'Anti-woke' conservative slams MAGA for pushing the 'cancel culture' it claims to oppose

In his new book "Woke Is Dead: How Common Sense Triumphed in an Age of Total Madness," conservative television journalist Piers Morgan offers a scathing critique of the "woke" movement and "cancel culture."

Morgan discussed the book during a Wednesday, November 5 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." The host of the YouTube show "Piers Morgan Uncensored" had a lot to say about "cancel culture" and "wokeness" on the left, but conservative host Joe Scarborough wanted to know if Morgan applied those same criticisms to the Trump Administration.

Morgan said of the "woke" movement on the left, "I think we went slightly insane. And my message to my liberal friends was: Look, liberalism is not what you're doing. What you're doing, ironically, is a kind of new form of fascism. You're basically setting up a narrow worldview. And if people don't align absolutely to it, then we're going to vilify you, shame you, we're going to cancel you. We're going to destroy you, as we've seen horrifically with people like Charlie Kirk. We're going to kill you, right? This is fascism. And yet, they love to call the right fascists. They love to call them Nazis and so on."

Morgan, originally from the UK, added that some Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, were highly critical of left-wing "cancel culture." And he described "free speech" as "tolerating views, actually, you may hate."

Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, didn't disagree with Morgan's criticism of "cancel culture" and "wokeness" on the left. But when the "Morning Joe" host brought up the Trump Administration's push to "cancel" people who were critical of Kirk's political views, he wanted to know where Morgan stood. And Morgan made it clear that he disliked the way Trump officials went after late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about MAGA following Kirk's murder.

Morgan told Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski, "There was a really interesting thing after Charlie Kirk's murder with the Jimmy Kimmel issue, for example, where I looked at people on the right and thought, 'This is going to be a real test of how you respond to what the Jimmy Kimmel scandal, if you want to call it, was all about. And it was interesting: the ones who stepped up and were true to their actual beliefs that they espoused about free speech, and those who immediately given the first opportunity to show what they believe this, then said the complete opposite."

Scarborough responded, "Yes, they became what they hated. I will say, (Sen.) Ted Cruz actually said: If we do it to them, they're going to do it to us."