As for creative freedom, that might be the biggest joke of all. Two Jewish comedians, Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon, have had their shows canceled at two venues. One of these, Whistlebinkies, at first claimed that this was due to “safety concerns” — presumably it feared that activists from “the right side of history” might turn up to assault audiences and staff in the name of compassion. Creeger and Simon say they were told of “staff discomfort at hosting Jewish shows”.

Of course, any appeal to “safety” in the context of a comedy show is mere sleight-of-tongue, a specious justification for the curbing of artistic freedom. The Banshee Labyrinth has canceled Simon’s solo show after trawling through his social media posts in search of heretical views. Chillingly, its managers have compiled a “dossier” of tweets in which Simon criticizes the hypocrisy of those who attend and organize “humanitarian” marches for Palestine while turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by Hamas. The venue was particularly outraged that Simon pointed out that Greta Thunberg had not been “kidnapped” by the IDF when she sailed her flotilla to Gaza in her ongoing mission to save the universe and chronicle it all on Instagram.

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One would hope that a comedy venue of all places might appreciate that creatives do not always agree, and that it is not their place to cancel performers who do not pledge fealty to the fashionable omni-cause of the middle-classes. Alas, as ever, conformity is now being demanded from those we should least expect it from. It is particularly dispiriting to see this kind of groupthink take hold at the Fringe. Since its inception in the late Forties, performers have been accustomed to protests and demands for censorship from the Christian Right, but such calls today are coming from within the industry itself.

The ideological capture is evident from critics who laud shows for conveying the “correct message” and comedy commissioners who evidently prefer propaganda to art. Ever since Nica Burns, the director of the Fringe comedy awards, launched the 2018 festival with a paean to “comedy’s future in the woke world” which will “establish a clear marker for what is unacceptable today”, most performers and industry doyens have been diligently following the decree. Genuinely subversive acts have been edged out to make space for the mediocre and the bland.

This is a trend that is now firmly established. Three years ago, the Pleasance Theatre — one of the Fringe’s main provider of venues — canceled a show by controversial comedian Jerry Sadowitz. According to the director of the Pleasance, Anthony Alderson, this was because “this type of material has no place on the festival”, and “opinions such as those displayed on stage by Sadowitz are not acceptable”. When a leading comedy promoter openly admits that he doesn’t understand the difference between opinions and jokes, we know the rot is entrenched.

Kate Copstick, one of the few comedy critics who has refused to kowtow to the new orthodoxy, wrote the following after the Sadowitz cancellation: “In all my years of covering the Fringe, there has never been a more joy-stranglingly censorious August. Councillor Moira Knox in her heyday seems like a libertine now, in comparison to today’s recreationally offended. When the blood-chilling phrase “unacceptable and does not align with our values” is bandied about, and by a venue like the Pleasance, then it is time to fear for the freedom of our funny. The point of a Fringe is that it does not align with anything.

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All of which would be depressing enough, but the situation has been exacerbated by the complicity of comedians themselves. Many acts at the Fringe now fall into the category of what the Spanish call “cuerpo oficial de cómicos del Estado” (official body of comedians of the state). These “regime comedians” are aware that success in their careers is dependent on echoing the dogma of our times, one that has been promoted consistently by successive Conservative and Labour governments. These are the fools at court who have forgotten that their job is to criticize the king.

It was not always this way. Back in 2006, when Tony Blair’s government attempted to oppose amendments passed by the House of Lords that limited the scope of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, comedians were outspoken in their dissent. Had the bill passed, any vexatious complaint about a show that mocked religious belief would have resulted in its suspension pending a police investigation. Acts have just over three weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe to recoup some of their losses; they simply can’t afford to waste time being interrogated by the Star Chamber.

But whereas there was near unanimity among comedians in 2006, by the time Markus Meechan (aka “Count Dankula”) was prosecuted for a joke video in 2018, there were few speaking out. Whereas they once understood that “the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended” — the phrase used by Rowan Atkinson during the 2006 campaign — they had now subscribed wholesale to the core woke belief that words and violence are synonymous and that suppression of free speech is essential for the preservation of a cohesive society. Where once comedians fought censorship, now they were defending it.

Up until relatively recently, punters would have been sorely disappointed at a fringe festival that offered a series of interchangeable comics all aiming their barbs at similar targets. When Scott Capurro took his show Islamohomophobia to the Fringe in 2013, and was depicted wearing a transparent burka in the publicity materials, nobody took offense or called for his deplatforming. A little over a decade later, and police are contacting a venue in London because of accusations that Capurro might be “homophobic”. Perhaps the investigating officers should have asked for evidence from his husband.

For the humourless and the doctrinaire, comedy will always be a dangerous phenomenon. Take George Monbiot, who recently produced a piece for the Guardian in which he argued that jokes are the equivalent of gateway drugs to the far-Right. “Dominant powers have for centuries used clowns to express their deepest, most unmentionable urges,” he writes, forgetting that the antics of clowns have always been the most effective tool to undermine authority. Citing jokes by Lewis Schaffer, a comedian whose every utterance is guaranteed to bewilder the congenitally literal-minded, Monbiot concludes that “Humorous suggestions of violence reveal and embolden real desires,” that they “soften us up for violence and misrule” and that “it’s the clowning that kills us”.

In this, Monbiot appears to be channelling the spirit of William Prynne, the puritanical firebrand who, in his Histrio-Mastix (1633), railed against the capacity of stage comedies to “empoison, endanger, and deprave” the audience. The elegance, wit and popular appeal of these shows, Prynne reasoned, had the effect of acclimatising the public to “adulteries, fornications, rapes, love-passions, meretricious, unchaste, and amorous practises, of lascivious wicked men or heathen idol-gods”. The claim that jokes lead to violence is often asserted but never proved. It is eternal cry of the sanctimonious and the philistine.

Monbiot’s logic is identical to that of the officers who last week arrested Jon Farley, a protester at a pro-Palestine rally in Leeds, who had been holding a placard bearing a cartoon from the satirical magazine Private Eye. The cartoon mocked the Government’s proscribing of Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Fully on board with the notion that comedy and satire are potentially toxic forces and can incite real-world harm, the police swiftly handcuffed Farley and detained him for nearly six hours. This is what happens when freedom of speech is no longer valued by the ruling class, and the ideology promoted by the likes of Monbiot becomes institutionalised.

No doubt this authoritarian attitude will persist at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Innately subversive comedians will continue to self-censor, and those who do risk the ire of the establishment will doubtless pay the price. We can expect increased conformity while activists insist that “nobody is being stifled”. Genuine fans of comedy would be advised to avoid the Fringe, at least until its gatekeepers learn that laughter is more satisfying than nodding along to the approved creed.

This was how I opened my review of Jerry Sadowitz’s show for ScotsGay magazine in 2008. I described his performance as “an explosion of hate on stage”, but noted that the effect was both prurient and deliriously funny. That Sadowitz’s unending bile is often interspersed with adroitly executed magic tricks makes his routines all the more compelling. When critics quote his jokes out of context, it’s easy to see why so many are offended — but when it comes to Sadowitz, context is everything.

Such a distinction, however, is lost on many of today’s comedy aficionados. This week, the Pleasance — one of the so-called “big four” venues at the Fringe — cancelled Sadowitz’s show at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. In an incredible feat of doublespeak, Anthony Alderson, Director of the Pleasance, claimed that it is “a venue that champions freedom of speech” and does “not censor comedians’ material” but has nonetheless cancelled this show because it “is not acceptable and does not align with our values”.

There is much to criticise in Alderson’s statement, not least his high-handed claim that “this type of material has no place on the festival”. In recent years, the doyens of the comedy industry have developed a tediously pharisaic approach to the artform. Critics, promoters, and even comedians themselves have behaved like a modern-day clergy, censuring acts who fail to conform to the diktats of the new morality. The comedy industry, in other words, is seemingly dominated by those who are not comedy-literate.

The Pleasance Theatre Trust issued a further statement claiming that “opinions such as those displayed on stage by Sadowitz are not acceptable”, thereby revealing how little it understands about the essential theatricality of stand-up. Are “jokes” and “opinions” now synonymous? To take stand-up at face value, to attempt to apply moral guidelines to a theatrical performance, is to misapprehend the experience. Denouncing Sadowitz’s onstage persona as racist, sexist, or homophobic makes about as much sense as condemning Macbeth for his ruthless ambition.

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Besides, Sadowitz isn’t the only one affected. The current trend of cancelling comedians is infantilising audience members by deeming them susceptible to corruption through their favourite shows. It is the identical view that underpinned Mary Whitehouse’s “Clean Up TV” campaign in the Sixties. For Whitehouse, it wasn’t sufficient that adults make choices about what they did or did not watch; authority figures were expected to intervene in order to prevent the spread of “dangerous” ideas that might lead the plebeians astray.

Anyone who has undertaken the least research into Sadowitz will know what they are in for. The Pleasance was certainly aware of his style and content (and his tendency to expose his penis) well in advance of the festival. Sadowitz had even posted a promo video in which he referred to himself in the third person, saying: “He’s gonna be funny. He’s gonna be rude. He’s gonna do magic tricks. He’s gonna do impressions. He’s gonna get his dick out. He’s gonna do every fucking thing.”

In another promo, Sadowitz said: “I might just do card tricks and say nothing for a whole hour or I might just do the usual ‘screaming fascist’ schtick. Or both. Patrons may wish to drink alcohol pre-show to avoid boredom, embarrassment and guilt.” His current show is entitled Not For Anyone. When I reviewed his show in 2008, it was called Comedian, Magician, Psychopath II. One can hardly accuse Sadowitz of false advertising.

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So why is it that a show explicitly marketed at adults who enjoy controversial comedy would need to be cancelled? I have been told that some of the complaints originated from members of staff at the Pleasance itself — reminiscent of the revolt at the Canadian branch of Penguin Random House, where junior employees apparently burst into tears and demanded the cancellation of Jordan Peterson’s book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. In Peterson’s case, the publishers refused to be cowed. At the Pleasance, the management capitulated.

This philistine trend gained momentum at the launch of the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe, when Comedy Awards director Nica Burns declared that she was “looking forward to comedy’s future in the woke world”. She went on to compare the current fashion for “woke” to the alternative comedians of the Eighties, claiming that “it is the woke movement which is setting an ever-evolving agenda as it seeks to establish a clear marker for what is unacceptable today”.

The implied decree was observed by up-and-coming comics in subsequent years; eligibility for awards or plaudits would be reserved for those who toe the ideological line. This is why I continually hear from stand-ups who are choosing to self-censor, who fear that their viability in the industry is contingent on maintaining the status quo. This is why we have seen so many second-rate acts promoted by the industry for conveying the “correct” message, one typically related to the new religion of Group Identity. This is also why so many television comedy shows are failing to attract viewers. For all the industry gatekeepers and their pretensions to moral superiority, comedy audiences would still much rather laugh than hear a sermon.

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Burns had it entirely backwards when she compared the “woke world” to the alternative comedy movement. The complaints we hear today about subversive comedians like Sadowitz are strikingly reminiscent of the anger against the alternative comics of the Eighties, those who dared to challenge establishment norms. When I co-founded Comedy Unleashed, a monthly night in London, it was an effort to provide opportunities to those comics who are by nature non-conforming. It wasn’t about being controversial, it was about creating a show in which ideas could be explored freely, and where the priority would be to be funny rather than preachy.

The unhinged reactions to our recent announcement of a Comedy Unleashed tour have been revealing. One of the acts, Reginald D. Hunter, was trending for the day on Twitter because he had dared to appear on the bill. One comedian tweeted: “If you do that tour: you’re a fucking scab” and “Comedians need to pick a side: I’m an anarchist”. The comedian in question has a show on BBC Radio 4, so his definition of “anarchy” seems dubious at best.

Up until now, Sadowitz has been able to evade the accusatory finger-pointing of culture warriors — those who are determined to see racists and fascists in every shadow — by dint of his status as a luminary among comedians. Stand-ups who have admired Sadowitz for years will baulk at the suggestion that there is no distinction between his act and that of Roy “Chubby” Brown. But for those who have succumbed to the new puritanism, words have a contaminative power. Racist epithets are always racist; context be damned.

In a statement released yesterday, Sadowitz wrote: “I don’t want to humiliate the Pleasance but they are doubling down on their position and I don’t want to be made the victim of that…  My act is now being cheapened and simplified as unsafe, homophobic, misogynistic and racist… A lot of thought goes into my shows and while I don’t always get it right… I am offended by those who, having never seen me before, hear words being shouted in the first five minutes before storming out without listening to the material which I am stupid enough to believe is funny”.

Sadowitz’s frustration is palpable, and rightly so. It is similarly frustrating to see him forced to break character publicly — possibly for the first time in his career — simply because a few know-nothings with too much power cannot comprehend the notion of an onstage persona and its function in stand-up. We have reached a point where the art of comedy has been demeaned by a “progressive” view of language and power relations. Consider how the tax lawyer and Twitter activist Jolyon Maugham responded to an opinion piece about the attack on Salman Rushdie. He claimed that when it comes to free speech, one should “engage with relative power. Who has a platform to speak — and for what purpose do they use it, to challenge or to embed power?”

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This is the basic formulation to which all artistic expression is now reduced. So when Sadowitz screams racial slurs, he is not doing so as part of an unhinged comedic persona, but is perpetuating power structures that maintain his privilege. That he is Jewish doesn’t seem to matter because, as David Baddiel has argued, Jews don’t count.

We have seen comedians investigated by police, members of the public prosecuted for jokes, and the Culture Secretary suggesting that the law ought to be changed to criminalise controversial comedy on streaming services. At each step on this road to Pandemonium, mainstream comedians have remained silent, as though it is of no concern to them that their craft is being subjected to continual battering. There is nothing particularly surprising about the cancellation of Sadowitz’s show; it was simply a matter of time.

Perhaps now that the new puritans are targeting respected comedians like Sadowitz, other stand-ups will wake up to the problem. Comedy cannot exist in an environment where words are deemed to be “unsafe”, and risk-takers are punished with cancellation. This is why Sadowitz deserves your support, even if you cannot stomach his performances. He is one of the few comedians who has been instrumental in pushing boundaries. God forbid we allow these pettifogging authoritarians to re-establish the parameters in accordance with their banal and bloodless creed.