lily (she/her)

Original post by @/Min_tramcam on X/Twitter

The most important thing to understand about South Park is its identity does not align with any one political group. Its identity is a rabid hatred of censorship.

South Park, at the end of the day, wants to line up a bunch of idiots representing all sides and say Absolutely Anything about them. The show itself strikes a "Caring is Cringe" Enlightened Centrism by making sure you see that everyone who cares on either side is an idiot.

But. And this is important too: They do it in a way that can honeypot just about anyone into thinking they're the ones being agreed with.

This is because the bullet spray of mockery hits all targets. And you can, without much stretch, assign a character who is probably in the right, right? The show creators thought so too, right? This character is the least idiot.

So many plots are structured around Kyle (one of the main boys, the progressive one) taking some stance of compassion and anger over a social issue, to then be absolutely dicked around by Cartman (who needs no introduction.)

And it's actually so very easy to have two people watch the same episode and have one person conclude "Obviously Kyle was in the right. And he's getting dicked around by Cartman who sucks." while the other person concludes "Hahaha stupid Kyle with his bleeding-heart liberal BS. Cartman is so funny and awesome."

If Kyle says "I support the environment" and then spends the whole episode getting tormented for it: it's because this is righteous narrative comeuppance for a bleeding-heart idiot stance, or this is actually representing the tortured reality of being the only smart compassionate person in a world of cruel idiots. It's both. It's neither. It's clown nose honking.

Everyone is an idiot. Every side is full of idiots. So when an idiot character says, "I support gay rights", the audience can say either "South Park said gay rights!" or "South Park made fun of the idiot who said 'Gay rights'." with equal conviction.

Now--with no real political convictions and beliefs--South Park does have plenty of episodes that assign a winner. They will shoot down whoever they find most annoying. And they will shoot down whoever is trying to tell them what they can and cannot say.

And, while this is where my knowledge is about ~14 years out of date, I'm going to make the safe assumption that "You can't say that, because Woke" has been a constant target of the last maybe half-decade.

Okay, now with that context:

It is entirely unsurprising of me to think South Park has (or had) an enormous swath of alt-right, conservative, MAGA fans who think South Park is their show. They can watch every politically non-committal episode and say "Cartman is so cool and awesome. Kyle is a whiny little bitch." And they can watch every committal "We hate Woke for telling us what we can't say" episode, and happily conclude South Park is on their side.

But back to the thesis: South Park hates censorship. South Park hates censorship so much more than they could possibly care about any one political party.

And, the fact that Trump is lashing out with threats, blackmail, and every political cudgel he has to make people stop talking--that's already going to get you on South Park's shitlist.

But it got so much worse: because a sister-show on South Park's network (The Colbert Show) is being canceled as an appeasement to Trump. By the network hosting both IPs.

And Canceling a show for saying something politically unsavory is the worst possible offense, according to South Park.

There is no worse sin.