Matthew McConaughey has again shared his ruminations on the two extreme sides of the political divide, this time during an interview on U.K. broadcaster ITV’s “Good Morning Britain.”
The “Dallas Buyers Club” star last week pointed out that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory had the left in denial, just as some Republicans are now sceptical of Joe Biden’s win. He was speaking as part of an episode for Russell Brand’s podcast.
Appearing virtually on the morning program on Tuesday, McConaughey said, “You need liberals. What I don’t think we need is the illiberals, and what I don’t think that some liberals see is that they’re often being cannibalized by the illiberals.”
“Now, you know, there are extremes on both sides that I think are unfair — that I don’t think are the right place to be,” McConaughey told show hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid. “The extreme left and the extreme right completely illegitimize the other side, or they exaggerate that side’s stance into an irrational state. That makes no sense,.”
McConaughey noted that it’s “not fair” when either side does so.
“Where the waterline is going to land on this freedom of speech, and what we allow and what we don’t and where this cancel culture goes…is a very interesting place that we’re engaged in right now as a society of trying to figure out, because we haven’t found the right spot,” continued the actor.
When Morgan suggested that British politics has become “so tribal now that consensus is getting buried in the mix,” McConaughey responded, “There’s no room for any consensus. You’ve got to have confrontation to have unity, I think we can all agree on that. That’s when the democracy works really well.”
“I would say we don’t have true confrontation right now,” McConaughey added. “And that means that actually in a way it’s sort of unconstitutional.”
McConaughey was promoting his memoir “Greenlights,” in which he reveals that he was a victim of sexual abuse during his teenage years.