Bill Maher has been known for his liberal views, but on Tuesday night’s CNN Primetime, he surprised even host Jake Tapper when he slammed the “woke” left and its obsession with identity politics.
Tapper asked Maher about the Democrats’ focus on identity politics and the “counterargument” that it’s always been about white people but now it’s just an effort at inclusion, which Maher said he supported.
But then Maher went on to draw a firm line between liberalism and wokeness, which he said had gone too far. “Woke, which started out as a good thing, alert to injustice, who could be against that, but it became sort of an eye roll because they love diversity except of ideas,” Maher aptly noted.
Maher then defined wokeness as “a collection of ideas that are not building on liberalism but very often undoing it.” He used the example of Abraham Lincoln, whose name and statues “they” are taking down, as evidence that wokeness has gone too far. “Five, ten years ago, bedrock liberalism was we are striving to be a color blind society where we don’t see race. Of course, we see it, but it doesn’t matter. That’s not what woke is. Woke is something very different. It’s identity — we see it all the time. It’s always the most important thing. I don’t think that’s liberalism,” Maher explained.
Clearly, Maher is fed up with the woke left’s obsession with identity politics and its refusal to consider different ideas. It’s no wonder that even Jake Tapper was taken aback by Maher’s statement, as it’s not often that a leftist criticizes the official religion of the Democrat Party.
It’s important to remember that Maher is not advocating for conservatism, but for a return to a more moderate liberalism based on inclusion of all ideas. Maher is not alone in this sentiment; many on the left are concerned about the “cancel culture” that has become popular in the past few years.
I think the majority of America still falls somewhere in the realm of moderate but the left has the more liberal voters scared of standing out.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, it’s hard to deny that Maher has a point. Instead of shutting down ideas they don’t agree with, the left should be encouraging dialogue and open-mindedness. That would require them to get their heads out of the sand and engage in meaningful conversation—Not likely to ever happen.