this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (19 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jillette#Politics

Jillette has previously identified as a libertarian, and stated in 2003 that he may consider himself an anarcho-capitalist. He was a fellow at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 29 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Huh. Thanks. I didn't even know he was a libertarian, only knew him as an atheist skeptic guy (besides the illusionists part). And according to Wikipedia, seems he's no longer a libertarian:

In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism […] adding "Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, 'It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,' and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate."

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Wow. He has completely changed. Good on him for seeing the errors of his ways. Also, I'm going to paste a bit before what you pasted to add context, because I think it's worth adding.

In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic after a libertarian group asked him to speak at an anti-mask rally. "The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change"

In 2020, Jillette distanced himself from aspects of libertarianism, particularly surrounding COVID-19. In an interview with Big Think, he stated, "[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass." He went on to elaborate, "[I]t seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism."[53]

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I just didn't want to make it bulky, so tried to bring in the core statement. My thought was that for more details, the Wikipedia link is right there.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I understand the sentiment, but so many people never click on the link.

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