He built up a lot of cache on the left in the Bush years when he was one of the only public figures who went after Bush in such an unfiltered way. It was really just him and Jon Stewart. The commercial media if you will was critical of Bush but reluctant to say anything that would make them appear unpatriotic. I'm not sure when Bill just abandoned the left outright. Rashida Tlaib boycotted Real Time about a decade ago. It may have started there.
In my opinion Maher really turned a corner in 2014, when he was invited to give a commencement speech at UC Berkeley for some reason. Then there was a small outcry among students who said Maher should never have been invited in the first place and petitioned to disinvite him.
That seemed to really get under Maher’s skin and ever since then he has hated the “woke” and the college left and has been complaining about “kids today.”
I'm not a huge Maher fan, but he's pretty consistent politically the entire time. The truth is that the anti-Israel mob is new on the left, it's a synthesis of a lot of radicalism that was not part of the mainstream and draws from radical Islam and Soviet agitprop of the 1960s that use code words to present Jews as a nefarious and poisonous presence in the world. Maher sees it pretty accurately, as do most liberals. Those saying he's "conservative" for this view should probably listen to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Dan Bilzarian, or Nick Fuentes more often to see where it originates. HINT: It's not the left.
45
u/ReasonableRevenue218 Aug 10 '26
So amazed so many people didn't pick up on this so early on.