Roseanne Barr has faced backlash for remarks she made regarding the Holocaust in a recent podcast.
When discussing free speech, the 70-year-old, who is ‘100% Jewish,’ claimed comedians are the “final free speech art form.”
The controversial comic then used the 2020 US presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump with 81 million votes, to accuse online platforms of’mandating’ the truth.
‘Nobody wants to hear the whole truth,’ said the former Roseanne sitcom star, who is a fervent Trump supporter, on a recent edition of Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast. They’d rather believe nonsense because it’s easy.
Then, seemingly with an air of sarcasm in an effort to make a point about the ‘truth,’ the comedian continued: ‘I’m glad that they’ve set up all these guidelines so we are only allowed to speak the truth, and the truth is that Biden got 81million votes by winning 36 counties.’
Continuing in a similar vein, Roseanne called Biden’s votes ‘incredible’ and praised [them] for being ‘very careful to make sure no one could detract from that proven truth.’
Here is the full clip of Roseanne Barr obviously using sarcasm and satire. She is a mensch and one of the funniest people i've ever met. pic.twitter.com/p0K6pWEqr8
— Theo Von (@TheoVon) June 27, 2023
After concluding in the same tone that the election was ‘not rigged’ she explained: ‘See, that’s the truth. And don’t you dare say anything against it or you’ll be off YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other ones. Because there’s such a thing as the truth and facts and we have to stick to it.’
‘It’s scary,’ Theo replied before Roseanne furthered her point using the Holocaust as an example.
‘And nobody died in the Holocaust either,’ she continued, to the outrage of many.
‘That’s the truth. It should happen, six million Jews should die right now because they cause all the problems in the world, but it never happened.’
‘But it never happened,’ she reiterated.
The video clip exploded on Twitter with an outcry from shocked members of the public and organisations.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, issued a statement via Twitter, which wrote: ‘Sarcasm or not, Roseanne Barr’s comments about Jews and the Holocaust are reprehensible and irresponsible. This isn’t funny.
‘And shame on Theo Von for letting it go unchallenged and instead diving into conspiracy theories about Jews and Hollywood.’
The Holocaust Museum account tweeted: ‘The Holocaust — the murder of six million Jews — is one of the most well documented crimes in history, made possible by antisemitic conspiracy theories. Invoking those dangerous theories and calling for the mass murder of Jews is an outrage.’
Another member of the public wrote: ‘Roseanne Barr’s comments about Jews and the Holocaust are disgusting and indefensible. I don’t care if she was “joking”, you don’t joke about the Holocaust. Ever. She is abhorrent.’
Roseanne’s previous statements on the Holocaust imply she was not a Holocaust denier, but was using it as an example – with a heavy lick of her deadpan-delivery sarcasm – to claim the 2020 US presidential election was rigged and social media was’mandating’ the ‘truth’.
Many people were offended when Roseanne used the Holocaust to spread electoral disinformation.
One person said: ‘I have seen the full video with Roseanne Barr, and indeed she isn’t Holocaust denying.
‘However, I disagree it’s a smear job. Roseanne knew exactly what she was doing here for clicks. I find it extremely distasteful. She’s using the Holocaust to spread election disinformation.’
Jake Pentland, Roseanne’s son, hit back and told TMZ: ‘We are embarrassed that people are stupid enough not to recognize Roseanne is being sarcastic. We think it’s funny that people are so stupid.
‘Let’s stop doing this clickbait s***, we need to focus on big problems in America. Focusing on out-of-context clips is what morons do.’
Meanwhile, Theo posted a longer clip with the context of the chat surrounding the comments and wrote: ‘Here is the full clip of Roseanne Barr obviously using sarcasm and satire. She is a mensch and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.’
Roseanne was fired from US network ABC after tweeting a horrible racist Tweet against former Barack Obama official Valerie Jarrett, in which she likened her to an animal, in which she called her to an ape.
