Comedian Dave Chappelle took LGBT activists to task this week for their apparent hypocrisy and intolerance. In the second episode of his podcast “The Midnight Miracle,” Chappelle discussed the savage attacks by violent activists on his fans and his success in canceling one of his shows.
What is the background?
In a conversation with co-hosts Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey, Chappelle noted that transgender activists “want to be feared. “If you say that, we will punish you. We’ll go to First Avenue if*** your show and come to the Varsity Theater if**** your performance. And they just can’t.”
Chappelle was scheduled to perform a comedy show in July at an iconic Minneapolis concert hall, First Avenue. However, the event was canceled just hours before it started.
TheBlaze previously reported that it was canceled by First Avenue officials and subsequently moved to the Varsity Theater, a venue approximately 2.5 miles away.
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway suggested at the time that this move amounted to “totalitarian censorship,” exemplifying “hatred of free speech.”
First Avenue had evidently caved to pressure from activists, saying in a statement: “We believe in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression, but in honoring it, we lost sight of the impact this would have.”
Rolling Stone reported that employees complained about Chappelle and threatened to quit.
The staff and other activists unsympathetic to free speech were angered in part by Chappelle’s 2021 special “The Closer,” which had drawn complaints from Netflix.
Former actress Elliot Page, Jameela Jamil and one of the former Wachowski brothers behind “The Matrix” were among the so-called celebrities who supported Netflix employees’ efforts to silence the black comedian, the BBC reported.
Trans activist Ashlee Marie Preston said: “We’re here today not because we don’t know how to take a joke. We’re here because we’re concerned that jokes are taking lives.”
One of the allegedly murderous jokes Chappelle made in the special was: “They canceled JK Rowling. Oh my god… She actually said gender was a fact, and then the trans community got mad like shit, they started calling her a TERF.”
The comedian noted that she was on “Team TERF,” which stands for Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminist, a group that believes only biological women are women.
NBC News indicated that the cancellation of the show in Minneapolis was also prompted by an online Change.org petition, which stated, “Dave Chappelle has a history of being dangerous to trans people, and First Avenue has the duty to protect the community”.
Activists were apparently not pleased that Chappelle’s show had been moved. They wanted him to be silenced outright.
Violent activists flocked to the second theater hoping to repeat the success.
The intolerance of the rainbow coalition
On his podcast this week, Chappelle recalled how transgender activists mobbed his fans lined up outside the Varsity Theater, waiting to get in after the original show was canceled.
Chappelle said that these transgender activists “and their surrogates are always saying that my jokes are somehow going to be the root cause of some impending violence.”
Before a joke was told onstage that day, “people of various genders and gender identities … threw eggs. They threw eggs at people who were lined up to see the show,” Chappelle said.
“One lady was so angry at the protesters that she grabbed a police barricade… Have you ever seen one? They look like a bike rack. This whore picked up this barricade by herself and threw it into the crowd,” he recalled. comedian. “I’ve got to tell you, it’s an incredible feat of strength for a woman.”
Chappelle recalled that the rallying cry of the violent activists was “‘Go home, transphobic.’ They kept saying this: “Go home transphobic” and “Fuck you transphobic”. It was very confusing, but if you replace the word ‘transphobic’ with ‘n*****’ it makes perfect sense.”
Despite the activists’ venom and violence, Chappelle stressed how none of his fans “hit them. In fact, people in the crowd would just say, ‘We love you. Like what are you talking about?'”
Chappelle has striven to take a nuanced approach to LGBT issues in his comedy. However, because of his refusal to subordinate his sense of humor to the precepts of activists, he has been physically assaulted along with his followers.
Chappelle was attacked on stage at the Hollywood Bowl in May by a knife-wielding man, who claimed to have been “turned on” by the comedian’s jokes about the “LGBT community”.
u201cAnother angle of Dave Chappelle being attacked on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. https://t.co/6OPZv32wKRu201d
— CONSEQUENCE (@CONSEQUENCE) 1651702572
“Art is a nuanced endeavor,” Chappelle said this week. “I think they’re trying to take the nuance out of the discourse of American culture, that they make people talk like they’re right-wing or left-wing. Everything seems absolute, and any opinion that respects it is. much more nuanced than these binary options they keep putting in front of us. I don’t see the world in red or blue.”
The comedian hinted that activists go out of their way to find and take offense: “There’s a thing they do where they deliberately obscure what I think they think is the intent of my work to make a moment out of it that I don’t know. that the work necessarily deserves. Do you know what I mean?
“I’m not even mad that they have a problem with my work,” he added. “Well, well. Who cares? What bothers me is the idea that because they don’t like it, I’m not allowed to say it.”
Jeremy Clarkson of “Grand Tour” fame, now facing yet another cancellation, recently expressed a similar sentiment in an op-ed, claiming that left-wing malcontents are always “inventing new rules to catch anyone and everyone they deem unworthy” and that there is “truly an army with the ability to remove from public life anyone who disagrees with their increasingly militant point of view”.
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