📝 Bill Maher Doesn’t Get the Joke: A Review of Anthony L. Fisher’s Critique
By Janet Kira Lessin with Minerva
“Woke” used to mean awakened — not asleep, not complicit. But now it’s a slur. And it’s being used to erase the very movements that tried to bring peace, love, equality, and awareness to a broken world.
🌿 A Familiar Smear
There’s something deeply familiar about the manufactured panic over “wokeness.” I’ve lived long enough to watch the same people who once spat on civil rights marchers and burned Beatles records now shriek about gender pronouns and cancel culture.
Today’s anti-woke hysteria isn’t new — it’s just the old war on consciousness with a fresh coat of paint.
Bill Maher claims to see Trump as a threat, but spends more time criticizing “wokeness” than dismantling the machinery of fascism. His logic echoes the exact same attacks hurled at hippies, feminists, mystics, anti-war protestors, and anyone else who challenged the system in the ’60s, ’70s, and beyond. Only now it’s more sophisticated — it hides behind words like “rational,” “free speech,” and “common sense.”
But here’s the truth:
The right wing isn’t afraid of “woke” college students or spiritual seekers. They’re afraid of awakening itself.
🧠 What “Anti-Woke” Really Means
It’s not about policy. It’s about suppression. When pundits and politicians rail against “wokeness,” what they’re really doing is:
Targeting anti-racism, climate activism, and LGBTQ+ rights
Mocking empathy, compassion, and inclusion
Vilifying anyone with feminine energy, mystical inclinations, or anti-materialist values
Demonizing collective healing, whether through therapy, psychedelics, or spiritual practices
Resurrecting Cold War fear of “liberal brainwashing” or “subversive” peace movements
This is not about preserving free speech. It’s about controlling consciousness.
🧙♀️ A Modern War on Hippies and Healers
The war on “wokeness” is just a modern echo of the war on:
The counterculture
The New Age movement
The divine feminine
Starseeds, psychics, artists, and rebels
We were told back then to “grow up” and “get real.” Now we’re told we’re too sensitive, too inclusive, too “woke.” But what we really are is awake — and that terrifies those clinging to power through division, domination, and deceit.
💡 Bill Maher’s Blind Spot
Maher plays both sides:
He calls Trump “Hitler-like” — then shares dinner with him and reports he’s funny.
He says Trump is dangerous — but spends entire monologues mocking social justice.
He wants to be the brave centrist — but punches left far more than he checks power.
By mocking “wokeness,” Maher softens the ground for authoritarianism, even if he doesn’t intend to.
He’s no fascist — but he’s playing into the same tired, destructive narrative that once vilified people like us.
🧬 Why They Fear Wokeness
They don’t fear it because it’s dangerous.
They fear it because it works.
Because love disrupts tyranny.
Because unity terrifies those who thrive on division.
Because awakening spreads — and awakened people are harder to control.
This is a spiritual battle as much as a political one.
🔍 Quick Takeaways
🎯 What “Anti-Woke” Really Targets:
Black Lives Matter and Civil Rights
LGBTQ+ visibility and rights
Feminism and gender diversity
Climate change activism
New Age, spiritual, and cosmic consciousness movements
The divine feminine, sacred sexuality, and holistic healing
Anti-war and anti-authoritarian resistance
🛑 What It’s NOT:
Not about protecting kids
Not about defending speech
Not about helping working people
Not about saving democracy
It’s about erasing progress and silencing transformation.
🗂️ References
“Bill Maher Doesn’t Get the Joke” by Anthony L. Fisher — MSNBC, April 30, 2025
Larry David, “My Dinner With Adolf”, The New York Times
Mike Godwin on Trump comparisons
Bill Maher’s history of Trump/Hitler comparisons — HBO archives
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin
The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders
🏷️ Tags & Hashtags
Tags: Bill Maher, Trump 2025, Anti-Woke Panic, Larry David, Counterculture, Consciousness, Satire, Political Commentary, Spiritual Politics
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“Project 2025: The Blueprint for American Autocracy” An investigative deep dive into the Heritage Foundation’s plan to dismantle democratic institutions and replace them with executive rule.
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“The Return of the Culture Wars: Why ‘Wokeness’ Became the New Scapegoat” A cultural history of how right-wing media recycles fear — from hippies to feminists to Gen Z activists — all under the banner of “anti-woke.”
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Bill Maher at an NBA basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors on April 3, 2025, in Los Angeles.
Larry David — co-creator of “Seinfeld” and creator/star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — penned a satirical column for The New York Times this month titled “My Dinner With Adolf,” which lampooned “Real Time” host Bill Maher’s public comments following his dinner at the White House. Maher praised President Donald Trump over things like laughing in casual, private conversation and not ranting maniacally as he is wont to do in public.
David’s satirical column seemed to reference this: “I realized I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal.”
Maher, a longtime Trump critic who says David has been a friend to him, does not seem to appreciate the joke. This can’t be a comfortable position for Maher to find himself in, and he’s insisted that his critics are, in fact, intolerant and part of the problem. “To use the Hitler thing — first of all, I think it’s kind of insulting to six million dead Jews,” Maher told Piers Morgan Thursday. “The minute you play the ‘Hitler’ card, you’ve lost the argument.”
Maher’s wrong, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. So in the style of his most recognizable routine, here are three new rules that might help him on the journey to enlightenment.
New Rule #1: If you’re going to build your image of being a take-no-prisoners, “politically incorrect,” “anti-woke,” anti-sensitivity culture comic, don’t tone-police your peers’ political satire or put Hitler jokes in a comedic no-go zone.
Maher’s also taking offense to a joke premise written by Larry David, who co-created a show with a legendary episode called “The Soup Nazi,” another show with frequent Hitler and Holocaust jokes — including a Nazi dog — and who made a controversial concentration camp joke in a “Saturday Night Live” monologue. Were all of his Hitler jokes kosher until he included Maher in one?
New Rule #2: If you’re going to justify your White House dinner with Kid Rock and Trump as “reporting” — then come out with a bigger scoop than Trump occasionally laughs in private conversations with celebrities.
Maher said he heard Trump admit in the White House that he lost the 2020 election. And, Maher added, Trump “didn’t get mad” when the comic pointed out that fact.
That’s kind of a big deal! Especially since Trump has lied about it for five years, attempted a self-coup over it and convinced almost half the country that this incredibly consequential lie is the truth. That he was “not mad” at a private dinner doesn’t matter at all. He was quite mad about losing the election, which is why he continues to poison American politics with his big lie about it to this day.
Maher claims to fearlessly speak truth to power and to be brave enough to break bread with his political adversaries. I’d ask Maher — in the event he gets another White House invite — to please, for America, politely ask his host if he’d consider doing the patriotic thing and stop misleading tens of millions of his followers and eroding trust in American elections. Then, Maher could let us know what the president says. That’s news we can use!
We see, I guess, in the macro sense, yeah,
New Rule #3: When you get it wrong, be brave enough to admit it.
Maher, on his own show, said of Trump: “I get it. It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian. It matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking it as a positive that this person exists.” With the exception of the last sentence, that’s basically the whole point of David’s column. So what’s the problem?
“There’s gotta be a better way than just hurling insults from 3,000 miles away,” is a rationalization Maher has repeated several times since he was a guest of the president. He’s argued that by enjoying a superficial social engagement with Trump, he’s signaling to Trump supporters — and his own fans — that Maher is one of the good liberals searching for common ground in a divided country.
This is a straw man argument. Few people are saying “ignore Trump” or “don’t speak with Trump supporters” — the issue is whether Maher’s “reporting” served any purpose other than to soft-sell the increasingly authoritarian Trump as a normal guy in private. I mean, who cares if he is?
It was 16 years and many pounds of marijuana ago, so Maher might not easily recall, but in 2009 he caused a bit of a stir by referring to America as a “stupid” country. Because, he said, Sarah Palin — who recently had lost as the Republican vice presidential candidate in a landslide election victory for Barack Obama — might someday be elected president.
Palin’s know-nothing populism found a much more famous and charismatic vessel in Trump, who rode it to the White House twice — with a failed self-coup attempt thrown in between for good measure. The reality of Trump as a two nonconsecutive-term president far exceeds the horrors Maher feared of a Palin presidency that was never in real danger of actually happening.
Maher recently mocked Trump’s critics for lamenting the state of America after Trump won the 2024 election. But if 2009-era Bill Maher thought America was “getting dumber by the day,” as he put it, because Palin was lingering around the edges of electoral respectability, what would that Maher think of America now that’s twice elected Trump?
To Maher’s credit, he continues to describe Trump as a unique threat to the country, and said it’s not even a close comparison to the supposed threat posed by “wokeness.” He even listed a new rule at the end of his most recent show that seemed to get at almost exactly the point as David’s column, “New Rule: Republicans have to stop excusing all the dictator-y stuff that comes out of Trump’s mouth by saying ‘He’s just kidding!’”
The point of David’s column was not that Trump has committed anything comparable to Hitler’s crimes; it was to mock Trump’s useful idiots (a term Maher’s fond of using for pro-Palestinian student protesters), people with influential perches who are easily charmed by a powerful person’s flattery, as that leader amasses power, crushes dissent and scapegoats a marginalized group of people.
Maher has long lamented younger audiences “not getting” his comedy, supposedly because they’re too easily offended. I don’t get the sense that Maher’s actually in the tank for Trump or MAGA at all. But could it be possible, maybe just a little bit, that he’s the one not getting the joke here?
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
