“Kids, you don’t know what the hell it is.”
That’s how it’s done Bill Maher opened up about his latest take on Western Civilization during Friday night’s episode of Real time — and by “kids” he meant two of the biggest pop stars on the planet.
The HBO host remarked Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan by name, accusing them of reducing everything about the West to a story of oppression while benefiting from the freedoms it created. It was the kind of segment that splits the Internet in half—and within hours, it was already doing just that.
“Don’t ask Billie Eilish or Chappell Roan”
Maher did not relax. He told his audience that young people “think the West is white and white is bad,” then argued that atrocities were not unique to European history, pointing to Imperial Japan and Genghis Khan.
He then turned his attention directly to the two Grammy-winning artists. “Don’t ask Billie Eilish or Chappell Roan what Western values are, because they’ll just say it’s about oppression,” Maher said. “But it’s not about oppression.”
Instead, he listed what he believes the West actually stands for: “Rule of law. Respect for minorities. Democracy. Scientific inquiry.” He called them “good things that came from the Western world” and added: “I wish schools would teach this again.”
The comments built on Maher’s earlier attack on Eilish’s viral Grammy speech, in which the 24-year-old declared “nobody’s illegal on stolen land” while accepting Song of the Year. At the time, he told her he “didn’t go to school” and “doesn’t know the facts.”
On Friday, he made it clear he wasn’t done.
What Maher didn’t mention about Roan
Image credit: @chappellroan
This is where the story gets more complicated – and more interesting.
While Maher framed Roan as someone who reduced the West to oppression, Roan was making headlines for something else entirely. Earlier this month, she became the most high-profile artist to leave the Wasserman talent agency after its founder, Casey Wasserman, was named in the latest batch of Jeffrey Epstein files.
Roan didn’t stay quiet about it. She said she refused to “stand by passively” and that “no artist, agent or employee should be expected to defend or overlook actions that engage so deeply with our own moral values.” Her exit sparked an industry-wide exodus—Laufey, Weyes Blood, Orville Peck and others followed—and may have prompted Wasserman to announce he was selling the agency.
In other words, the young Maher says she doesn’t understand the values she’s been busy holding a powerful industry figure to account while much of Hollywood has remained silent.
As for Eilish, the singer Maher says she “didn’t go to school” directed $11.5 million in proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to fight climate and hunger — and won an Environmental Justice Award at the annual MLK Jr. Loved Community ceremony in Atlanta earlier this year.
None of this appeared Friday night.
Irony Maher’s critics like to point out
Maher has been making this argument since at least 2023, and has been consistent: the West gave us liberal values, and young progressives are too focused on historical mistakes to appreciate them.
But there was always an irony. Maher is an atheist who made the 2008 documentary. Religious mocking organized religion—yet the values he ascribes to Western civilization are ones that many scholars trace directly to Judeo-Christian thought. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said as much to Maher’s face Real time last September, telling him he was “morally born on the third base” because of a biblical tradition he rejects. Maher pushed back, giving credit to the Enlightenment. The public was on Shapiro’s side.
The internet doesn’t hold back
Image credit: @AnnTWolf3/X; @AnaKasparian2/X
The segment spread quickly – and so did the backlash. A post sharing the segment garnered more than 246,000 views and 12,000 likes in just three hours — and the reactions were anything but polite.
Maher’s supporters came out swinging. One user praised him as “infuriatingly likable”, adding that Maher is right “even if I normally and fundamentally disagree with him”. Another noted that he seemed to have “lost his patience with the far left” altogether, pointing out that the same man who had clashed with conservatives for decades was now having a polite conversation with Lauren Boebert.
The strongest rebuttal has come from those who believe Maher is aiming at the wrong target. A 70-year-old man lecturing 24-year-old women about what they don’t know is a tough look to begin with — and critics haven’t let it go. One user wrote that “the problem is not that young people hate the West” – but that “they were handed a system that preaches freedom but offers debt and burnout and then told to be grateful for it.” Another was more direct: “Old man screaming about Billie Eilish. Just say that. It’s faster.”
Others spared no one. One called Maher a “broken clock” that “started slowly ticking” — not right most of the time, but overlapping more than before.
If Maher’s goal was to start a conversation about what Western civilization means to the generation that inherits it—mission accomplished. Whether one actually listens to the other side is an entirely different question.