Just saw a video of Bill Maher calling Mamdani a “straight up communist” and I continue to be struck by the depiction of policies associated with the New Deal Order as far-left extremism, which goes along with a refusal to depict Trump’s unprecedented authoritarian actions as far-right extremism.
He's so bitter that the kids never found the graphic-tee weed lord cynic cool or interesting
Ironically a significant part of the Right still views Maher as a commie lol.
Nobody should be paying attention to Maher. He has no credibility.
Jesus the amount of capitalism propaganda you've swallowed is striking. Communism isn't extremism and far left isn't bad. You know what's extreme? Valuing shareholder profit over regular people's lives like capitalism does. Do better.
Far left & far right ideologies also bear no similarities beyond the superficial American politics and political language since the early 1900s have been tailored to misunderstand both as much as possible (& probably because Western Intelligence has always been fully of fascists)
Okay, I wasn’t looking for Maher to endorse Mamdani, but whatever
Mahar thinks he’s so liberal because he smokes pot, but his attitudes are much more stick-in-the-mud conventional.
Despite making his name at the edge of the political area, Maher's politics extend only as far as who he can fuck and what he can smoke, snort, or shoot.
Amazing, isn’t it?! Makes you think it’s not about policy
Good call. And I'd further add, Mamdani is far further from Lenin/Marx than Trump is from Hitler/Mussolini.
It's simple. Maher dislikes people who aren't straight, white males. The older be gets it clearer it becomes.
He especially despises Muslims.
Maher is a straight up snake.
Bill Maher is unbearable.
🤬 Bill Maher.
I overhear people who are truly, genuinely upset by the idea of a socialist mayor, including one woman who was spiraling about govt-operated grocery stores meaning rations and breadlines, and meanwhile the feds are shutting down public services and sending goon squads to snatch people off the street
She can still get price gouged by capitalism if she chooses. But, also, Trump's bullshit means she won't be able to afford much food anyway because it's going to be an expensive, hungry winter.
No need to make up things to be afraid of, and yet some people seem to love it!
It would probably just confuse them but you could theoretically calm their worries by telling them that Mamdani isn't actually a socialist
Fun fact: Mamdani will actually be the *third* NYC to call himself a socialist.
So scary! They might writecan affectionate musical about him someday!!
Sigh. My aging brain dropped a word again. Ordinarily I delete posts with that kind of error, but people seem to get this one.
I guess my brain filled it back in! I didn't even notice 😁
Bill Maher is a smug selfish rich pig.
Maher’s politics, such as they are, can be boiled down to what is most convenient for Bill Maher. He became an outspoken Islamophobic bigot after 9/11 made him scared for his personal safety. He’s attacking Mamdani for threatening to raise his taxes. Just a selfish narcissist and nothing else.
Maher is a straight up useless old shit who doesn't deserve a bit of influence on our culture.
Maher is a hack
As Marc Maron said recently in a podcast,” Maher is desperate to stay relevant.”
Bill Maher,a known corporate toadie, Bill Maher who isnt funny so now has to shill for an authoritarian regime? Bill Maher who's rapidly diminishing audience is made up of racist bitter losers whos only animus is others' suffering? Just making sure its not a Bill Maher who's opinion means something
Everything Maher says about Mamdani is explained by the fact that he’s a raving anti-Muslim and pro-genocide bigot.
I’ll take straight up communists then, especially over straight up Nazis.
Please remember that Bill Maher is a "straight up dumb person" and a "straight up asshole"
bill would have been snitching in the 1950's
No
Sorry but yes without a doubt.
this is the brilliance I can expect from a bill "vaccines aren't proven science" maher fan
Thank you. I am, indeed, brilliant.
youtu.be/wIhJFY6R1D4?...
Who exactly do you think Bill Maher is?
People like Maher are taking all the sting out of terms like “communist”. I’m older than he is and he seems antiquated to me. And badly read, can’t forget that.
To be fair, Maher is an oozing goiter
Bill Maher just parrots Fox, that’s his go to channel for faux news. He’s also very anti muslim.
The Overton Window is so far to the right in the U.S. at the moment that all of the other countries in the G7 look Socialist in comparison.
You may not be surprised to learn by now that "libertarian" was always a well-paid way just for enabling this authoritarian control. bsky.app/profile/larr...
🙄 in GenX
Left & Right are useful shorthand descriptions in which most politicians lean in one direction; it’s only the press that sees left as wrong, evil, undesirable or weird while right is now a standard (totally perverse).
Bill Maher is a raving bigot—both Muslim-hating and trans-hating.
Bill Maher is SP00K speak. He knows better but will still conflate mild socialist ideas as communism. Maher is also a career war pig that think Klobucher is a moderate.
Tapping the sign
The ongoing disappointment that is Bill Maher
He's only a disappointment if you expect better
This is true.
You should interview him, Jiminy
I continue to be struck by Maher having a career at all. Least funny comic of his generation. And his generation includes The Unknown Comic
When people weaponize words like "communist" as insults, we need to focus on de-weaponizing the word. Force them to define "communist", give evidence, and explain why it is bad. Ask these people to articulate and defend the principals THEY claim to have. Put THEM on the defensive.
Well Bill Maher is a dipshit hack, so there's that
Bill Maher deserved every beating he got in high school.
Maher is a dumbass pot head.
Bill Maher is a jackass. Who cares about his opinion.
Do you remember the Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert play acting as a conservative? It's like that, but in reverse with Maher.
Not just his authoritarian actions per se but his straight forward economic policies including hysterical protectionism, extortion of private entities, and government assumption of ownership stakes in private businesses.
Watching videos of Bill Maher never results in anything good, and nobody should do it.
Maher’s only qualification for being a Democrat at this point is hating Trump and smoking weed.
Maher has always been a total idiot. He cldn’t define communism if his life depended on it. That this racist, bigoted, misogynist clown has any platform at all is an indictment of HBO & our society.
Maher has always been an idiot.
Bill Maher is an idiot and apparently that is a job right now.
The only thing more pathetic than BM trying and failing to be provocative is the USSC demanding respect.
Poor guy has to say stuff so people remember he’s still around
Reminding me yet again why I can’t stand Maher and won’t listen to a thing he says. F him.
Maher hates Muslims. Why anyone listens to him is beyond belief.
variety.com/2025/tv/news...
Bill Maher has lost it
Never had it tbf
neoliberals hate when normal people have good things
i've said it before but where are all the Sensible Commentators decrying the misuse of the terms communism/maoism/marxism like they do for nazi, fascist, etc
Evergreen headline you can bookmark to save everyone time when Maher makes the news: Known racist and bigot makes ignorant claims on a successful brown person.
My mother from Long Island heard me mention Zohran Mamdani and gasped: “the SOCIALIST?!” I had to gently remind her: “mom, LaGuardia was a socialist. This isn’t some weird new thing.”
By calling Mamdani a “straight up communist,” Maher proves, once again, that he doesn’t respect language and is merely a moderately well-spoken propagandist.
He’s not even that well-spoken anymore. Probably too much weed dulled his senses.
Don’t ascribe to spleef what long term petty meanness can explain.
He’s been hanging in the ivory tower with Bari Weiss for too long, lost touch with the real world. When was the last time he just walked down the street like a normal human?
The last time he did he became FURIOUS that he saw a person wearing a facemask so now he just stays inside eating his ball cheese 24-7
Bill Maher truly isn’t worth listening to.
"Centrists" like Maher always end up fellow travellers with the fascists.
Maher is a jerk. I stopped watching him around 2009. He hates Muslims
HBO should be ashamed they haven’t canceled his show
Just last week Atlanta opened a city-owned grocery store and nobody batted an eye. Everyone is looking for anything to excuse their hatred for muslims.
In case anyone else curious. Seems like public private partnership where govt provides some incentives for a private operator. www.investatlanta.com/about-us/new...
I don’t get it. Heritage-driven batshit Trump 2.0 is truly “radical, right-wing extremism” - but the Dems won’t say it…why??
Bill Maher is a comedian/commentator. His opinion, like other camera favorites, doesn't mean doodly squat. He has no education in politics or foreign affairs. He's just spouting off. Tired of "celebrities" being thought of as worthy conversationalists. They're actors, period. It's all bullshit.
When money and privilege envelop the life of a standup comedian desperate for relevance, he may suffer from political schizophrenia and morality dislocation from time to time. Desperate to be edgy and cool he may fall victim to the maga voice in his head. - Encyclopedia of Ego & Id
Some people depicted the New Deal as far-left extremism as it was being implemented. So he's just following tradition.
Ever was it thus homie. John Steinbeck wrote three books about this in the 1930s!
Bill Maher looks sooo pathetic when he tries to be "cool" for the Fascists.
To steal a line from the movie, The American President, Bill's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bill's problem is he can't sell it. Bill's snark is gone.
Yup.
You as a historian surely know better about this than me, but hasn't this been a thing ever since the McCarthy era?
Even earlier, at least as far back as the New Deal.
“Stop Trusting Republicans” is a far quicker and sharper mantra than anything he ever attempted to cook up, and I recommend he tries mine instead someday
This is par for conservatives and southern neo confederates, they saw the new deal as bad, and along with civil rights must be ended, back to feudal America
I’m mostly struck by Bill Maher still having a platform. Why?
The network changed their name like 5 times, but that show is a proud ancient redwood tree that cannot be moved.
Contracts are legally binding for both parties.
He’s been irrelevant for several decades so that still begs the question of who signed him to a contract in recent years
Did Colbert not have a contract when he was cancelled?
He’s been canceled by not renewing his contract, which is why he’s on air til march or so.
Ah, thanks!
Ratchet Effect. Media plays a role, too.
They called FDR a communist for the New Deal itself, so this tracks.
Bill Maher has show significant Islamophobia, and I wonder if thats influencing his judgement.
Trump is literally seizing private assets as state capital, but sure, Mamdani is the communist 👍🏻 /s They don’t know what the words, “communism,” nor, “socialism,” mean to begin with; they’re merely afraid of Muslims.
Hate, not fear.
Same difference in such minds. It’s how they mask what they perceive as their own vulnerability.
tbf the new-deal was also widely panned as being communism, the business class even tried to coup FDR.
also be open to being struck by the fact that Maher is a hack comedian and has never been a progressive
The context has changed since 2016, when I wrote this for @dissentmag.bsky.social—Trump does not embrace the label of “free enterprise”—but I think this history helps contextualize Maher’s comments. www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
📌
A great piece, even in the current context! May I ask why you didn't include more about Reagan, Friedman, Buckley and the panic over the popular embrace of socialism in the 60s/ 70s? And why the U.S. ignores Europe's success adopting mostly social democratic/social liberal policies since WWII?
Only if you don't understand what socialism is
Excellent analysis, and well argued. The nut graf, paraphrased for length, is that government regulation of capitalism proves that "free enterprise" is a built system, "a political project." Thus belying the preferred neoliberal view of capitalism as an unalterable state of nature.
See Bernard Harcourt’s Illusion of Free Markets
Or my book, Fred Enterprise: An American History.
Fred Enterprise definitely has a mustache and wears a hat. He was a much loved car dealer who expanded across the city and was a member of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce for many years.
Thanks so much.
Greed runs so-called free enterprise that is not free at all, but a very expensive club where capitalistic monopolism rules and a million dollars is only the ante.
This post from a few weeks ago seems relevant in this thread as well. bsky.app/profile/larr...
“Just saw a video of Bill Maher…” Ah ah, gonna stop you there. That was your first mistake.
I can’t stand that guy. He’s not funny. He’s not insightful. He’s a tool for normalizing right-wing rhetoric as if some kind of “tell it like it is” critical moderation. IE: part of the “Centrist™” marketing system.
On top of his many flaws, Bill Maher is so dense. He knows nothing.
Maher just says whatever gets the most engagement or ratings
The nice thing is, Mamdani’s appeal is so fresh and vital, it makes the people calling him names look like out of touch idiots. Maher is a smug boring creepy sexist dirtbag. Always was.
Who is Bill Maher ????????? Bad comedy
That whole song and dance about: "vote blue, no matter who" seems to have suddenly gone quiet...? Where's the "lesser evil" lobby now? 🦗🦗🦗 Hypocrites, the lot of them.
Bill maher is a republican who doesn't like republican voters because he thinks he's smarter than them
People actually watch Maher? Who are they?
Those guys wouldn’t know a communist if one of them seized their means of production.
Or reproduction.
Trump is taking over private businesses. He's a Communist and Fascist
Please don't talk about politics until you learn a single thing about it
Ok poopy head. Care to respond to what I said?
Fascism and communism are opposites
Well ya. And Kankles is a kakidiscope of nonsense.
YES! Maher did go after Trump for fascism, but still.
Well yeah, Mamdani is brown and supports trans people, therefore he is a straight up communist and far left extremist according to Bill Mahar.
My mom who is 96 years old was a Roosevelt Democrat as was her whole family and everyone she knew. It was mainstream af. She is so appalled at what is happening in this country. BTW, she still reads the Chicago Tribune cover to cover but admits she perfers sports page over the front page now.
Imagine if he didn't insist on calling himself a Socialist? For someone running a great campaign it's incredibly stupid.
Your point is a good one more generally. It’s an unforced error that self-identified socialists are fixated on making. But when it comes to Maher, it all about his bigotry.
If Maher didn’t have that to use, he would use something else because this is all about Maher being a genocidal anti-Muslim bigot.
It’s so stupid he’s winning.
The utter horror of the specter of social democracy, amirite?
He's going with Socialist though, not Social Democrat, which for some reason has never caught on in the States.
Both terms have been negatively propagandized beyond recognition by monied interests fearful of working people organizing together for their own benefit.
He’s running as a Democrat.
He’s running as a Democratic Socialist and “the party” wants to distance from that and say “we are Democratic Capitalists.” It’s ridiculous to watch Democrats want to distance from him.
Eh, he’s the Democratic nominee - if Cuomo had beat him he’d be the Democratic nominee. Regardless of what party leaders want. Obviously a lot more than Dem Socialists voted for him in the primary.
I'd've never given him the time of day if he wasn't at least indicating that he was open to working with socialists. He's basically the least-Democrat Democrat I've seen in ages, it's kinda great.
Bill Maher has always been a grifting Liebertarian who said some left sounding stuff because he was high. The guy might be one of the stupidest fucks in both comedy and media, which is saying something. Bill Burr basically destroyed him for it on his own podcast.
hey thanks for giving us updates about bill maher, we definitely care what an old rich white guy has to say about politics, it's definitely worth hearing and super valuable information
My 90-year-old Polish neighbour, after someone called Kamala Harris a communist: 'I bet she's never even read The Communist Manifesto.'
Bill Maher is an asshole who plays liberal when it’s financially advantageous. In actuality, he’s not liberal, he’s certainly not progressive, and he’s never been.
his actions and words are actually very liberal in the sense that libs are conservative lite that will allow fascism and do performative nonsense in your face as a distraction as long as they get the convenience of punching down on the left too.
Muting this thread bc I honestly don’t have the energy for all the mansplainers here who don’t have a tenth of the political or organizing experience that I have dropping in to incorrectly argue semantics.
I've been hearing for many years that Maher is widely loathed within the comedy community. And every once in a while, it shows www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/o...
Such a strange thing for Maher to say the week Trumps administration literally took an ownership stake in the means of computer chip production.
He knows better than to bite the hand of the ass he's kissing.
Not really strange. Conflating communism and state-capitalism is part of Maher's function in media.
Hitler was rabidly anti-communist, all the while creating many state-owned industries like VW. This type of contradiction is common with fascism. It makes sense if you understand that, under fascism, the gov buys shares in corporations, but ultimately, the corporations own the gov.
Bought stakes in the most overvalued stock since tesla to keep the economy afloat a little longer
To be fair, in the same clip Maher did say something along the lines that Trump’ was aggrandizing power through the use of government.
It’s ok to not be fair to Maher, he sucks ass
Yeah, my current podcast of choice is 'I hate Bill Maher'. It should be more popular.
Maher was the first person to call this a slow moving coup - 10 years ago. He’s been blackmailed. Grow up, folks.
So does that make him any less a misogynist?
No, he's just an ingratiating idiot with conservative politics who thinks being something of a libertine makes him a liberal.
Maher has the rich white guy brainworms, he has been an asshole since forever
Maher has no genuine problem with Trump regime and the only reason he's not formally registered as a Republican is because he knows it would hurt his show's ratings. "I would be a Republican if they'd let me," he likes to say.
Useless point. His morons have no idea what the words “aggrandizing power thru the use of govt” means. For that matter, they dont know what the word “communist” means either. But they think hitler was one.
Bill maher is a rabid islamophobe
Maker’s standup during Bush years was, “Everyone says - the people will stand up, the people will vote, the people the people the people - Have you SEEN the people?!” He was right. 😉
regular guest at PragerU - the antisemitic, race-science conspiratorial propaganda arm of the Heritage Foundation btw
The word, "communist", triggers boomers, who are his audience. Younger generations are deeply suspicious of capitalism, esp. given bubble collapses, federal bailouts, student loans, lack of jobs, and an affordability crisis. 1/2
Also, younger generations see how the quality of life has improved in communist nations like China and Vietnam to the point where boomers are retiring in Vietnam bc the cost of living is affordable. 2/2
There are no communist Nations and there never have been
Fortunately, no one gives a damn what Bill Maher thinks about anything.
Good gracious I wish that was true
Mostly mine too but there is a startling number of otherwise intelligent people in my extended network that do still listen to that bigoted hack.
🤮 I can’t believe he still has a show on the air. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah, but there were those college students that one time who were a little annoying about halloween costumes or something.
Yes. Things have been sliding the wrong way for a while. Lemme rephrase that. Fascist white supremacists have been pulling things the wrong way—and democrats have been going along—for a while.
"centrists" are on the fascist-enabler-to-full-on-fascist spectrum
Bill Maher is clickbait made flesh. Ignore the troll.
Bill Maher is a straight up Islamophobe.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZGC...
Maher is just another insufferable privileged millionaire. There is absolutely nothing notable about him except his assholery.
Maher is part of the brainwashed generation that was taught that anything Socialist, Marxist or Communist is an existential threat. I'm at the start of GEN-X and saw it all, and somehow, maybe due to my incongruity, watched in awe at the conditioning. They made "The Manchurian Candidate" twice.
I can’t believe how fucking stupid everybody is If any of these fuckheads ever met a real communist, their tiny worm-eaten brains would explode
Bill Maher move to Florida 🙏
Have you ever noticed that some _democrats_ aren’t thrilled with the legacy of FDR? New Rule: New Deal is Communism now!
I see zero evidence that Bill is a Democrat
Bill was a Democrat until he gave a million bucks to a Democrat and decided he didn't get his money's worth, so he bought in to the party that takes money seriously He just won't admit it on TV, that's all
He won’t admit it on TV because there’s no money whatsoever in being a moderate Republican pundit. You just get called a RINO and told to shut up. Whereas, if you’re a right-leaning Dem - even a relatively fascist Dem - people will throw money at you all damned day long
He does act like one.
Saying the New Deal was dead happened nearly every election since McGovern, if not earlier.
I stop reading anything when I encounter the words "Bill Maher" unless the sentence ends with "has unexpectedly passed away."
But if you stop reading the sentence after "Bill Maher," how can you know how the sentence ends?
The meaning of the word "unless" in the sentence I wrote?
Using this ruleset, I read a sentence that begins: "Reuters reports that Bill Maher"; the first rule condition is met, so I stop reading. I can test for the second rule condition only by continuing to read the sentence that the first rule has stopped me from reading. So the ruleset is invalid.
It’s always been my opinion the more you oppose some one the more people will vote for them out of spite. Don’t tell me who to vote for will make me want to vote for them even more. That’s part of the reason Trump got elected and of course all the lies he told.
Wasn't Mamdani a Socialist last week? Which is it, man?
Cancel culture (when he called himself the n-word to Ben Sasse) and Covid broke Bill Maher.
if he’s cancelled then why am i still hearing about him
I didn’t say he was cancelled. He got a lot of blowback from that, which was his brush with cancel culture, and other comedians (debatable to call him one at this point) have run into issues. Comedians in general tend to defend their brethren; Jon Stewart defended Joe Rogan earlier this year.
He was an asshole even when you liked him and his whole schtick has been being provocatively right wing for attention FFS. Maybe you've just noticed, changed or outgrown him?
i didn’t hear about jon stewart. gross 😭
Being Cancelled™ these days just means you trade in your usual fanbase for a bunch of degenerates who believe in race science.
Is it because of the policies, or because of his DSA affiliation?
Bill Maher is the final boss of coworker politics
City-owned grocery stores are the thin end of the wedge that widens to force-feminized gay mecha-communism
If Mamdani is a communist then so am I.
Bill Maher period 🤦
Camps, disappearing, sham indictments, nationalizing industries, tilting heavily toward state religion? Come on now. Cookie cutter conservatism.
Oh is Bill Maher still alive? He certainly isn't relevant to anyone with a functioning brain.
Has Bill Maher ever been relevant?
He is for Boomer liberals. The few that there are.
based on his ratings, not even that many boomer liberals
I'm not sure about that. I'm a (very late) boomer liberal, and I hate that sonofabitch. I think whatever audience Maher may have is mostly Gen X men who think they are Libertaians, when in fact they just want to smoke weed and not pay taxes.
That describes, to a T, the only people I’ve ever known who called themselves fans of that guy.
I confess I went through a Bill Maher phase (GenXer), no seriously, I loved him...I live in daily shame over it. I feel like I spent several years gleefully drinking puppies blood thinking it was pomegranate juice and now I have to live with the guilt and self hate.
I'm a millennial and I used to like him. He used to be the only motherfucker anywhere on the left that didn't do the fake civility bullshit. We have a lot of more progressive voices who are actively hostile to the right at this point.
I liked him when he did Religulous, he shit on all the religions, then later he started only shitting on Islam and defending Israel no matter the cost.
Religulous is the thing he did that made me hate him irreversibly.
I so loved it at the time. I'm not exactly sure why though, other than it was refreshing to see someone poking at religion and seeing it like I do. And while I still feel that way, I'm also like, whatever, let people have their things, no need to be a dick.
Yeah, those were the peak times for me. Looking back now at the earlier days, he was always a horrible bigot against Muslims, but I didn't really see it until he started really ramping it up (like his exchange with Ben Affleck). That's when the downward slide began from like to loathe.
I'm usually very sarcastic (I consider it a character defect of mine), but I'm completely on the level here: that's got to be hard to say, and I respect you for being able to say it.
Dude, I started listening to a podcast called 'I Hate Bill Maher'. I'm seriously owning my shit on this one. I only wished I thought of it first.
The few that are there? 🤣 You mean like those crunchy San Diego mothers wearing Birkenstocks who bullied ICE out of town? Fact check yourself.
once, in 2001
I have, maybe not so much a theory as a belief, about why that is: bsky.app/profile/nadi...
Your first mistake was listening to Bill Maher.
Communism for US right = integration.
To create controversy and drive clicks, Bill Maher will say increasing controversial things until he’s become part-time MAGA.
He's already MAGA, he's always been a Libertarian, he just pretends he's different because he smokes pot. He platformed and promoted many of the assholes who got us here.
Yup! Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, RFK Jr, Eric Adams... sick, demented assholes, all of them.
I used to like Bill Maher but lately he’s been acting like an idiot.
Fuck bill maher
This in the same week that the Federal Government took a substantial stake in a private company.
Absolutely!!! Read FDR's 1944 State of the Union address for his vision of post-WWII world and a Second Bill of Rights for he US.
Bill Maher will say anything if it means one more dirty dollar in his creepy, idiot, rich for nothing pocket. Why anyone began listening to him in the first place is beyond me.
