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Kanye West, Kyrie Irving, Dave Chappelle, and Jon Stewart, and Their Special Dispensation For Jew-Hatred

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Micha Danzig has noticed that Jon Stewart deplores anti-black hate speech and wants it to be severely punished, while he has a surprising tolerance for antisemitic hate speech, Danzig’s analysis can be found here: “Irving, Stewart and Chappelle and the Double Standard for Jew-Hatred,” Jewish Journal, November 23, 2022:

As anyone paying attention to the news over the past few weeks knows, on Oct. 27, Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving shared to his 22.1 million followers on social media (around seven million more people than there are Jews on the planet) a “documentary” called “From Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.”

In the week following Irving’s promotion of this antisemitic film—which was about as subtle, credible and well-sourced as a Josef Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl German Ministry of Propaganda film—Irving repeatedly refused to apologize for promoting antisemitic material. At times, he even sounded angry in his response to the backlash and hurt generated by his actions. He said three days later: “I’m not going to stand down on anything I believe in. I’m only going to get stronger because I’m not alone.” And then he added a comment that was vaguely threatening and, based on responses on social media, also accurate: “I have a whole army around me.”

Kyrie Irving has proven to be a real antisemitic menace by recommending to his 20.1 million followers this “documentary” (“Hebrews Into Negroes”) about how those who call themselves “Jews” in fact “stole” the identity of the true – black – Jews. These white Jews, in Irving’s view, are guilty of everything bad that has happened to blacks, beginning with their supposedly taking the major role in enslaving blacks during the Atlantic Slave Trade,

As a result of Irving’s refusal to apologize, the Brooklyn Nets suspended him and set forth a number of conditions for his return to the team—and to earning nearly $37,000,000 per year (around $16,000 a minute on average).

While many people have concurred with Irving’s suspension and the conditions imposed by the Nets for his return, others have opined that the measures were too punitive, heavy-handed, or even that people were wrong to be upset with Irving in the first place.

Two public figures who recently made such comments include comedians Dave Chappelle and Jon Stewart. Chappelle and Stewart made very different defenses of Kyrie, as well as arguments against his punishments. But both ignored the blatant double standards they were endorsing through their defense of Irving. Chappelle also buttressed his claim with a blatant strawman argument, effectively gaslighting those who saw Irving’s actions for what they were: antisemitism.

But before we get into the fallacies and hypocrisies espoused by Chappelle and Stewart, it is worth recapping the antisemitic, ahistorical and dangerous drivel Irving promoted to at least 22.1 million people.

The movie Irving promoted included the following (among many) dangerous lies and antisemitic tropes:

  1. The Holocaust never happened.
  2. The Jews made up the Holocaust to conceal their innate evil nature and to protect their status and power.
  3. The Jews started and ran the transatlantic slave trade.
  4. Jews worship Satan.
  5. Those who have been living as Jews for thousands of years are not “real Jews,” and began the slave trade, faked the Holocaust, and assumed control of banks, governments, media, education, etc. (a smorgasbord of classic white supremacist/Nazi antisemitic tropes) to conceal their theft of Jewish identity from blacks.
  6. Perhaps most dangerously, not only did the Jewish people do these terrible things thousands of years ago, but also all modern-day Jews are a knowing part of this incredible conspiracy and nefarious identity theft.

All of these charges about Jews in “Hebrews Into Negroes” are so absurd that you may think they need no refutation. Alas, that isn’t true. Many of Irving’s ill-educated, and not terribly intelligent 20.1 million followers, will take the advice of their glorious leader and see the so-called “documentary” he’s been promoting, and end up believing Jews made up the Holocaust, Jews worship Satan, Jews started and ran the transatlantic slave trade, and worst of all, Jews have for thousands of years been “stealing the identity” of the real, authentic black Jews.

To support these ludicrous claims that plainly incite hate (and violence) against one of the most frequently attacked minority populations in history, the film Irving shared quotes Henry Ford and his views about the Jews. While Ford was certainly a racist, he was also one of the most famous Jew-haters in American history, and the only American Adolf Hitler called “an inspiration.”

Henry Ford is quoted as an authority several times in the documentary. Ford was the most famous antisemite in American history – Hitler called him an “inspiration” — who published “The International Jew” from his headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. And it is this very “documentary” that Irving praises and promotes to more than 20 million “followers.”

What also should be clear is that the film shared by Irving is antisemitic and promotes Nazi-level falsehoods about the Jewish people. It should also be clear that when millions of people watch such a film, chances are that some of those people will want to attack Jews. As it is, attacks against Jews already account for over 60% of the faith based hate-crimes in the United States, despite the fact that Jews make up no more than two percent of the population. In cities like Los Angeles and New York (Jews account for less than 18% and 13% of those cities’ respective populations), they make up 80% of the victims of hate crimes.

In other words, antisemitism is not a trivial problem. It is growing in this country, and in Europe, and is already having profound effects on the ground, in the increase in violent attacks on Jews, who are many times more likely to be attacked than any other group.

Days after Ye’s antisemitic comments and Irving’s promotion of a film that blames all of the terrible things that have happened to black Americans on the Jews, Dave Chappelle appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” delivering a 15-minute monologue that leaned heavily into some of the antisemitic tropes about nefarious Jewish control that Ye keeps raving about, while “joking” that the only crazy thing Ye did was make those claims “out loud.”

Chapelle on SNL might light of the whole Kanye West business, claiming that West’s only mistake was to make his “true” statements about Jews “out loud.” It’s precisely, according to Chappelle, because his claims about “Jewish power” were true that he should have been more circumspect; those vindictive Jews will come at you with everything they have, and they did – they got a host of sponsors to drop their sponsorship of West, so much so that his net worth dropped from $2 billion to $400 million. That’s “Jewish power“ for you.

But then Chappelle dropped this gaslighting strawman about Irving: “Kanye got in so much trouble that Kyrie got in trouble. This is where I draw the line. Jews have been through terrible things all over the world, but you can’t blame that on black America, you just can’t.”

The first part of that statement is a flat-out lie. Irving “got in trouble” because of his own choices and actions. Period. The second part is a blatant strawman and attempts to make the concerns over Irving’s actions seem purely punitive and based on a misplaced desire by Jewish people to scapegoat black Americans for the terrible things that have happened to Jews throughout history. But that isn’t what’s happening. Jews are not doing that, and certainly no Jews with millions of followers on social media.

Kyrie made his own trouble; he was not an innocent victim of transferred fury over Kanye West.

No Jews have blamed “blacks in America” for the “terrible things they have gone through.” But they will blame antisemites, whatever their color, for their own antisemitism. And both Kanye West and Kyrie Irving deserve to be exposed as the antisemites they are. Their blackness should not serve as an invisible protective shield.

The truth, which Chappelle’s “joke” tried to obfuscate, is that while black Americans have also “been through terrible things,” these things also can’t be blamed on “the Jews.” But the film promoted by Irving does just that, as do many of Irving’s and Ye’s biggest defenders. People like Louis Farrakhan, who regularly blames Jews for the suffering of black Americans, including the entirety of the transatlantic slave trade.

The indisputable fact is that Irving promoted a movie filled with antisemitic canards. Lies and tropes that some people (like the movie’s producer and Louis Farrakhan) have masked in a web of faux scholarship to do what white supremacists have always loved to do: blame the Jews for everything they hate, or every bad thing they believe ever happened to them.

This is the antisemitic elephant in the room that Chappelle’s SNL monologue ignored. It’s this history that Chappelle, and those lauding him and defending Kyrie, ignore. And it’s this history that causes many Jews to be so upset when someone with as many followers as Kyrie promotes a movie that blames Jews for everything.

Chappelle made a joke of Irving’s promotion of a viciously antisemitic “documentary.” It was no laughing matter. He ought to have used his appearance, instead, to hold the “documentary’s” contents up for ridicule. Instead, by making light of it, he dismissed Jewish alarm that 20 million who followed Irving would now be viewing the antisemitic “documentary” following Irving and some of them were likely to be as taken in by the “documentary’s” lies as was Irving himself.

A few days after Chappelle’s appearance on SNL, Jon Stewart appeared on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and defended Chappelle with fallacious reasoning and double standards. He also voiced his disagreement with people exercising their freedom of contract and freedom of association with someone who promotes Jew-hatred.

Stewart’s defense of Chappelle suggested that antisemitism is already so “normal” in America that it’s not fair to accuse someone like Chappelle of “normalizing” it. This is a complete cop-out. Chappelle is not a “flat-earth” believing, anti-vax-promoting NBA player like Kyrie; nor is he widely viewed as mentally unhealthy, as Ye is. Chappelle is seen as a very smart and sharp comedian with a penchant for poignant commentary. So when he endorses a view, it does a lot more to mainstream or normalize it than when someone like Ye does it or when a Jewish person’s Twitter feed gets filled with antisemitic comments.

Regarding those who choose not to do business with Ye, or to suspend their relationships with Irving, Stewart said: “But the one thing I will say is I don’t believe that censorship and penalties are the way to end antisemitism or to gain understanding. I don’t believe in that. It’s the wrong way for us to approach it.” Stewart went on to assert: “The whole point of all this is to not let it metastasize, and to get it out in the air and talk about it.”

Stewart thinks that there should be no censorship of antisemitic hate speech. His nostrum is to “let it be brought out in the open air, to be held up for discussion, as a way to disinfect it, to make it lose its venom.” But curiously, he doesn’t think the same when the hate speech is directed at blacks, or indeed at any other group. When the hate is directed at them, he’s all for shutting down that speech.

Stewart supports free speech, even when it is hate speech, without punishment, but apparently only when the target of the hate speech is the Jews….

When Donald Sterling lost his right to own his NBA team because of his private hate speech (recorded without Sterling’s knowledge by his girlfriend), did Jon Stewart use his prominent position to complain or suggest the answer here was conversation, not punishment? No. To the contrary, Stewart seemed to be very much in favor of that decision by the NBA.

When the NBA recently suspended Robert Sarver from having anything to do with the Phoenix Suns (including receiving any earnings) and required him to pay a $10,000,000 fine for his hate speech (which, unlike in Irving’s case, was not promoted on social media platforms to millions of people), there is no record of Stewart complaining or suggesting the answer was conversation, not punishment….

Given all of the celebrities who have lost their jobs for expressing their racist, Islamophobic or homophobic thoughts, these comparisons could go on indefinitely. But the examples already cited are sufficient to establish the hypocrisy and double standards of Stewart and the numerous others (like Lebron James) complaining about Ye or Irving being punished or “censored.”

In the case of Kanye West, he wasn’t censored in the classic sense, but he did pay a financial penalty. The freedom to contract also means the freedom to cancel a contract if it no longer made business sense. Kyrie Irving expressed his “sorrow and regret” over the 2018 documentary – “Hebrews Into Negroes” — full of antisemitic tropes, that he had praised. His punishment was to be suspended from play or five days, and to take sensitivity training and to meet with Jewish leaders.

Jon Stewart thinks these attempts to punish antisemitic hate speech are not acceptable. He who has never objected to the severe punishments meted out to Sterling and Sarver for their anti-black hate speech – the forced sale of a sports team, a fine of $10 million, loss of a television job – now finds that antisemitic remarks should be treated, as Dave Chapelle did in his SNL appearance, as fit for a comic monologue.

The reality is that most of those who advocate no consequences for hate speech when it comes to Ye and Irving have one standard for hate speech targeting non-Jews and another for antisemitic hate speech. The very same people who thought it was great for the NBA and ABC to exercise their freedom of association to heap incredibly adverse consequences on people for racist or misogynist speech (or were perfectly quiet about it), now suddenly think it is a terrible idea for Adidas or the Nets to behave similarly with those who promote Jew-hatred to millions of people.

This double standard from people like Stewart, as well as the strawman argument used by people like Chappelle to make it seem as if people like Irving are the victims of an overreaching and overly punitive Jewish community, is completely warped. As long as the accepted response to those who promote hate speech against any historically persecuted group is severe consequences from the corporations that do business with them, fund them and support them, then that should be the outcome when someone promotes antisemitism.

Nothing more and certainly nothing less—no matter how many famous comedians try to normalize Jew-hatred or gaslight us about it.

A very simple idea, but one that the Dave Chapelles and Jon Stewarts of this world apparently find hard to grasp: hate speech is not to be tolerated, even when it is directed at Jews. This may be hard for them to accept. But try, Dave and Jon. Just try.

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