Sarah Silverman is bemoaning the lasting effects of cancel culture, believing that people should have a "path to redemption" and not be permanently judged for past actions.
The comedian, a proud progressive, acknowledges that progressives are the ones largely pushing cancel culture, but believes people can change.
"Without a path to redemption, when you take someone, you found a tweet they wrote seven years ago or a thing that they said, and you expose it and you say, this person should be no more, banish them forever," she said on The Sarah Silverman Podcast,.
People, by nature, "go towards love," she said, but that isn't necessarily always a good thing. On the podcast, she spoke of a friend who joined a neo-Nazi group in his youth after someone from the hate group expressed concern about him smoking at a young age.
"If we don't give these people a path to redemption, then they're going to go where they are accepted, which is the… dark side," she said.
That same friend now works to get people out of extreme hate groups.
Without that offramp to forgiveness, Sarah said those who've been "canceled" are "going to find someplace where they are accepted and it's not going to be with progressives, which ironically means to be changed, progress."
"I think there should be some kind of path. Do we want people to be changed? Or do we want them to stay the same to freeze in a moment we found on internet from 12 years ago?" she said.
Sarah knows all about being in the bullseye of cancel culture. In 2007 she participated in a sketch for the Comedy Central series The Sarah Silverman Program wherein she wore blackface. The footage reemerged more than a decade later and cost Sarah a film role, she's previously said.
Sarah has previously spoken about the dangers of cancel culture. Last year she told the New Yorker that she's apologized often for her blackface scandal. Still, she added that critics "should take into account the nuance of things and the people's intentions and their room for growth and if they have changed or if they have not — there's a big difference."