Comedian’s plea to end the torrent of hatred
The actor Sacha BaronCohen is best known for his comedy. But his work has always had a serious side. It was clear in the way he used the more grotesque utterances of his character Borat to expose bigotry and racism in others.
“By himself being antiSemitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice,” he once told Rolling Stone magazine.
It was also clear in his exceptional performance in Netflix series The Spy, in which he played Israeli undercover agent Eli Cohen, who was executed after being caught in 1960s Syria.
And it was on full view two weeks ago in a speech he gave at an Anti-Defamation League Summit in New York.
Mr Baron-Cohen wondered aloud whether characters like Borat, conceived more than a decade ago, were losing their comedic punch. Why? Because bigoted and bizarre views no longer seem complete oddities.
“Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream,” he said.
“It’s as if the Age of Reason – the era of evidential argument – is ending.”
Mr Baron-Cohen is in no doubt about where the blame lies for this disturbing trend.
“All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history,” he said.
Naming Facebook, Youtube, Google and Twitter, he accused the companies of putting profit before responsibility, of allowing themselves to become a “sewer of bigotry and vile conspiracy theories.”
And he blamed them for facilitating the spread of one of the oldest and vilest of such conspiracy theories.
“It’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history – the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous,” Mr Baron-Cohen stated.
“As one headline put it, ‘Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook’.”
The recent surge in antiSemitism is particularly shocking, given the events of the twentieth century.
World War II may seem distant, but it is not. It was within the lifespan of people still around today. Cruel proof lies in the fact that there are people who have experienced both the anti-semitism of the Nazis and of the present. Mireille Knoll, brutally murdered in Paris last year in an anti-Semitic attack, was a Holocaust survivor.
It was far from an isolated incident. Eleven people were killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue last year. The rightwing extremist responsible had posted numerous antiSemitic comments on social media.
Only two months ago another right-wing extremist targeted a synagogue in the German city of Halle, killing two people.
In the UK, the opposition Labour party has been accused by the country’s Chief Rabbi of allowing “a new poison – sanctioned from the top” to take hold. This party is currently fighting to win the keys to 10 Downing Street in a general election due to take place next week.
There have been many more attacks, too many to list here. As a result, Jewish institutions around the world, from schools to synagogues, have fortified themselves with all kinds of security.
Members of the Jewish community on the Gold Coast told this column that while there have been instances of anti-Semitism which have been reported to police, they are mercifully rare. The community here does not face anything like the level of prejudice and harassment seen in countries like France.
Nonetheless, a Gold Coast synagogue has recently installed 16 CCTV cameras in a sad sign of the times.
It’s sobering that just 74 years since the Holocaust, a similar hatred can bubble up from the sewer once more. It is as if we have learned nothing from the awful past.
The Jewish community is not the only one targeted – the despicable Christchurch terror attack is sobering proof of that. But there is something deeply shocking about the way antiSemitic tropes are once again gaining currency when the world has seen so clearly where such dark conspiracies can lead.
The phenomenon has coincided with the growth of the internet, and in particular social media. In his speech to the Anti-Defamation League, Sacha Baron-Cohen suggested that the tech giants be subject to the same laws as publishers of newspapers, like the one you’re reading now.
That they be fined or even jailed if they did not do more, far more, to stop the spread of hate on their platforms.
It’s a sensible, reasonable suggestion. In April, federal parliament passed a law against the sharing of violent material on social media in the wake of the live streaming of the Christchurch massacre.
If they can do that, they can pass laws similar to those suggested by Mr BaronCohen, a comedian with a serious and important message.
IT’S SOBERING THAT JUST 74 YEARS SINCE THE HOLOCAUST, A SIMILAR HATRED CAN BUBBLE UP FROM THE SEWER ONCE MORE.