In the latest example of Western governments repudiating their own traditions of liberty, legendary English comedian and actor John Cleese has been reported to Prevent, the British government entity created to deter extremism. 5Pillars, a London-based Islamist media outlet, in a report about the complaint, wrote that Cleese’s jokes and commentary “go beyond legitimate criticism of Islam and instead portray Muslims collectively as violent, criminal and morally depraved.” This behavior, so the complaint alleges, may contribute to “radicalisation, communal tension, and hate incidents.”
There is, of course, the irony of an Islamist organization clutching its pearls over potential radicalization in a country whose own government has consistently publicly acknowledged that Islamic radicalism is a threat, as well as the fact that a large majority of the world’s roughly 50 Muslim-majority countries impose significant legal or practical restrictions on free expression.
But even more infuriating is the fact that so many elites reap the benefits of Western-originating freedoms while simultaneously hindering and prosecuting those hard-earned liberties.
Freedom Declines as Christian Civilization Declines
Cleese and other fellow travelers who appreciate the importance of freedom of speech recognize that the West now stands on a precipice regarding its core values, seemingly willing to repudiate what made them great to appease supposed “victims” who claim they have been offended. They recognize that there is an increasing propensity toward knee-jerk attempts to label various speech as “racist,” “fascist,” or any of the many varieties of “phobic” to silence and even prosecute unpopular opinions. (Cleese was previously attacked in 2019 for complaining that London was no longer “really an English city” anymore, and mourning the loss of the English culture of his upbringing, which he described as “calmer” and “more polite.”) Yet what few seem to perceive is that what they are effectively mourning is the decline of a specifically Christian culture that facilitated the freedoms they had taken as a default of rational, science-based Western societies.
“You cannot take Christianity out of the West and have anything that’s recognizably the West,” atheist British pundit Douglas Murray has acknowledged. “To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions,” says British historian Tom Holland in his popular book Dominion. One of those Christian concepts and assumptions, channeling ideas that draw upon even more ancient Greek and Roman sources, is that people must be free to speak their minds without the threat of arrest or violence. It was an incredibly hard-fought freedom. And it is one many of our elites seem eager to surrender for the sake of inclusivity and tolerance toward Muslims and people who call themselves transgender, among others.
Freedom of Speech Is a Western Phenomenon
Two hundred and 50 years ago, the United States declared its independence based on the proposition that “all men” are endowed by God with the unalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” When, 15 years later, an independent, sovereign nation ratified its Constitution and Bill of Rights, the right to freedom of speech was included in the very First Amendment. Of course, its authors and signers did not think they were innovators in this regard but rather drew upon an ancient Western — and perhaps most singularly, British — tradition that included, per Thomas Jefferson, Aristotle, Cicero, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney, who all recognized the importance of free speech.
One reason for this unique tradition, argues historian and prolific writer Victor Davis Hanson, is that the West’s distinctive intellectual inheritance, beginning in ancient Greece and Rome, promoted systematic reasoning and the testing of ideas that gradually challenged explanations that were based solely on myth, priestly authority, and tradition. Alternatively, Catholic thinker Marcus Peter has posited that Christianity also contributed to this phenomenon because the Christian faith is premised on proclaiming a Gospel that across history has consistently been unpopular and controversial, often provoking violent reactions. Thus the Christian West became an incubator for those desiring the freedom to speak without fear of being killed or imprisoned.
For all the errors and missteps of the contemporary West, even its own self-hating organizations recognize that the West remains, among all nations, a civilization that prides itself on this liberty. The most recent index from Reporters Without Borders, which ludicrously lists the United States as 64th in press freedom, notes that the top 10 countries that respect journalistic and media freedom are all in Europe. Even if Western countries increasingly monitor social media for “hate speech,” they at least want to be recognized for promoting citizens’ right to freely express their opinions. In contrast, with little surprise, the worst countries for free speech are either totalitarian states such as China, North Korea, and Eritrea, or Muslim-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkmenistan.
An Obliviousness to the Culture of Free Speech
Despite an incredible tradition that has been so integral to the success of Western civilization, our elites seem remarkably willing to reverse societal developments that required centuries to nurture. Certainly the United Kingdom is an embarrassing offender in this regard, arresting and prosecuting those it accuses of “inciting racial hatred” or saying mean things about people who say they’re transgender. A third of British university students support restricting some forms of speech.
Yet the U.K. is not alone. Canada, Germany, and Australia, among many other countries, all restrict speech that might offend people, limitations that are especially egregious because the Western tradition has historically sought to protect precisely the kind of speech that offends. Even some 36 percent of Gen Z Americans think shouting down a public speaker is acceptable.
The example of John Cleese is also instructive. A recent op-ed in The Washington Post noted that in 1979 Cleese and fellow Monty Python actor Michael Palin participated in a famous debate with Christian convert and writer Malcolm Muggeridge and Anglican Bishop Mervyn Stockwood. Muggeridge and Stockwood were visibly angered by what they assessed to be little more than a malevolent, even blasphemous critique of Jesus and Christianity in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Cleese and Palin responded by arguing that the film satirized those who blindly follow religious movements, rather than Jesus himself.
Regardless of what one thinks of Life of Brian, it’s worth remembering that two of the most prominent Christians in late-1970s Britain engaged in a civil, public debate with Cleese and Palin about their film. Despite allegations of Christian “closed-mindedness,” no one threatened to have Cleese and Palin executed for blasphemy. No one suggested imprisonment. Only in the kind of country that has engendered a deep respect for freedom of expression — the Britain Cleese has more recently bemoaned as a thing of the past — could men so obviously mock the majority religious faith and suffer no consequences for their behavior.
In truth, it will not be conservative Christians who lock up the likes of Cleese for speaking controversial opinions, but spineless woke ideologues kowtowing to Muslim immigrants whose countries of origin have no respect for free speech. The irony is terrible.
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He is a regular contributor at many publications and the author of three books, including the upcoming "Wisdom From the Cross: How Jesus’ Seven Last Words Teach Us How to Live (and Die)" (Sophia Institute Press, 2026).