Culture Writer Anna Emmerson Robinson reports on Jimmy Carr’s latest insensitive jokes about marginalised communities and the outrage they caused
Content Warning: mentions abortion, the Holocaust and genocide
On Christmas Day 2021, Jimmy Carr’s comedy special ‘His Dark Material’ was released onto Netflix. Little was said at the time, but in recent weeks, it has unfortunately become clear that Carr made an incredibly insensitive ‘joke’ about the Holocaust. At the opening of the show, Carr warned that there would be insensitive comments made about ‘terrible things,’ but that ‘they are just jokes. They are not the terrible things.’ During the show, in a segment which he claimed had ‘career-ending’ possibilities, he said:
‘When people talk about the Holocaust they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of G****** that were killed by the Nazis.’
‘No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.’
By dismissing the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti that were lost during the horrors of the Holocaust in the Second World War, Carr has upset many people
The response by the audience was to clap and laugh at this statement. Later in the show, Carr goes on to claim that this ‘joke’ was ‘ f**king funny’ and educational as it brought awareness to the Holocaust, and yet by dismissing the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti that were lost during the horrors of the Holocaust in the Second World War, Carr has upset many people.
Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: ‘Hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti people suffered prejudice, slave labour, sterilisation and mass murder simply because of their identity – these are not experiences for mockery.’ Labour MP Nadia Whittome wrote in her letter to Netflix urging the company to remove the content that ‘in funding, streaming and profiting from this material, Netflix is legitimising and perpetuating racism.’ More than a month after Netflix released the comedy special, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson noted that ‘those comments are deeply disturbing and it is unacceptable to make light of genocide.’
He also said that there are plans in place to pass a legislation that would give the government tighter control over the content of streaming services. However, Johnson’s government has elsewhere been criticised for seeking to criminalise Traveller communities in section 4 of the new policing bill which would make living on land without the permission of its owner a criminal offence and would allow police to seize vehicles and mobile homes.
It is unclear why Netflix chose to feature such a comment on the programme, especially since they recently came under intense scrutiny for comments comedian Dave Chapelle said about transgender people. They are yet to comment on Carr’s special. For the entirety of Carr’s comedic career, the streaming services that show Carr’s stand-up performances have been forced to apologise many times.
Carr’s career has been made up of joking about marginalised or oppressed groups
During his 2019 tour, he asked: ‘is a dwarf an abortion that made it?,’ deeply upsetting the charity Little People UK which was co-founded by Harry Potter star Warwick Davis. In 2009, he made a comment about the high number of amputees following conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, noting how ‘great’ our Paralympic team is as a result of their injuries. And, in 2006, the BBC apologised for airing another joke he made about the Traveller community. Carr’s career has been made up of joking about marginalised or oppressed groups, but in the modern world where these jokes are heard by so many people across social media platforms, the backlash to his comments is much wider than in previous years, causing him to fear the end of his career.
During a stand-up set at the Whitley Bay Playhouse near Newcastle on Saturday 5th February, a heckler asked him: ‘are we going to talk about the Holocaust?’, to which Carr replied: ‘we are going to talk about cancel culture, the whole thing. We are going to talk about f***ing everything, people. Relax.’ He also suggested that: ‘There’s a rare psychological disorder that causes people to tell inappropriate jokes. I know I have got it.’ Carr has yet to make an official statement.
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