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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

For context: Rowan Atkinson is famously a Tory, the whole family is very right-wing. His brother was a prominent member of the UK Independence Party, the original brexiters - a fairly unsavoury organization containing a lot of racists.

Rowan’s activism on these issues of free speech is not particularly new either: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rowan_Atkinson&mo...

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What's wrong with him being a Tory? And he is not responsible for what his brother or sister is doing. This is the sick American University style social justice he is fighting against and more power to him, things are changing in the EU also because liberal or conservative, everyone's sick and tired of it.

Reading the Wikipedia link, most of his activism seems to be aimed at being able to allow comedy with religious aspects ("...they felt would give overwhelming power to religious groups to impose censorship on the arts") and the ability to poke fun at people in general ("...which aims to reform or repeal Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, particularly its statement that an insult can be grounds for arrest and punishment.").

Please explain what parts of his activism are we are supposed to be troubled by since those of us who are not in the UK don't have the background to know.

So your point here is that... we should ignore his views on free speech (e.g. he should be 'cancelled') because you don't like his other views?

You do realise that ~40% of Brits are Tories?

What does his brother have to do with anything? I don't know what my siblings' political leanings are at all!

Given the first paragraph, you should also make clear that he is a proponent of free speech. Because it sounds like you want to say the opposite.

And it does not provide any context, just a veiled attempt of saying what, exactly? Tory or Labour, cancel culture is a mob looking for blood.

Let's discuss the topic at hand, not whether the speaker is in the black or white camp.

This post proves Rowan point exactly.

The rabid replies to this entirely-factual comment, projecting a bunch of stuff I never said or implied, is a story in itself.

I never said his views have to be “discounted” because he’s a Tory, I just added context in terms of the ideological positions he moves from when elaborating his argument, in case people were not aware. This sort of issue doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

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