Yes, we must defend Stephen Fry from the woke mob he encouraged in the past

This is, after all, the same Stephen Fry who suggested JK Rowling needed to ‘retreat’ from her position on trans issues because ‘I have trans friends and intersex friends who are deeply upset by her’.

This is also the same Stephen Fry who said people who get upset about the toppling of statues by woke mobs are ‘ignorant of history’. ‘One of the ironies of this kind of culture war’, he said last year, ‘is that it is those who are upset by it and regard it just as wokeness or cultural Marxism or whatever else they want to call it – they’re the ones who are most ignorant of history’.

Yet none of these silly positions quite tips into outright hypocrisy. Nor do they amount to a call to cancel anyone who has breached the dreary norms that wokesters seek to impose on society. Besides, even if they did, it would still be right to defend Fry and other luvvie comedians from the Watermans of this world who wish to censor jokes they regard as offensive.

[I agree … to an extent. We should argue against the attacks on comedy and speech when they cross over into outright cancellation attempts. However, that doesn’t require us to do so with any particular enthusiasm when the woke mob turns on one of its own. One way to disincentivize future Robespierres is to ensure they get the Robespierre treatment themselves, figuratively speaking. — Ed]