Jimmy Carr, a British TV presenter and stand-up comedian, was denounced this weekend for his "joke" about the Roma genocide during WWII.
His show, called His Dark Material, was released by Netflix on Christmas Day but received attention on Friday after a video clip was posted and shared online. Anti-hate groups in the UK, including the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Auschwitz Memorial and Hope Not Hate denounced his statement as bad taste or disgusting hate speech.
Towards the end of the show, Carr utters the word “Holocaust” and is met with laughter by the audience as if it expects him to tell a joke. He continues: “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 Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.”
“No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.” These words roused more laughter and even clapping from the audience.
“We are absolutely appalled at Jimmy Carr’s comment about persecution suffered by Roma and Sinti people under Nazi oppression, and horrified that gales of laughter followed his remarks,” 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.”
After the incident, Jimmy Carr tried to justify his mockery as a joke intended to get people to remember the Holocaust. At the time of going to press, he has not yet issued any apology.
“Jimmy Carr’s ‘joke’ is breathtakingly callous and racist,” commented Zeljko Jovanovic, Director of the Open Society Foundations' Roma Initiatives Office. “It speaks volumes about the way in which anti-Roma racism is tolerated that he felt able to mock the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people—including children—in a way that he would never have dared with other minorities.”
“Carr’s ‘humour’ is a serious example of hate-speech,” he added. “It contributes to the dehumanisation of a group that are already the most marginalised in Europe. We ask that Netflix remove this content from their platform and apologise to the millions of European citizens from a Roma background who have seen the attempt to wipe out their people celebrated.”
Asked by the Brussels Times to comment on the incident, a spokesperson for the European Commission replied that, “It is fully committed to countering the spread of hate speech online” and recalled “the unique contribution to European diversity and heritage the Roma community make.”
The spokesperson referred to the EU Roma Strategic Framework to achieve equality for Roma in the EU and beyond. The Framework foresees a comprehensive list of measures to combat discrimination and anti-gypsyism, advance social inclusion and promote the participation of Roma in society, as well as equal access to quality mainstream education, employment, health and housing.
At EU level, there is already a framework in place for a response to racist and xenophobic hate speech and hate crime through the Council Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law. The Decision requires member states to criminalise hate speech and “public condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”.
Though over 500,000 of Europe’s Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during WWII, it remains a little-known fact and has been described as “the forgotten Holocaust”.
The Brussels Times
