Mel Gibson Under Attack After Controversial Gesture Directed At Trump

Mel Gibson is trending after gesturing to the former president. See the video.

By Faith McKay | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

mel gibson

Mel Gibson is trending on Twitter. Did anyone possibly think that could be for something positive? After recordings of Gibson surfaced online where he let loose racist attacks, that’s mostly what people expect when they see his name. This time around, he gestured at a former president. At the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) 264 event, Mel Gibson saluted the former president Donald Trump. As Trump is a controversial figure, and Gibson is one as well, this was met with a lot of reaction on Twitter that continues to build.

See the videos of Mel Gibson saluting the former president, and some of twitter’s reaction to the event, below.

https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1414382497404706817
https://twitter.com/normwilner/status/1414695157765640192

While the short story here is that Mel Gibson witnessed Donald Trump walking by at a UFC event in Las Vegas and saluted the man who used to be president, it sparked a lot of conversation on Twitter. Some people respected Gibson for the gesture. Some people wondered how he still had an acting career. Others thought that Mel Gibson had been canceled a long time ago and wasn’t in movies anymore.

For all the outcries against cancel culture removing celebrities from the spotlight, it is weird how present Mel Gibson remains in the public sphere. He was famously recorded in Malibu during a DUI where he went on an anti-Semitic rant. Then, leaked tapes came out, letting the public know this wasn’t a one-time event. Adding on to this, in 2010, he screamed racist remarks at his girlfriend and mother to one of his nine children. These remarks included the N-word. She then came out to the public, saying that Mel Gibson had been physically abusive with her. And even before all of these events, the actor was known to be making homophobic remarks.

mel gibson santa

Despite all of these very public controversies, many on Twitter were surprised to see Mel Gibson saluting Donald Trump, a former president of the United States with his own long history of public racism. While Mel Gibson may be well-known to some for his racist rants, others seem unaware.

Is some level of public ignorance responsible for Mel Gibson’s continued career? Or are there other reasons cancel culture seems to have skipped over Gibson? Cancel culture is a newer phenomenon at the level we see it today. Because the actor’s recordings were made so public in 2006 and 2010, did the public simply become used to the idea that Gibson is racist, and then let that go?

While the actor is still around and in Hollywood productions, he’s not in as many as he was in his Braveheart days. However, some of that can simply be put down to the fact that Mel Gibson is older. Acting careers tend to slow down when wealthy performers reach 65 years of age. Still, in recent years, we’ve seen Mel Gibson in the 2021 movie, Boss Level. He played Santa Claus in an R-rated film. And he has a long list of upcoming productions, including Stu with Mark Wahlberg.