Actress Criticizes Islam, Loses Her Career

The actress Selma Blair appeared in Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde, The Sweetest Thing, and other movies, but on a fateful day in February 2024, she discovered what it was like to be a dissident in a totalitarian state. The totalitarian state in which she lived is known as Hollywood, and it turned its back on her and ended her career after she dared to depart from the party line on the overall wonderfulness of the left’s favorite religion, Islam. She has apologized profusely since then, but her career has not revived. Totalitarian states are not known to be forgiving.

The Hollywood Reporter stated Friday that “the veteran star said she lost her entire career and the team that supported it — talent agency CAA, a manager of 30 years, a lawyer and personal and book publicists — in the wake of leaving a comment widely criticized as anti-Islamic under a video posted by immigration reform advocate Abraham Hamra.”

No forgiveness was available: “Though she apologized, Blair noted it wasn’t enough and not only did she lose that team but also brand deals, payment for a supposed Super Bowl advertisement, her son’s godmother and more. So much that, she says, she came to learn ‘what erased feels like.’”

George Orwell ably encapsulated the left’s desire to obliterate its enemies, and give the impression that they never existed, in 1984. People who fell out of favor with the state were “nonpersons.” Old news items that mentioned “nonpersons” were sent down the “memory hole” and incinerated, and a new version of history concocted to take their place. And so in Hollywood, Selma Blair, having expressed views that dissented from leftist orthodoxy, no longer existed.

“The brands I worked with were gone within a day,” Blair recounted. “A few partnerships I’d spent years building were shelved. My agency was gone. My lawyer was gone. My publicist was gone. My book agent was gone. My book publicist was gone. My social media manager was gone. My son’s godmother was gone – my best friend. While some friends in the business quietly stood by me, most of them were gone. And of course, my manager, my supposed friend of 30 years, and a Jew, was gone too. I still don’t know what any of them were thinking. No one returned my calls.”

Blair became a nonperson because in February 2024, angry over the Israel-Hamas war and the support for Hamas among leftists and Muslim migrants, she wrote this on Instagram: “Deport all these terrorist supporting goons. Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroyed minds. They know they are liars. Twisted justifications. May they meet their fate.”

Once the inevitable outrage mob got going, Blair hastily backtracked, saying: “In my comment, I mistakenly and inadvertently conflated Muslims with Radical Islamists and fundamentalists, a terrible err [sic] in my words and resulted in hurting countless people I never meant to, and I deeply regret this. As soon as my error was brought to my attention, I deleted the comment.”

That certainly toed the standard line, although there was a glaring logical hole in her statement, and in that conventional wisdom as a whole: “Radical Islamists and fundamentalists” do not magically become non-Muslims because they don’t conform to the West’s fantasies about Islam being a religion of peace. They are as Muslim as other Muslims, and indeed, they base their appeal to the larger Muslim community upon their claim to be authentically following the teachings of the Qur’an and Muhammad.

Blair’s self-incrimination statement continued: “Hate and misinformation are amplified so easily these days. This time by my own hands. In this instance, I erred in my writing and I fully recognize how I contributed to the Muslim community being understandably very upset. I respect and love all peace-loving communities, all over the world.”

Well, all right. But what if she was right the first time? Should the U.S. not deport “terrorist supporting goons”? All Islamic countries are authoritarian regimes, with the partial and diminishing exception of Turkey, and all are economic failures except those that have struck oil. So is it not at least arguably true that “Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroyed minds”?

Related: Iran Touts Islam's Teachings of Equality. Reality, As Always, Is Different.

But Blair wasn’t interested in defending her own statement, so I won’t do so here. She was just trying to stave off ostracism and professional ruin. “In February of 2024,” she said recently, “just mere months after Oct. 7, I posted a comment online. It offended people, and I did apologize right away. No conditions, no fine print. I meant it then and I mean it now, and I’m leaving the comment there, because the comment was not the story. I’m not up here for sympathy. I know I’ve had a lucky life, and I’m working again. And of course we know that life is better now than it was then. I have a team now I’d walk through fire with. It’s small, and it is my team. I want you to know that before I tell you the part that isn’t better. It left a mark.”

The mark, she said, was that her son suffered with her: “The fear got into me, and fear is contagious in a house. He’s a teenager now. He’s supposed to be embarrassed by me, not frightened for me. Careers come back. Years of his childhood do not.”

That’s a shame. It’s an even greater shame that the left operates this way, and that we still cannot have the societal discussion about the nature of Islam that we need to have.

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