Dilbert Finds a New Home After Creator's Racist Tirade

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert stands within “Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle” which offers practical and humorous concepts for the future workplace office, Tuesday, August 28, 2001 in San Francisco, California. The cartoonist was dropped by his distributor and U.S. papers after calling black people a “hate group.”

The comic strip Dilbert has relocated to Rumble, an online video platform that describes itself as “immune to cancel culture,” after the cartoon’s creator was dropped by news outlets for embarking on what many have called a racist tirade.

Scott Adams, the man behind the popular three-decade-long comic about office life, took to his YouTube channel in late February to tell white people “to get the hell away from Black people” as he considered them a “hate group.” He has since argued that he was using “obvious hyperbole.”

In the weeks after the video was published, newspapers across the United States including The Washington Post and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio dropped the comic strip from their pages, leaving both the cartoon character and its creator without an audience.

However, on March 14, Rumble announced that Adams would bring Dilbert Reborn to its subscription-based platform called Locals, which he had been contributing to since 2020. The content would include more than 200 “micro lessons” and a comic called Robots Read News.

“I feel creatively renewed,” Adams said in a statement. “No more guessing what the newspaper industry will allow, no size limits, no artistic limits at all.” Meanwhile, Assaf Lev, the president of Locals, said the platform was “proud to host the new home of Dilbert.”

Adams has often espoused opinions that are varied and do not align with one political school of thought. He has praised Donald Trump while describing himself as being to the left of Bernie Sanders, but has also said he would do “whatever Bill Clinton advises me to do.”

In a video as part of his Real Coffee series on February 22, he discussed a poll from Rasmussen Reports that found that only 53 percent of Black Americans agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” The survey of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted between February 13-15.

The pollster noted to Newsweek that the phrase had been labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate slogan, but said it had polled on it because it had “been in the news many times.”

“As you know, I’ve been identifying as Black for a while—years now—because I like to be on the winning team and I like to help,” Adams said. “But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m OK to be white.”

The poll was the first “that ever changed my activities,” Adams said. “As of today, I’m going to re-identify as white because I don’t want to be a member of a hate group. I’ve accidentally joined a hate group.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people—according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll—that’s a hate group. And I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” he said. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people, just get the f*** away. Wherever you have to go, just get away—because there is no fixing this.”

On March 1, Adams posted another video in which he argued that most of the media were “fake news” and had contributed to his cancellation.

In a Twitter thread on Monday, Adams compared himself to NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who sparked controversy by kneeling for the national anthem to protest racism in the U.S. Adams said he “intended to offend” like Kaepernick and praised the former 49ers star” for informing the rest of the country how Black Americans feel about police brutality.”

“My so-called ‘racist rant’ was obvious hyperbole, at least to people familiar with my pattern and history,” he wrote. “I intended to offend, in Kaepernick style, to draw energy in my direction, so my point would have a chance of penetrating the social bubble that needs it the most. If you don’t like how I did it, you missed the point. You were supposed to not like it.”

Adams followed up on Tuesday with a positive spin on the move, writing that he “exited a dying industry, got all of my rights back, and went from hating my job—it was creatively limiting—to loving it.”

Newsweek reached out to Adams via email for comment.

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