Comedian John Cleese decided to call off a scheduled appearance at Cambridge University after an art historian, Andrew Graham-Dixon, was banned from the university because he did a Hitler impression. Cleese, having done Hitler impressions himself in the past, tweeted that since he did the same thing, he would pull out of his show to blacklist himself “before someone else does”.

I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an
impersonation of Hitler

I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) November 10, 2021

In a Tweet, Cleese apologized to those at Cambridge who wanted to talk with him, but suggested they “find a venue where woke rules do not apply”. He then followed up this Tweet with another suggestion: “If you’re in Cambridge, why don’t you hire a sizeable room and invite people on condition that I don’t have to walk on eggshells”.

 

 

John Cleese, unsurprisingly, received many negative comments and backlash for his decision to stand up against woke cancel culture. However, he continued to defend his opinions and stand by Graham-Dixon.

One critic of Cleese’s asked if by “woke”, he meant tolerant, intelligent people… To which Cleese replied, “If you are a morally superior, hypersensitive, narcissistic Puritan, uninterested in any opinions other than your own, I actively encourage you to stay away”.

 

Here is one of the sketches in which Cleese impersonates Hitler:

Cleese has previously made his views on cancel culture publically known. In fact, he is currently working on a cancel culture documentary which will be titled “Cancel Me”. In this documentary, he will interview people who have been “canceled” by the woke public.

“I’m delighted to have a chance to find out, on camera, about all the aspects of so-called political correctness,” said Cleese, “There’s so much I really don’t understand, like: how the impeccable idea of ‘Let’s all be kind to people’ has been developed in some cases ad absurdum.”