WATCH: Dave Chappelle Called Out This ‘Sick’ Hollywood Culture Over a Decade Ago

In a bombshell interview with James Lipton, Dave Chappelle noted that he was going to "drop some dimes" on what goes on behind the scenes—he kept that promise.

Dave Chappelle Just Offended Everyone — but Spoke Some Controversial Truths

(ANTIMEDIA) After spending over a decade out of the spotlight following his public exit from his 2000s hit Chappelle’s Show, this week comedian Dave Chappelle released two stand-up specials on Netflix.

The wildly politically incorrect sets have already drawn criticism from gay and transgender communities, but while his comedy certainly poked fun at the two minorities, it also lambasted numerous subgroups in America.

Chappelle targeted everyone from white people to black people to Asians, women, celebrities, Donald Trump, and the Hollywood establishment. Though much of the buzz surrounding the highly anticipated Netflix specials focused on Chappelle’s arguably offensive jokes about minority groups, much of his most salient commentary focused on the government and racial injustice within the system.

We"re revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.

Warning: Spoilers below.

In his first set, titled “The Age of Spin,” filmed last year at the Hollywood Palladium, Chappelle discussed Netflix’s popular 2016 docuseries Making a Murderer. Discussing Steven Avery, a white man allegedly framed by police for murder, Chappelle joked:

“Steven Avery is in more trouble than any white person in the history of the United States has ever been in. In a justice system designed for him to thrive, he’s failed miserably — twice. I can’t even wrap my mind around it. If Making a Murderer was about a black dude, that shit would be called ‘Duh.’”

He went on, alluding to police involvement in Avery’s conviction and African Americans’ historical skepticism toward police:

“All he needed to get off that he didn’t have was a single black juror. That’s all it would’ve [taken]. Because only a black dude in the United States can look at 11 other dudes and be like, ‘I think the police did this shit.’”

Chappelle did not shy away from discussing race and politics. In his second set, “Deep In The Heart Of Texas: Live At Austin City Limits,” filmed in 2015, he tackled it head on.

“Tough time for the blacks,” he said. “These are not good times for the blacks. You know what I’m talking about right? Police are killing us again. It’s a very unfortunate set of circumstances because we were doing very well.”

Continuing, he discussed other marginalized groups in America:

“You know, America has a racial hot seat. I think we can all agree that that’s the truth, and we can also agree that that hot seat is traditionally occupied by African-Americans in general, African-American men in particular.”

“Although I can see that in recent years,” he went on, “that seat has been occupied by Mexicans, and I dare say Arabs. And we the black Americans would like to thank you both for your sacrifice and your struggle. We needed a break. We needed a goddamn break.”

He focused on the particular struggle Arabs face:

“We all go through something,” he said, “but at least I can leave my backpack someplace. If you’re Arab and you forget a backpack, you have about 20 minutes before they send that robot to blow your shit up. You can kiss all that engineering homework goodbye, Fouhad.”

In his Hollywood special, Chappelle went on an extended diatribe about when things went wrong in America. Joking about how everyone is now angry whereas it used to be only black people who were angry, he opined about how this happened, dropping surprising kernels of truth in his statement. After joking about times changing around and after World War II, he said:

“And then behind the scenes of that, there was a little-known government agency that started testing mind control drugs on the American public.”

Indeed, the CIA conducted mind control experiments on subjects using psychedelic drugs. But according to Chappelle:

“They fucked up. They tested it for 12 years. They didn’t realize these drugs were not mind-controlling. They were mind expanding. It was LSD and mescaline… and for the first time, there was a new school of thought that was chemically induced that made people question the very society they lived in.”

He continued:

“By 1960, the president of the United States was only 42 years old. Can you imagine? DMX is older than that. And he was gonna usher in a new era of peace. He was gonna avoid the Cold War. He was gonna end segregation. And they blew his fucking brains out in front of everyone in Dallas.”

He did not specify who “they” were but went on to make a biting observation about dissent in America:

“This country was never the same. There were seven more major assassinations in the 60s. Anyone that stood up and said anything was shot down in the streets like a fucking dog. Kennedy, Kennedy, King, X, Evers — on and on. You didn’t even have to be famous. You could be a college student at Kent State or in Mississippi protesting the Vietnam War, and they shot them, too. The 70s were a wild era. And while all this was going on, Bill Cosby raped 54 people.”

Bill Cosby, along with O.J. Simpson, were a frequent focus in the specials and often provided comedic relief after Chappelle made more serious statements like the one above. In another apparent affront to mainstream politics and conventional history, Chappelle appeared to question mandatory vaccinations. After he asked the Austin audience how they felt about such policies, receiving cheers in response, he responded:

“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I just… I don’t know. I don’t know about this one. First of all, black people generally don’t trust doctors — after the Tuskegee experiments and all that shit.”

Chappelle was referencing, as the Atlantic has explained it, “the 40-year experiment run by Public Health Service officials [that] followed 600 rural black men in Alabama with syphilis over the course of their lives, refusing to tell patients their diagnosis, refusing to treat them for the debilitating disease, and actively denying some of them treatment.”

Chappelle’s jokes spanned nearly every layer of potentially offensive content. He joked at length about Caitlyn Jenner’s gender transition in the Hollywood special, and in the Austin special, he further questioned trans culture. Expressing support, he said, “I support anybody’s right to be whoever they feel like they are inside. I’m your ally in that.”

“However,” he continued, “my question is to what degree do I have to participate in your self-image?”

Regardless of how one feels about Chappelle’s arguably offensive show, two things were apparent: he wasn’t concerned about offending anyone, an attitude expressed recently by other major comedic players. Figures like Jerry Seinfeld and Tina Fey have bemoaned the constraints PC culture places on free speech and comedy. As Chappelle warned the audience early in his Hollywood performance after they gasped at one of his jokes:

“Ladies and gentleman, man the fuck up or you’re not going to make it through this show.”

Most importantly, Chappelle proved himself fearless in confronting deeply uncomfortable realities about American society, culture, and government, dropping otherwise shocking bits of information in with classic Chappelle comedy.

Chappelle, who famously left the limelight when his often politically and racially charged Chappelle’s Show was reaching new levels of popularity, will produce a third special for Netflix viewers to be released later this year. It is expected to tackle the 2016 election and the new era of Donald Trump.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo / Image: Davej1006

WATCH: Dave Chappelle Takes Over Town Hall Meeting to Expose Police Brutality

Yellow Springs, OH — Comedian Dave Chappelle was moved to attend a city council meeting in the small Ohio town where he lives, following a New Year’s Eve incident in which officers acted aggressively toward revelers — to call out what many felt was the small town’s dangerous flirtation with brutal policing.

Duly noting Yellow Springs Police have, indeed, assisted him on two occasions, Chappelle turned to the law enforcement panel and scolded sternly,

“Huge gaffe, New Year’s Eve.”

Affirmative murmurs from the residents in attendance made clear the comedian and political activist wasn’t alone in criticizing police for deploying Tasers against possibly-inebriated African American holidaymakers.

With a predominantly caucasian population of around 3,500 — and students attending private Antioch College — Yellow Springs is more sleepy, quirky enclave than bustling city, thus has not experienced the worst of a shamefully rampant police violence issue.

Per New Year’s Eve tradition, a crowd gathered downtown to celebrate and watch a disco ball drop at midnight — but the atmosphere turned strangely sour as the event drew to a close. The Chicago Tribune reports,

“Residents told the New York Times that officers began clearing the crowd more swiftly than usual. As they moved to disperse the residents, police said, according to the Times, that a 29-year-old black man named David Carlson, who was drunk, began to threaten officers and hit a squad car. An attorney for Carlson denied he was aggressive. After one officer forced Carlson to the ground, he slipped away into the mostly white crowd, which tried to prevent officers from following him.”

READ MORE:  Disturbing Video of Cop Trying to Choke a Handcuffed Teen Surfaces on Facebook

In other words, the crowd moved to prevent unnecessary violence or arrest by police against a man who might have been drinking too heavily at a holiday event. But that didn’t stop the cops.

“There was a Taser deployed in a crowd and it missed,” an anonymous eyewitness told the Yellow Springs News at the time. “It could have hit a child.”

So rare are incidents where police in Yellow Springs have had to employ force of this nature, many residents were stunned the violence, albeit on a constricted scale, had finally touched their town.

Witness and 20-year resident, Anita Brown, told Yellow Springs News, as quoted by the Tribune, the officers seemed “emotionless, with no sense of caring. I witnessed villagers de-escalating and officers escalating, it was so strange, it seemed so backwards.”

“In all fairness,” Chappelle said to audience laughter, discussing the holiday scofflaw, “the crowd was drunk.” He added, deadpan, “because it was New Year’s Eve. … And, I left early, because nobody felt completely ‘right.’”

In response to ensuing contention, if perhaps in deference to outrage against police departments nationwide — those whose errant officers and corrupt supervisors frequently fail to be disciplined for controversial wrongdoings — Yellow Springs Police Chief Dave Hale resigned from the force on January 3.

On Monday, Chappelle attended the village council meeting to advocate for immediate reform of policing, with an eye to community relations, saying the council has “a tremendous opportunity for us to be a leader in progressive law enforcement.”

Where the bond between the community and police shattered was the shift from officers who live in the areas they serve. Noting when he attended school, everyone knew various officers because their children or other family members attended the same schools, Chappelle observed,

“Now we are being policed by what feels like an alien force.”

READ MORE:  Crips, Bloods Call Truce, Not to Harm Cops But to Protect their Community from Violence & Looting

Thanks to the government’s military surplus giveaway to local and state law enforcement, an aggressive and combatant — and staunchly authoritarian — method of policing has supplanted the albeit Rockwellian image of Officer Friendly patrolling with a smile, ostensively just decades ago.

Chappelle’s comparison might be new for tiny Yellow Springs, Ohio, but images of stormtrooper cops in military and riot gear, sometimes sporting imposing face shields, automatic rifles, and usually backed by armored vehicles — sometimes menacing, always intimidating — have splashed periodically across headlines for years.

As civilians fight tooth and nail to reform police forces nationwide, the violence wrought by those with a badge and gun continues to infect even the smallest havens like Chappelle’s hometown.

For the down-to-earth, politically-aware comedian, stepping to the mic to be a resounding voice of caution and to advocate for preemptive change is a way to draw attention to a timely cause.

“This is an opportunity to show everybody that local politics reigns supreme,” Chappelle concluded. “We can make our corner of the world outstanding.”