The Red-Pilling of John Cleese

Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas: HERE.

In 1979, comedian icon John Cleese sat across from the Bishop of Southwark and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge on BBC’s Friday Night, Saturday Morning, defending his troupe’s film Monty Python’s Life of Brian against charges of blasphemy. Calm, articulate, and fiercely secular, Cleese argued that religious institutions should never be immune to satire, ridicule, or robust critique. For many years, this battle often defined Cleese’s public persona: a classic British liberal, an iconoclast fighting back against the conservative Christian establishment of the 20th century.

Fast forward to 2026, and Cleese’s digital battleground looks entirely different, though he would argue that his core principles haven’t shifted an inch. Today, the 86-year-old comedy legend spends his days launching highly combustible broadsides to his 5 million followers on X not at Christian bishops, but at Islamic supremacists and the Western Progressives coddling them.

For an artist who remains a harsh critic of Donald Trump and Right-wing populism, Cleese’s seemingly sudden emergence as an aggressive critic of Islam has left many on the Islamophilic Left bewildered, if not furious; but in fact, he simply views Islamic fundamentalism as the modern, untouchable religious orthodoxy that today’s globalist elites are either too terrified of – or too supportive of – to challenge.

While Cleese has dropped hints about his concern regarding demographic and cultural shifts in the UK for years — most notably sparking backlash in 2019 by opining that London was “no longer an English city” — his commentary has taken a raw, explicitly theological turn in early 2026. No longer just critiquing vague notions of multiculturalism, Cleese began directly confronting Islamic doctrines and their compatibility with Western liberalism.

In March 2026, for example, Cleese took aim at Sadiq Khan after the London mayor remarked on the rising anxieties felt by British Muslims. Cleese fired back aggressively: “Can this silly little man not grasp that the traditional British values are under attack from Muslim belief systems, especially the Koranic demands to kill ‘infidels’?” That same day, responding to an anonymous advice thread intended for “scared” British Muslims, Cleese added bluntly, “My advice would be… Don’t be so vocal about your intention to kill ‘infidels’.” Again on the same day, Cleese responded to an X clip of New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani claiming he had received hateful abuse for being Muslim: “Maybe if the Muslims stopped threatening to kill infidels, that would help?”

For Cleese, the issue is structural and existential. Also in March, he framed his concerns not around race (nor should he, since Islam is not one), but around the foundational ethics of British society:

The UK has always been based at the deepest level on Christian values, regardless of dogma. Despite the many mistakes made by churches, for centuries British people have been influenced by Christ’s teaching. If these values are replaced by Islamic ones, this will not be Britain any more.

To many contemporary observers, this rhetoric sounds indistinguishable from the talking points of Right-wing populist parties like Reform UK. But Cleese is hardly a conservative ethno-nationalist; he has spent years eviscerating the American right, mocking President Trump and his MAGA base, and lambasting the corruptions of modern capitalism. How does a lifelong liberal arrive at this apparent paradox? The answer lies in his adherence to the old-school, secularist free-speech model. In Cleese’s view, modern Progressivism is simply suffering a systemic failure of nerve.

This sentiment was captured by Fraser Myers in a March 2026 Spiked profile titled “Is John Cleese turning… based?” Myers argued that while most Western cultural elites march in lockstep promoting propagandistic narratives and causes, Cleese has gone on a lonely “warpath against Iranian mullahs, Islamic sectarians and woke censorship.” Myers noted that Cleese’s fury is aimed equally at the white, Progressive enablers who shield fundamentalism from criticism under the guise of diversity.

Cleese rightly sees free speech-derailing smears like “Islamophobia” (or as the British government under tyrannical Prime Minister Keir Starmer now calls it, “anti-Muslim hostility”) as weaponized tools designed to usher Islamic blasphemy laws into the West. As Cleese has correctly noted, “A phobia is irrational. There is nothing irrational about criticising aspects of Islam.” Decades earlier, on Real Time with Bill Maher, Cleese foreshadowed this exact stance. When Maher noted that comedians willingly satirize every group except Muslims, Cleese quipped with characteristic gallows humor: “That’s not saying that you can’t, that’s just saying that they’ll kill you.”

His critics argue that Cleese’s digital crusade has crossed the line from legitimate secular critique into the propagation of anti-Muslim animus. An analysis by Middle East Eye in late March disapproved of Cleese’s high-velocity X posting — which Myers described as “tweeting at 120mph” — “attacking Islam and British Muslims.” The outlet compiled many of Cleese’s most inflammatory – but reasonable – social media questions and comments which the comedian himself describes not as Islamophobic but “Islamoskeptic.” That included sharing what Middle East Eye dismissed as “far-right content” including from “far-right activist and convicted criminal” – i.e. British patriot – Tommy Robinson.

In one sense Cleese remains exactly who he was in 1979: an uncompromising, provocative secularist who despises rigid dogmas and refuses to bow to anyone telling him what he cannot say. In the 1970s, Cleese viewed the Christian Right to be the oppressive orthodoxy. Now an apparently red-pilled Cleese clearly realizes there is an actual danger from today’s orthodoxy, Islam, which is shielded by the Progressive Left. The difference is that he now is willing to acknowledge and defend the Christian history and character of the English people in the face of that threat.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.

Photo credit: Eduardo Unda-Sanzana at Wikimedia Commons.