Comic and GB News host calls woke warriors 'dangerous and scary’

Andrew Doyle has appeared on the most influential TV show for right-wing Americans.

The Northern Irish comedian appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to talk about his woke-warrior alter-ego Titania McGrath.

Doyle explained how he wanted to mock moral puritans and portrayed the social justice movement as ‘dangerous and scary’.

Carlson is a populist conservative firebrand said to have the ear of Donald Trump – and even tipped as a successor to him. A controversial figure, he has said immigrants make the US ‘poor and dirtier’,  downplayed the storming of the Capitol last year, undermined the coronavirus vaccines said Black Lives Matter is ‘definitely not about black lives, remember that when they come for you’.

His incendiary comments have cost Fox News some advertisers, but he is also the most-watched cable news host in America, averaging 3.1million viewers a night.

Fox News is said to have inspired the ‘anti-woke’ agenda of GB News, the channel on which Doyle is a presenter – although the station is subject to the UK’s much tighter impartiality rules.

Doyle told Carlson about the genesis of his McGrath character on Twitter, explaining: ‘I was just getting frustrated with what they call the social justice movement or what's become known as the woke movement.

‘It seemed to be impervious to reason, impervious to criticism. You couldn't rationalise with people who had been captured by this worldview and as a comedian my instinct was to mock it.

‘Whenever I encounter these activists online it's certainty never crosses their mind that they may be wrong, never crosses their minds that their opponents might just have a different worldview - they just think everyone else is evil. That "we are right; everything must change".

‘To me that is dangerous and scary but also funny. I mean, the sheer arrogance of that is quite funny.

‘You notice the way they try to destroy history, to topple statues. Their idea is that up until now, human beings have got it wrong. We've always been evil and wrong on every issue and now they've come along and they are pure and have got all the answers.

‘They think they've got it all right, they're just going to sort of dismantle society as it is, "let's start from scratch – year zero" and that's where they're coming from.

‘I find that level of arrogance is always funny.’

Watch the interview here.

Published: 9 Jan 2022