Jimmy Carr has said he will “go down swinging.”
Downing Street has called Jimmy Carr’s Holocaust joke “deeply disturbing” and has said it is “unacceptable to make light on genocide.”
Over 15,000 people have signed a petition urging Netflix to remove Jimmy Carr’s special from their platform after a comment he made about the Holocaust sparked widespread outrage.
Carr’s In His Dark Materials, which premiered late last year, has received immense criticism for essentially saying that the Gypsy people being killed during the Holocaust was a good thing.
Comedians stand on a precipice of controversy at every standup and @NadineDorries called @jimmycarr ‘s act “abhorrent” and yet she stands on the same precipice in her support of a liar who really should just jump
— Robert Lindsay (@RobertLindsay) February 8, 2022
An official spokesman for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “Those comments are deeply disturbing and it’s unacceptable to make light of genocide.
“The government is toughening measures for social media and streaming platforms who don’t tackle harmful content.”
A petition on ActionStorm has also since gone viral. Entitled “Jimmy Carr: The Genocide of Roma is Not a Laughing Matter”, the petition details why the 49-year-old’s remark is so offensive.
It states: “Hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, Roma, and Traveller people were killed in the Holocaust. Roma people call it ‘Porajmos’, meaning ‘the devouring’.
Swap the words 'Gypsies' and 'Jews' around in Jimmy Carr's Holocaust joke and see how funny it is then. See if the newspapers and liberal celebs are still debating its intellectual legitimacy and groundbreaking edginess. 🤷♂️
— Ragged Trousered Philanderer (@RaggedTP) February 7, 2022
“Historians estimate that as much as 25-50 percent of the entire Romani and Sinti population of Europe were victims of genocide at the hands of the Nazis, a crime of almost unimaginable proportions.
“To this day, affected communities in the UK and across Europe still struggle to navigate this immense collective trauma and come to terms with the scale of grief and loss.”
The petition also acknowledges that comedy is inherently subjective. However, the petition adds that “when punchlines are indistinguishable from the genuinely-held views of fascists and Neo-Nazis, a line has very clearly been crossed”.
There's nothing funny about that Jimmy Carr "joke". And it's not "cancel culture" to find jokes about the attempted systematic murder of a race of people offensive. It's indefensible.
— Otto English (@Otto_English) February 4, 2022
It reads: “We acknowledge that Jimmy Carr highlighted the widespread ignorance that exists with regard to non-Jewish victims of the holocaust, but it was nevertheless incredibly crass for him to claim his ‘joke’ therefore had an ‘educational quality’.
“If this was the case he would have used his considerable platform to raise awareness of Roma Holocaust Memorial Day to his 6.7m followers. To our knowledge, that has never happened. That speaks volumes.”
Jimmy Carr's "joke" – that a "positive" of the Holocaust was the slaughter of 500,000 Gypsy, Roma and Siniti people – is disgusting beyond words. Mocking racist genocide has no place in comedy or a decent society.
I call on @netflix to remove this grotesque material.
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) February 4, 2022
The statement concludes: “There is no legitimate basis for this ‘joke’, and no positive to its inclusion which outweighs the profoundly negative impact it produces.”
Health Secretary Sajid Javid was one of many to slam the comedian, stating that: “I think we all have a right to react to that.”
Speaking to Times Radio on Monday, he added: “And one of the best ways anyone can react to that is show these platforms, what they think about Jimmy Carr by not watching or listening to him, and that will send him a very strong message.”
Similarly, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister said: “Those comments are deeply disturbing and it’s unacceptable to make light of genocide.”
