Bill Maher slams singer Chappell Roan in unhinged sexist and queerphobic attack on his show; My response to Bill

Someone should have stopped him... preferably when he first went on television

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Bill Maher smirking after delivering a joke his writing team came up with.

I have to admit I haven’t kept up with Bill Maher. I was surprised to see he still appeared on television, with his talk-show Real Time with Bill Maher now totaling 22 seasons.

I remember Bill from when I was much younger. I changed; he hasn’t. He’s always been “controversial”, to put it in positive marketing terms, and he’s always been kind of stupid.

The problem isn’t being controversial for the sake of laughter or — as much as Bill might hate to call it — engagement. At least, not in this case. The problem with Bill, instead, is that he has decided to be controversial towards a public figure that it is currently cool to hate just so he could further browbeat her into accepting Zionism.

Watch the clip here: https://x.com/billmaher/status/1844938477512675654

This is not intelligent or insightful content; it’s just filling the airtime for your dying medium. At least, that’s probably what he says to himself when he sees that the ratings on his show have dropped by 25% over the last two years.

Hollywood has long had a problem with Zionism, and more broadly with imperialism. The US military lends surplus equipment and soldiers as extras for Hollywood movies provided they get final say over the script, so that the US military-industrial complex always shines in a positive light.

Over time, self-censorship becomes ingrained and second nature.

In the age of #metoo and the resurgence of new assailants such as P Diddy, Epstein, Johnny Depp, Kanye West and many others who will follow along as Diddy’s trial progresses, we can easily forget to look at the past; Hollywood has always been a hive of sexual assault and misogyny.

Bill Maher with P Diddy and Ron Burkle, 2008

In 1921, Hollywood star ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle locked himself in a room with 25-year-old Virginia Rappe at a party. He emerged a little bit later with Rappe saying “"I am dying, I am dying. He did it.”

Arbuckle was acquitted after only five minutes of deliberation by the jury.

Marylin Monroe was a victim of Hollywood sexual assault too, also during her 20s. Fredric March groped actresses on set. Errol Flynn was charged for sexual assault on underage women. If you refused these advances, like Rita Hayworth, you would get blacklisted and never find work in the industry again. The list goes on.

The connection between Hollywood’s rapist nature, its ties to the MIC and its growth as a Zionist outlet is that it has created a microcosm over time that reinforces a certain ideology. Hollywood has essentially become a monopoly, one that wields incredible amounts of money, with which they can buy powerful people — actors, who are recognized and loved around the world. The Hollywood system is a self-reproducing pyramid, too big for its own good.

Do not confuse Hollywood for Judaism, however. Some self-serving trolls would like you to believe that Hollywood is “corrupted” because it’s Jewish-dominated. It’s true that there are many Jewish actors, writers, agents and directors in Hollywood. This is because Hollywood was formed on the West Coast, which was much less developed than the East Coast back in the day, precisely to evade antisemitic practices and Thomas Edison’s patent monopoly in the showbusiness industry.

But Hollywood is corrupted because it wields money and power and is embedded in the imperialist system. Christians and atheists commit sexual assault in Hollywood too. To reduce everything to religion does a disservice to the Palestinian cause, it’s the same argument as simpletons like Stephen King or Maher, that “people in the Middle East are killing each other over their holy book.” To promote this argument is self-serving: it raises antisemitic and Islamophobic beliefs without doing anything for Palestinian liberation.

Bill Maher is not quite a Hollywood star, but he exists in the same microcosm of entertainment. HBO, the company that produces his show, also makes movies and TV series. They own their own TV channels. If he wants to exist in this environment, he has two choices: either pretend to be a Zionist, or, better yet, actually be one.

Bill presents himself as a controversial, no-holds-barred figure. One that says the truth and the plain truth, even if it hurts to hear it. But he self-censors too: he goes after anti-zionist, progressive figures. Where is his incisive response to Nethanyahu, instead of picking on a 26-year-old newly-famous singer? Instead, he had the architect of the Palestinian genocide himself on his show to ask him very important questions such as “Kanye West has said ‘when I wake up, I’m going Defcon 3 on Jewish people’ — will Israel retaliate?”

Chappell Roan, meanwhile, is a 26-year-old singer and performer who came under fire for protesting the Palestinian genocide, and she received such backlash from it, after being propelled to almost instant nationwide fame with her song Midwest Princess, that she felt forced to issue an apology and walk back some of her statements.

Certainly Chappell isn’t a child anymore. She is 26. But Bill is 68 years old; he is her senior and should conduct himself as such. He is old enough to have witnessed the Six Day War live on TV. The First Intifada, and the Oslo Accords. He was hosting his show already during the Second Intifada and subsequent liberation of Gaza from settlers in 2005.

Chappell had to learn about these events in the history books. I am a bit older than her, and I was too young in 2005 to really understand, care or even hear about the Second Intifada. Even though I was alive at the same time the liberation of Gaza happened, I only truly learned about this event later, by reading about it.

My point is that Bill should know better than to bully a 26 year old artist who is struggling with sudden fame, and has admitted to it.

This is Hollywood: either you get with the programme, or you get blacklisted.

In his 8 minute tirade against Roan, which you can watch here below, Bill Maher brings up several points that we’ll be going through one by one.

Responding to Bill Maher’s unhinged rant

The segment begins with Bill failing to land a joke; you can clearly see the “pause for laughter” moment after he says “…an open letter to Chappell Roan”.

This will be a recurring motif of the segment.

He bemoans that people prefer being on their phones instead of watching him, and quickly segues into mocking her name, saying it’s “not one of Trump’s golf course” (despite Chappell being a vocal opponent of Trump’s policies).

Bill, your name has always struck me as something I’d name a pet duck. Sit down.

He makes a joke about Hezbollah pagers blowing up, which I’ve written about before. The pager attack should concern him: it is a terror attack that “Israel” can carry against anyone, and against him too. He seems to think himself as being too ideological to touch; that he is such a good and diligent Zionist that he could never be the target of Mossad or IOF. But the pager attack was indiscriminate, and this is readily apparent when children were killed by this terrorist attack. It’s the same as saying “Well, I would never get mowed down by a car at a protest, because I don’t go to protests!” The car driver doesn’t discriminate. You could be going to the store passing by the protest and get ran over.

The joke fails again, eliciting only forced laughter from the audience (including one plant who’s much louder than everyone else throughout the segment). It’s a very ominous threat, as expected from Zionists. The play on words with “blowing up” is not particularly original; kids make it too (blowing up with fame and blowing up explosives). The comparison is an implicit threat, saying “if you don’t shut up, we might blow you up too”. It would be like me saying Bill Maher’s jokes land like an airliner on 9/11 — they don’t.

He continues with the threats, mocking her for “getting 3.2 billion plays on Spotify — almost 11 cents”. In the context of all that we’ve said before, about how Hollywood exercises control over its hopefuls, about how the TV medium is dying, this is not a joke about how Spotify doesn’t pay its artists: the target here is not Spotify, but Chappell. This “joke” is about how Chappell should do well to reconsider her views if she wants to keep her fame and make some money, lest she ends up homeless. It’s another threat.

This lengthy introduction brings him to his main point: berating a young artist for not accepting Zionism.

Let’s be clear first that Maher is talking to the choir. He did not invite Chappell on his show for a debate or conversation; he is not talking to her, but speaking at her. He’s not roasting her either, as a roast implies consent. He’s berating her, beating her down verbally, assaulting her, until she relents, and using his platform of over 700,000 viewers to do this publicly, in broad daylight.

After a long aside intended to disassociate his upcoming arguments from himself in which Maher jokes that he’s 35 (he’s not, he’s two generations older than Chappell and he should realize this), that he has a TikTok and that he “gets” the youth, he starts rewriting Palestinian history.

Israel has no history, only a criminal record

I know you're moved by what you see on there. we all are, the dead Palestinian bodies, but it's odd that your generation didn't seem nearly as moved by the Jewish bodies on October 7th.

Nobody cares about the “Jewish” bodies (Maher lied - they were IOF forces) because the death of 600 occupation soldiers was nothing compared to the 200,000 dead Palestinians, many of which never made it past the age of 1.

This is the same as saying “it’s weird that you’re not moved by all the dead Wehrmacht soldiers but you decry all the deaths in concentration camps!”

What’s weird is Maher losing all perspective to the Zionist brainworms and refusing to even understand the sheer scale of destruction going on in Gaza — much less talk about it.

He immediately goes on to another point:

You killed a Coachella this year, but when Hamas kills at a music festival, it's a whole other thing. Doesn't the sight of so many young women raped at a music festival make it a little personal? My guess is that Gen Z hearts are hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, which likes to call the Jews colonizers.

The pace isn’t out of the ordinary for talk shows. They’ve got it down to a science: talk fast, with only loosely-connected arguments. Wedge as many as you can in a sentence, so that people don’t have time to stop and think. The writing medium is much slower, letting readers come back to earlier points and move back and forth like this. So let’s take his points one by one:

“You killed a Coachella this year, but when Hamas kills at a music festival, it's a whole other thing” — Maher is once again threatening her, essentially saying “Hamas might attack Coachella next while you’re on stage!” This is something Zionist propaganda and “Israeli” officials have been lying about since October 7 too, but I unfortunately can’t find a reference for right now — if you remember it, please drop a comment and I’ll update.

Update: A watchful reader sent me sources. The Resistance (not just Hamas) wasn’t even aware of the festival going on, and this was confirmed by “Israeli” media. Hamas also released a document (through their Media wing) following the operation that states:

According to two reports by the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Oct. 10 and the Haaretz newspaper on Nov. 18 […] the Hamas fighters reached the area of the festival without any prior knowledge of the festival.

Next, Maher repeats the rape and sexual assault lie, which has been thoroughly debunked since October 7. A UN report said there was “credible evidence” of sexual assault, but they relied on picture evidence because they were not allowed to investigate on the ground. Two of these pictures were debunked. We also know that on October 7, the IOF perpetrated a mass Hannibal Doctrine, their own doctrine of killing POWs in the process of being arrested by the Resistance rather than let them go. This is because in 2011, IOF soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged by Hamas for more than 1000 jailed Palestinians.

On this topic, we do know with evidence that the IOF carries out sexual assault against innocent Palestinians as a routine part of incarcerating them. The evidence is overwhelming and beyond any doubt: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Bill never mentions any of this. These Palestinians are not Hamas — many of them come from the West Bank, where Hamas has no presence. They are kidnapped from their homes and held without charges or trial. Palestinians are also subject to IOF authority, not “Israeli” police.

Finally, Maher says that “[Gen Z] likes to call the Jews colonizers”.

First of all, it’s not only Gen Z. I’m a millenial and I like to call Zionists colonizers too. Gen Z doesn’t call “Jews” colonizers; only antisemites do, and I have seen them, but they form a very small part of the pro-Palestine movement (and one could argue they are not Pro-Palestinian but self-serving). We call Zionists and “Israelis” colonizers, because they objectively are. He says that “colonizers are intruders who have no history in an area”, but this isn’t the definition of a settler or colonizer.

Settlers are a foreign population who encroaches on occupied land, displacing the natives in perpetuity. It’s a form of colonialism. But where it differs from what we generally think of as colonialism is that in settler-colonialism, the settling population isn’t here to form an administrative class or open business ventures such as plantations, eventually going back to their home country — they’re here to stay as long as they will be able to.

Displacement has happened to Palestinians, see this map:

The Gaza Strip is a giant refugee camp, hence why its population was over 2 million people prior to October 7 2023. Palestinians were displaced in the Nakba and forced to either leave to Gaza or the West Bank, or remain in “Israel” as so-called “Arab Israelis”, second-class citizens with no passport and fewer civil rights.

Following Bill Maher’s definition, there is no reason that “Israelis” needed to have their own country separate from Palestine. There is no explanation for why they would have displaced Palestinians — which they did, and so we must figure out why.

His argument is, I kid you not, the Bible. “It says the Jews built a temple with a really big wall seven centuries before Muhammad or Islam ever existed.”

And before Judaism existed, polytheist beliefs existed. The Romans existed in Palestine; it was a province of their empire. Does that mean as a European descendent of Roman citizens I could convert to polytheism and displace all “Israelis” because there’s a few Roman statues left in Palestine?

This is what Zionists are doing. This website will help you convert in “Israel”, after which Ben-Gvir will hand you a weapon and you can be on your way to the West Bank picking out a Palestinian family’s house you’d like to live in.

In Jewish customs, conversion is something that should not readily happen. Traditionally, a prospective convert should be turned down three times by Rabbis. It’s not a light decision, and this is true for any religion. Religion, for its adepts, is not a nametag: it’s a lifelong commitment that you enter into in service of a higher power.

Zionism changed that; “Israel” likes new (white) converts, because it creates more cannon fodder for colonization.

Having history in an area, no matter how short or how long, is not a basis for determining settlerism. Settlerism is a relation between settler and settled.

One is being displaced and driven out, and the other has the power to carry out this displacement and occupy land.

Whether Palestinians had history to the region (they do; they are among the oldest Christians in the world, obviously, and many of their families were Jewish thousands of years ago before converting to Islam) is inconsequential to what’s happening since 1947: there is a settler and settled relation present.

Maher quickly continues:

Chappell, did you know that for 2,000 years Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three-star rating? Nobody wanted it. And there was never any Arab country called Palestine.

The assertion that “nobody” wanted Palestine is interesting, because it’s very new. I have seen it before in Hasbara talking points, but it’s not one of the most popular arguments. This other Zionist propagandist in fact disproves Maher:

All of those historical states certainly seemed to have wanted Palestine! Even pre-Christian Romans developed Palestine under their rule, founding cities at Eleutheropolis, Diospolis and Nicopolis under their Roman name. They certainly seemed to have liked owning Palestine.

Did the European Crusaders also not want Palestine, calling it the Holy Land as Jesus was born there, and waging wars for it? Well, at least in Maher’s simple worldview this was the reason they would have done so.

Yes, there has never been a Palestinian state. There was also no “Israeli” state until 1947, and vague references in the Bible don’t count. Self-determination was not very big in older times, and it’s not big with Zionists either. What you are missing, Bill, is that the Palestinians of today are the Jews and Christians of two thousand years ago! They haven’t changed, they haven’t moved: they’re still here!

You are the one encroaching on their land, being born Christian in New York and “realizing” at 12 year old that you were Jewish through your mother.

Meanwhile, Nethanyahu’s father changed his family name from Mikeilowksi to appear native. So did Ben-Gurion (Grün), Golda Meir (Mabovitch) and many other “Israeli” settlers and officials — Wikipedia actually has this information. Modern Hebrew is a constructed language, based on Ancient Hebrew, but with no continuity. It’s a fake language to appear more native, borrowing pronunciation from European languages and, unsurprisingly, Arabic. Ancient Hebrew has a vocabulary of around 28,000 words; it was a theological language and not one that people used for communicating with each other. When creating Modern Hebrew, vocabulary then had to be borrowed from other languages. Arabic words that made their way into Modern Hebrew (as loanwords) include, for example, hanun, tahina, salamtak, wahesh, and many others. Words were also borrowed from French and other Romance languages, English, Japanese and Chinese.

But after World War II, and after the Jews were very nearly wiped out by an actual attempted genocide, they decided it was time for their historic homeland to be an actual country so that for once they could defend themselves.

Bill is either woefully ignorant of history that predates him by only 8 years, or he’s lying. I’ll let him choose which humiliation he prefers.

Zionism predates the UN discussions and the UN itself. Zionism was started by Theodor Herzl, its most vocal proponent, who called it “something colonial” as far back as 1902 in a letter to Cecil Rhodes.

It was back at the first World Zionist Congress that proponents of Zionism settled on making Palestine the target of their colonial venture. They had, before the Congress of 1905, thrown around the idea of settling in Argentina, Madagascar, Uganda, Cyprus, etc. You will note that most of these places were Commonwealth possessions at the time.

How can one claim that Palestine was their historical homeland as an argument, when it was far from their first choice?

Eventually, the partition of Palestine was agreed on in 1947, though settlements had already started prior to the UN partition plan. Palestinians could not participate in these discussions (while Maher says that “And the UN, we like them, right? Yeah. They agreed and voted a country for each of the indigenous peoples. One side agreed to that. But the Arabs had a slightly different proposal.”) as they were not part of the UN since they didn’t form a state.

When “Israel” was established, the Nakba ensued: the first genocide of the Palestinians. This is when they were displaced to Gaza and the West Bank from their ancestral homelands. An “Israeli” militia was created to enforce the partition plan, but most Palestinians still lived on their land as they had done for generations. They had no intention or reason to move; they had not been told to. “Israeli” militias thus moved from village to village, emptying them either by order or by massacres. This process took until late 1948. Over 29 massacres were committed on Palestinians to force them out in one year alone. 750,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homeland, and 15,000 were killed in that short period.

So, Maher says, “[Arabs] said, how about we keep it all and wipe you out?”

“Wiping out” is an interesting choice of words. It’s not left up to chance; Maher has a whole team of scriptwriters behind him who write his lines in advance. Wiping out implies genocide, but “Israelis” were settlers and had committed the Nakba. They had a choice: to never come to Palestine.

Was it wrong for the Allies to “wipe out” the Nazis? Is that what Maher is trying to tell us?

Finally, and this is the line that got people riled up the most, he repeats more Hasbara propaganda about queer folks being “thrown off roofs” in Gaza.

Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the Midwest, try the Mideast. Yeah, that wouldn't fly in Gaza, although you would straight off a roof.

Palestinians have never killed queer people by throwing them off roofs. This was the method preferred by ISIS, a US and “Israeli” creation — notably, ISIS has never attacked “Israel” and the one time they accidentally did, they apologized afterwards.

Palestinians have repeated time and time again that they appreciate support from everyone, no matter where they come from or who they are.

It is in fact “Israel” that weaponizes queerness. One of their favorite methods of recruiting collaborators is to target young queer Palestinians, set up a date with them, take compromising pictures and then blackmail them into collaborating with the IDF. Zionists are the ones who constantly want to remind young queer folks that they would get “murdered” in Palestine.

Maher finishes with an inane comparison to all Muslim groups, lumping in together the IRGC, Hamas, The Taliban (a US creation) and ISIS (another US creation). These are the ramblings of an old man and we’ll just ignore them.

In this 8 minute rant, Maher has made three death threats to Chappell Roan disguised as “comedy”. A woman two generations younger than him. He could be her grandfather.

I don’t have the power to make Bill shut up, as much as I would like him to. For every Maher, there is another Zionist with equal opinions. But — for every unhinged Zionist, there are 10 antizionists like me and you. Never let the enemy tell you how strong your side is. There are dozens of pro-Palestine marches going on every day, and they always bring out thousands of people. Meanwhile, Zionism is a position held only by our ruling class, a tiny minority.

Zionists don’t need to educate themselves because they are in a position of power. They don’t need to know the real history of Palestine and what Islam, and groups such as Hamas or the PFLP, are about. But this will be their downfall. We know the facts, and we use everything we can to our advantage. To know the facts, and to repeat them, to teach people, creates more antizionists. To create more antizionists means to strengthen the pro-Palestine movement. This scares Zionists because after that comes uncertainty for them. Suddenly, their position of power isn’t so stable anymore.

By reestablishing the facts, we take one step towards dismantling “Israel”. We all must participate as best we can where we can.

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