{"id":1374547,"date":"2022-03-13T18:00:58","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T22:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1374547"},"modified":"2022-03-13T18:01:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T22:01:01","slug":"the-british-have-been-slaves-comedy-icon-cleese-has-mic-taken-for-mocking-reparations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-british-have-been-slaves-comedy-icon-cleese-has-mic-taken-for-mocking-reparations\/","title":{"rendered":"&#039;The British Have Been Slaves&#039; \u2013 Comedy Icon Cleese Has Mic Taken for Mocking Reparations"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-british-have-been-slaves-comedy-icon-cleese-has-mic-taken-for-mocking-reparations%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1374547&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">British comedy legend John Cleese had his mic taken by woke co-panellists at an event\u00a0in Austin, Texas, after pointing out that British imperialism was not unique and that the British, too, were once slaves.<\/p>\n<p>Cleese, of Monty Python and <em>Fawlty Towers<\/em> fame, made the remarks at a South by Southwest festival even titled \u2018John Cleese in Conversation\u2019, according to a highly-slanted <em>Hollywood Reporter<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/general-news\/john-cleese-sxsw-panel-1235109668\/\">article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Riffing on an alleged joke about colonialism by <em>Daily Show<\/em>\u00a0correspondent Dulc\u00e9 Sloan, who is black, Cleese is said to have remarked that people \u201cforget the British Empire was the basic political unit of organization for 6,000 years \u2013 the British didn\u2019t start [colonising].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, colonisation and empire-building was conducted not only by the British, French, Russians, and other European peoples, but by non-white civilisations such as that of the Arabs, which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Myth-Andalusian-Paradise-Christians-Medieval\/dp\/1610170954\">spread by conquest<\/a> from the Arabian peninsula through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/jewish\/.premium-1009-the-mad-caliph-attacks-christian-sites-in-fatimid-empire-1.5450335\">the Levant<\/a>, North Africa, and \u2014 for a time \u2014 Spain and Portugal, and that of the Turks, who originate in Central Asia but have now almost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/europe\/2019\/05\/19\/israeli-researchers-turkeys-christians-victims-30-year-genocide\/\">totally displaced<\/a> the predominantly Greek, Christian civilisation of Anatolia and East Thrace, including the former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/the-conquest-of-constantinople_b_5500136?guccounter=1&#038;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&#038;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAmW8XEMzxMGKJHSVUHgarYxC9_Xa32shkax_4hlXqTtR7-Pxup_LJNh11vS54bctZVBo50RW25cBb8OWJ2aFdDnbOj9l3giBVSF2X92m2Ql4m1_RzCX8zNozLgLcvJ5qpXYMw_JYa5rhp-AOsqp5otOpQTWZkmndJoMYQwFwGLf\">Constantinople<\/a> \u2014 lending credence to the old adage that \u201cmany a true word is said in jest\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHistory is a history of crime. It\u2019s a history of people who were stronger beating up people who were weaker and it\u2019s always been that. It\u2019s deeply, deeply distasteful. But to pretend that one lot were worse than another \u2013 you do know the British have been slaves twice, right?\u201d Cleese asked his co-panellists, who supposedly attempted to change the subject.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201c[People] get competitive about this business of being oppressed,\u201d Cleese went on, noting that \u201cWe were oppressed, the English, by the Romans for 400 [years], from about 0 to 400\u201d \u2014 apparently earning a testy response from Sloan and fellow co-panellists\u00a0Dan Pasternack and\u00a0Ricky Velez.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re<em> really<\/em> going back,\u201d Pasternack is said to have rejoined, as if the abolition of slavery by the British 189 years ago was a recent phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is getting so uncomfortable,\u201d Velez added, facetiously asking if this was \u201c[the new] Dave Chappelle special?\u201d \u2014 a reference to the hugely popular black comedian who has been under sustained fire from less popular but more woke comics for joking about transgenderism.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Dave Chappelle to transgender activists: &#8220;you will not summon me, I am not bending to anybody\u2019s demands.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/y9F1WMcEWw\">https:\/\/t.co\/y9F1WMcEWw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BreitbartNews\/status\/1453143185111363589?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 26, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Unperturbed, Cleese reportedly said he wanted \u201creparations from Italy\u201d \u2014 a remark which the <em>Hollywood Reporter<\/em> claims drew \u201cshocked gasps\u201d \u2014 and from the French, noting that \u201cthe Normans came over in 1066\u2026 they were horrible people from France and they came and colonized us for 30 years \u2013 we need reparations there too, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>(It is unclear whether Cleese misspoke or was misquoted here, as the so-called <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lse.ac.uk\/economichistory\/2022\/01\/04\/from-norman-conquest-to-norman-yoke\/\">Norman Yoke<\/a> remained upon the English for many centuries after the conquest in 1066. )<\/p>\n<p>Britons were also carried off into slavery in significant numbers by the Vikings and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/history\/british\/empire_seapower\/white_slaves_01.shtml\">Barbary Pirates of North Africa<\/a> for hundreds of years, although Cleese did not get around to mentioning them, as Sloan took away his microphone shortly after the reparations exchange.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now you saved the colonizer,\u201d Pasternack said, prompting Sloan to suggest that she had\u00a0\u201csaved a comic whose career I respect\u201d \u2014 as if the 82-year-old comedy icon\u2019s career could be destroyed by his poking fun at the far-left cause of slavery reparations.<\/p>\n<p>The notionally right-wing MailOnline also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-10606743\/John-Cleese-stuns-South-Southwest-crowd-jokes-historic-slave-reparations-Britain.html\">covered<\/a> the SXSW panel, but adopted much the same admonishing tone as the Hollywood Reporter, suggesting that Cleese had gone on a \u201crant\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Much of Britain\u2019s conservative and right-wing press has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/europe\/2020\/09\/12\/telegraph-reviewer-defends-netflixs-cuties-against-age-terrified-ochild-sexuality\/\">inculcated woke ideology<\/a>, as many of the new generation of journalists <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/europe\/2019\/04\/29\/new-pro-eu-editor-of-daily-express-felt-sick-couldnt-sleep-over-papers-anti-mass-migration-stance\/\">have very little in common<\/a> with their readers.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Telegraph has published a review defending Netflix\u2019s Cuties against \u201can age terrified of child sexuality\u201d. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/pfc5RVhT44\">https:\/\/t.co\/pfc5RVhT44<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BreitbartNews\/status\/1304785422032269312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 12, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h5 class=\"western\"><em><span>Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter:<\/span><\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JackBMontgomery\"><span>@JackBM<\/span><\/a><\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JackBMontgomery\"><span>ontgomery<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n<h5 class=\"western\"><em><span>Follow Breitbart London on Facebook:<\/span><\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BreitbartLondon\/\"><span>Breitbart London<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British comedy legend John Cleese had his mic taken by woke co-panellists at an event\u00a0in Austin, Texas, after pointing out that British imperialism was not unique and that the British,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1374547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1374547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1374547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1374547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1374547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}