Not All Sperm is Sacred
John Cleese's Racism, Hate, and Conspiracy Theories
When I was a teenager a group of us would spend entire weekends watching Monty Python movies, the TV series, and Fawlty Towers. It is so ingrained in my memory that I still use quotes in my regular conversations. A couple years ago I went to a screening of The Holy Grail at a rep cinema where the audience participated with fake coconuts, sang the lyrics, and yelled out quotes. To my surprise I still had the film script memorized from my youth. Fast forward to the 2026 version of me, and I sadly find one of my childhood influences deeply entrenched in my petri dish of research.
For months I have been contemplating writing something about John Cleese’s social media posts. My hesitancy in doing so was simply because I did not want to tackle memories from my youth, and someone who taught me to be sarcastic, question religion and society, and “how to have an argument.” This week my mind was changed. Metro News reported on a post Cleese put on X this week. The article is fluff, only acknowledging that Cleese posted it, and repeating Cleese’s own denials of “being racist.” The piece does not put into context the long history of racism, conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, anti-Trans, and lies on the former comedian’s X account.
“Culturalist” is a dog whistle term to absolve oneself from admitting racism and Islamophobia. It is positioning hatred into a heroism of “saving one’s nation and culture” rather than acknowledging the hate it truly expresses. The truth is, this is normative for Cleese’s social media account.
While he often attacks others for not knowing history, science, and attacking journalists for recycling “vague and misleading phrases” while endlessly doing the same himself he seems not to be challenged for using his position to spread hate. While reposting racist, populist accounts, Cleese creates a worldview where J.K Rowling is a hero for her attacks on trans individuals, where only Muslims are rapists and domestic abusers, where Christianity is persecuted, the Great Replacement is real, and immigrants are only military aged men creating militia cells in the UK. In essence, he is recycling vague and misleading phrases that spread hate, conspiracy theories, and extremism. All of this is fed to his 5 million followers. Looking on the Bright Side of Life, to his credit he does insult Donald Trump quite a bit.
At the heart of Cleese’s post (above) is his belief that the Great Replacement conspiracy theory is a reality. This theory holds that white people will be replaced by people of colour, and Western civilization will be destroyed. Intrinsically this conspiracy theory places Christianity at its centre, both as the marker of who “built civilization” in “Western Christian nations” and as being at risk of being eradicated. Islamophobia becomes the “enemy” of this movement, as witnessed by the burning of a replica mosque in Northern Ireland, the anti-Halal food boycott, and the global remigration movement. Cleese has become the conduit to the spread of hate and disinformation online, and with his support of individuals who encompass his own worldviews.
Cleese has shared posts of Harman Singh Kapoor, a Sikh restaurateur in England, who has placed a sign of his restaurant that reads “Proudly we don’t sell Halal.” Kapoor claims that he is being harassed and threatened for his stance. As with every story there are two sides. Kapoor has also instigated protests of anti-Muslim groups at his restaurant, posted videos of his Kirpan and said he is being forced to kill people, he refers to Muslims as “inbred” in his social media posts, and uses what he claims is holy water to clean his restaurant and keep those of Muslim faith away. He has garnered support internationally for his hate and he has publicly thanked Cleese and defended Cleese’s racism. While Kapoor is posting across social media garnering international support for his stance, and his self constructed victimhood, the only news organizations writing about what is happening is The Times of India, the legacy media of Britain has not written about his arrests, his threats, nor his stoking of hate towards Muslims. Below are some of his posts, and I warn they are offensive.
Both Kapoor and Cleese do not take accountability for the instigation of the events happening are from Kapoor’s posts.
This week Cleese in hopes of furthering his narrative of censorship of those opposed to the Great Replacement posted a video of a man in a Union Jack hat and his mouth taped shut, being arrested for wearing the hat and claiming that the police had taped the man’s mouth. The video was originally posted by an account “Trust in Trump” and considering the anti-Trump posts of Cleese, this means nothing when you are sharing disinformation, hate, and conspiracy theories. The video is actually from October 2025, and the individual in the clip had taped his own mouth with duct tape and wrote the words “save children” on the tape. The video was posted by the individual (Niyack Ghorbani) in his Instagram account and in the description states he had taped his own mouth. This video was posted by Cleese August 2 2026. The lies about what happens in the video, and the fact it is not even current means little when trying to create a scenario of living under perceived tyranny, censorship, and the constructed victim status of “patriots.”
Cleese, is often posting about legacy media using “claptrap” and not telling the whole story, yet he is perfectly fine reposting disinformation and hate. I guess those rules only apply when they do not fit your narrative or your ideology of hate.
The posts of the former comedian argue that Christianity and Christians are being persecuted in the UK, while Islam is positioned as protected. His ire directed at Muslims is articulated in disinformation, such as police are forcing the British not to walk their dogs in Muslim communities. This reflects the conspiracy theory that Muslims believe dogs are Haram or prohibited in Islam, so Western nations are beginning to ban dogs as pets. Both are untrue, dogs are not Haram and no current laws/bills are being forwarded to ban dogs as pets. He also spreads the conspiracy that all the individuals from Islamic countries are military aged men who are “invading” the West, and that no women or children are arriving. Conversely he also posts images of Muslim women in niqabs and hijabs, and mocks their appearance, states that they are “forced” to wear the clothing of their choice, as if women have no agency. But hey according to Cleese it is not good white, Christian men like him who are misogynistic. Cleese also attacks Islam for being misogynistic and that Muslim men are all domestic abusers. As we can see below he repeats the same trope of only Muslims being domestic abusers. According to the Government of the UK, this is not true. Shockingly I am sure to Cleese, those who are abusers are predominately white.
I looked into the statistics of rapes in the UK in 2025 by religious breakdown. This information is from the UK Government site.
No religion 5,429, Christian 6,211, Buddhist 69, Hindu 223, Muslim 568, Other 194
It would appear that Cleese is not in support of Christian culture based on these numbers.
This post was inspired by the lack of context in a Metro news article and I think that should be the beginning of our conversation. Cleese has argued that the “woke” refuse to have debates or conversations because they do not want to believe that the other side may have valid points. Yet, as we have seen his “points” are neither valid nor true. The issue here is that legacy media, are not tackling his racism, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and vitriol online. Those who do write about his social media pronouncements simply parrot (for those Monty Python fans, see what I did here!) his declarations of not being a racist, without even doing a little investigative journalism, by opening his social media and seeing the hate being spread. Why are we not holding him, or others like Cleese with millions of followers, that are sharing this material to answer to their actions? Cleese is coming to Canada as part of a tour, why are we quietly letting him in, with no consequences for his beliefs and actions? What about the hate laws in Canada? I am not a lawyer, but I have read of others who spread hate who are not allowed into the country.
I would like to think that of the 5 million people following him, they are fans of his time in the limelight, more of a nostalgia follow than an ideological one. It would appear to me that while many of us argue that we need to hold the wealthy, the famous, those in power positions as accountable for their actions, we are letting them off as well. The media is not engaging with Cleese’s posts, disinformation, lies, and hate based conspiracy theories, as we saw in the article about his “culture” post, it was simply, “well, he says he isn’t racist.” Take a moment, and think about the violence inherent in the system. While the Monty Python group sang that every sperm is scared and great, it would seem member John Cleese only believes white, Christian, sperm is truly what is sacred. I wonder if this makes God quite irate?