the influence of its current ownership, X is a cesspit because it is designed to restrict your thoughts. The character limit is the USP but by definition it can only be soundbites.
Social media today is trying to kill long form thought when only long form reading and writing trains a population to spot nuances and THINK CRITICALLY. The art of elaborating and looking beyond the headline is disappearing and it's a godsend for despots.

Re. your first sentence, which I agree, it does seem that X/Twitter in particular heavily steers people towards the Far Right:

https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/rightwing-populist-afd-dominates-german-twitter-new-study-shows/

Not to harp on about this, BUT leftists never EVER cared about free speech during Covid.

For me personally, Covid was a radicalizing moment, where what I would say and do was policed because it could be ‘dangerous’. And yet, a lot of what we were trying to say turned out to be correct. I will never forgive nor forget that.

So for your enjoyment, here are is a thread where someone collected 25 times the Biden administration pressured social media companies to censor speech:

x.com/justin_hart/status/1968734685409817032?s=46&t=LHu5hEVEgoG4lIIfMesJGA

There isn't a country in the world that doesnt restrict free speech somewhat.

In normal democracies, those limits are usually rooted in public policy (and are often unlawful if the valid public policy objectives justifies the restriction). See, for example, anti hate crime laws in the UK.

Attempting to restrict the spread of disinformation during a public health crisis is a world apart from having someone's show suspended because you don't like their opinions.

Land of the Free - what a fucking joke.

Attempting to restrict the spread of disinformation during a public health crisis is a world apart from having someone's show suspended because you don't like their opinions

I hope you read through the thread, because the Biden admin asked companies to censor true information in many cases. Or asking them to censor healthy debate about unproven tactics like lockdowns and universal masking.

Kimmel wasn’t suspended for his opinion. He was suspended because he repeated something factually untrue, that the shooter was MAGA. The only question is, did he truly
believe this (which is a bad look) or did he lie to protect his own side (which is an even worse look)

'Kimmel wasn’t suspended for his opinion. He was suspended because he repeated something factually untrue,'

You'd wonder why, if truth is sooooooo important in the US, Trump and his administration are still in role.

Because I’m not gonna vote for leftists. It’s just not going to happen. I will never ever vote for any Democrat again after Covid. And they’ve only become worse since then anyway, making my choice incredibly easy.

The data people were asked to censor went against the best expert advice at the time. As we’ve learnt more some elements of the advice at the time have been shown to not be fully correct with the benefit of more data.

In these situations you can’t always have a debate and the choice for everyone to decide for themselves because the measures you have opted to use to try and contain something, based on the best information currently available, may need compliance from the overall population to have any chance of success. Ultimately some of the calls likely were wrong but that’s the case with the calls made in any crisis. Having mixed messages is clearly not going to be better. It’s easy to look back and say well I knew x was wrong at the time but in reality there were lots of things all of us thought were wrong and all of us were right about a few and wrong about most. We remember the ones we got right and say “see we were saying this” but forget about or shrug off the ones we had wrong.

Conflating restrictions to public discourse during a national crisis to a president stating that networks who criticise him should maybe lose their broadcasting licence is just wild. They are not even close to the same thing.

Not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say that it doesn’t exist and if they did I’d wonder where they have been for the last 15 years. I don’t really spend any time on other SM having said that but I do spend time with a lot of left leaning people and I don’t recognise denial that it exists.

The question is more about whether restrictive consequences for speech are ever justified and if so in what circumstances. There is a lot of confusion it seems. It would be better if we could have a proper conversation about what and when, without trying to point score, and come to a consensus about it. But we seem a long way past that at the moment which is very depressing.

The data people were asked to censor went against the best expert advice at the time

Which experts? Those of the Great Barrington Declaration were censored and harassed. It is a stain on the experts, however, when even normal people turned out to be correct and the experts were in error.

You can’t just say ‘sorry, how could we have known?’ when you silenced the opposition. That’s real chutzpah, tbh.

In these situations you can’t always have a debate and the choice for everyone to decide for themselves because the measures you have opted to use to try and contain something, based on the best information currently available, may need compliance from the overall population to have any chance of success

George W Bush dragged my country to war over this same logic. We have a right to robust debate over these matters that will personally affect us.

Sorry I just don’t give a shit about a comedian who is telling an easily debunked lie to a national audience.

What JK said doesn’t seem a big deal at all. Your health secretary always tells dangerous bare faced lies to the public, why has he not been fired? Didn’t he say kids are walking around ‘mitochondrially challenged’? WTF? That’s not even grammatically correct English, let alone a diagnosis.

Kimmel said the ‘MAGA are trying not to claim the shooter as their own’…..how is that a proven lie worthy of being fired? Especially as the full investigation report has not been released, any opinion is merely that.

Dangerous times when someone’s ego is that fragile they forget your First Amendment. I am not American but it’s scary to see authoritarian rule happening to the US from within especially after remembering what NYC went through during 9/11.

Those of the Great Barrington Declaration were censored and harassed.

Yes and those who claimed Covid could’ve come from Wuhan lab were also derided and called racist. The ‘racist’ bit puzzled me - why is it more racist to say it originated from a laboratory rather than a wet market?
I suppose the Chinese government realised that an accusation of racism would immediately silence the lab theory exponents.

I did scan through the thread and can't really see what you think the issue with it is? The government made a good attempt, with lots of ongoing dialogue, aimed at preventing the spread of disinformation (based on the best available info).

And no, Kimmel did not say the shooter was "MAGA" and, even if he implied it (or even if he explicitly got it wrong), so what? Covid disinformation wad deadly on a mass scale - a comedian getting a fact wrong would be a comedian getting a fact wrong. Heck, news channels routinely get things wrong and are seldom cancelled, and Trump tells outrageous lies all the time.

And beyond that, it's already widely believed that Trump got Colbert cancelled (because he makes fun of Trump, often pointing out Trump's lies), and Trump has even said Seth Myers will be next? Do you think that's based on a prediction that Myers will say something factually untrue in the future, or because Myers is a frequent critic of Trump?

There is a world of difference between a government trying to protect public health and silence dissenters. That, of all people, the administration is prioritising going after TV comedians who joke about Trump is, in a sense, laughably petty (and obviously personal). The President is silencing free speech because his feelings got hurt, and such disrespect is (apparently) no longer justifiable in the US.

Agree. I don't even like his style of humour but:

• Kimmel condemned the murder of Kirk
• Kimmel also at least as far back as 2022 was criticising cancel culture and specifically said that he didn't think people like Joe Rogan should be cancelled for their views on COVID/vaccines. Or that their views should be suppressed but should be allowed to be aired so they can be debates (a very traditional argument for free speech)
• Kimmel also criticised the overly censorious tendancies of the left for contributing to Trump's reelection

Cancel culture didn't start with "the left". I would say that it started after 9/11 in America but either way... Whoever started it, this shadenfraude at someone on the "opposite team" being cancelled regardless of their own views is really unhealthy. It undermines the idea that everyone respects everyone else's right to speak freely so that they too can speak freely. And insures that people who do believe in healthy debate are removed from the conversation. Meaning whoever gets into power, free speech/discourse is going to get worse and worse. And more extreme.

Donald Trump ever told any easily debunked lies?

How about right wing news media, has it ever advanced any lies, in service to Donald Trump and his agenda? How about influencers, Charlie Kirk included?

In the context of the US media landscape, do you consider Jimmy Kimmel to be a significant distributor of political disinformation, worthy (among all others) of censorship? Really?

The left really don’t have the high ground on this. These sorts of posts are why they get pushback.

Maybe the Chinese gov but it was part of a lot of the rhetoric here without them.

@RingoJuice
"George W Bush dragged my country to war over this same logic. We have a right to robust debate over these matters that will personally affect us."

Sorry but isn't that a good reason to be worried about comedians/public speakers being shut down? In the run up to the Iraq war there was a lot of "you are with us or against us" rhetoric and people who disagreed were cast as being on the sides of the terrorists. Some people lost careers, that's why I said I thought "Cancel culture" started then. Trump is doing the same thing, but on steroids, and making it about criticism specifically of him rather than just US government policy. I happen to agree with you that the COVID issues could have been handled better. But this feels like an escalation of that, and therefore also not good.

Also Bush was republican. So, by your argument we had a republican limit free speech (Iraq war). Then a Democrat limit free speech (COVID). Now would be a good time to stop surely.

Censoring what you ‘believe’ to be right is exactly how we got here. Biden admin pressured social media companies to censor and remove content that they believed was wrong and that censored information turned out to be, in many cases, entirely correct.

Saying that its what you believed at the time is irrelevant. They censored opposing and dissident views so they have ZERO credibility on free speech (or was it ‘freeze peach’?)

But if this is really what you think, I hope you defended Alex Jones when he said Sandy Hook was a psy-op. Or is that somehow different?

Maybe the Chinese gov but it was part of a lot of the rhetoric here without them.

Yes indeed. I wish someone could explain why it was racist or even why the lab leak theory was dismissed.

For those earlier pushing the idea that the shooter wasn’t from the left,

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk-shooter-groyper/684244/

TL;DR: shooter was from the left; both left and right have been violent in cycles; there is less overall violence than people think; trying to pretend the shooter wasn’t from the left is just motivated reasoning.

You have no credibility on the free speech issue. It’s not just COVID. It’s the silencing of gender critical women. It’s the silencing of HBD dissidents on matters of race.

So no, you don’t get to ask for a truce now. Because when the left took up the reigns of power, they tried to crush dissent too.

I am not going to start caring about some washed-up comedian that nobody watches. ABC could have pushed back, they chose not to. Whatever.

I think I'm correct in saying Toby Young is not quite a free speech absolutist but very nearly. I agree the remarks by the President elect of the Oxford Union were distasteful but that's the true test of a commitment to free speech, isn't it? It's challenging sometimes but I think we have to get back to letting people be offended and not treating it as something society needs to fix for them. That includes President who don't liked being mocked as much as it includes men who can't tolerate being correctly sexed.

I can't believe people are voting Republican because the Democrats lied. Make it make sense.
Trump and his administration have lied and exaggerated time after time after time. Barefaced, provable lies and exaggeration. Getting journalists banned because they're critical of Trump and his administration. There is no free speech tolerated in the Republican administration if it's not 100% supportive of the administration.

Having a pop at the Democrats over free speech while supporting the Republicans? Makes no sense.