this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
851 points (95.7% liked)

Political Memes

5509 readers
2564 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (19 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jillette#Politics

Jillette has previously identified as a libertarian, and stated in 2003 that he may consider himself an anarcho-capitalist. He was a fellow at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 29 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Huh. Thanks. I didn't even know he was a libertarian, only knew him as an atheist skeptic guy (besides the illusionists part). And according to Wikipedia, seems he's no longer a libertarian:

In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism […] adding "Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, 'It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,' and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate."

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Wow. He has completely changed. Good on him for seeing the errors of his ways. Also, I'm going to paste a bit before what you pasted to add context, because I think it's worth adding.

In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic after a libertarian group asked him to speak at an anti-mask rally. "The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change"

In 2020, Jillette distanced himself from aspects of libertarianism, particularly surrounding COVID-19. In an interview with Big Think, he stated, "[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass." He went on to elaborate, "[I]t seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism."[53]

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I just didn't want to make it bulky, so tried to bring in the core statement. My thought was that for more details, the Wikipedia link is right there.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I understand the sentiment, but so many people never click on the link.

load more comments (15 replies)