Topic: Liberal Fascism
While it’s true that Ben Affleck is a fool, even a fool can perform a public service. Affleck rendered such a service recently when as a guest on Bill Maher’s TV show he accused that atrocious vulgarian of Islamophobia. That is, Maher had had to audacity to utter some never-to-be-mentioned truths about Islam, e.g. “Islam is the only religion that acts like the mafia that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing.”
Maher earned a bit of strange new respect from the Right for his candor, though some conservative commentators pointed out that his similarly offensive statements about other religions had never incited the ire of the Left. Personally I have no use for the guy, who once called Sarah Palin a “cunt” and her Down’s Syndrome child a “retard.” He is, if I may be forgiven a momentary descent into the vernacular, a leaping, screaming, flaming, gaping asshole. Thus it delights me to report that none other than Bill Maher is this month’s poster boy for Liberal Fascism in the category of Suppression of Free Speech.
Maher has been selected as the 2014 commencement speaker at the University of California, Berkley—a sad commentary on the state of American higher education, to be sure, but let us leave that aside. Here’s the thing, though. In the wake of his uncomplimentary remarks about Islam and Affleck’s on-air hissy fit, various student organizations on campus are demanding that Maher be dumped as commencement speaker. This is so wonderful, in so many ways!
First, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy. Maher has always been the Left’s most beloved court jester on account of his foul-mouthed denunciations of all that the Left hates. It didn’t bother progressives at all when he reviled Sarah Palin, mocked Catholics etc. and I suppose he thought he was bulletproof. But Islam is different. For complicated ideological reasons the Left can permit nothing negative to be said about the religion of the Prophet. It’s considered bad form, if not thought crime, to take notice of such things as the operation of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan or the rampages of Islamofascists in Nigeria. Maher crossed that line—and now the anathema has been pronounced against him.
Second, this exposes the ugly totalitarian tendencies of the Left. Oh, sure, the agents of the campus thought police use words like tolerance and sensitivity as their justification for giving Maher the push. They sob that “marginalized student communities” would be offended and feel excluded if Maher were allowed to speak. Another way of putting this would be to say that college students should never, but never, be presented with ideas that might challenge their assumptions or make them uncomfortable.
Third, it’s a reminder that though all campus communities are equal, some are more equal to others. We may be sure that if Catholics or Mormons, two favorite Maher targets, had complained about his invitation they’d have been denounced as fascists, religious fanatics, enemies of the First Amendment, etc. and so forth. And of course, if you’re white or Christian or politically conservative, you can count on being made very uncomfortable—indeed, you can count on being belittled and stereotyped in the crudest imaginable manner. The fact that Maher was chosen as commencement speaker is proof enough of that.
So you see, we owe a lot to the oafish performance of Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s show. That he actually managed to make Bill Maher look good for a moment was itself no mean feat. But by starting a process that generated these wonderfully teachable moments Affleck has, as I said, performed a genuine public service.
