MPs and Travellers' groups call on Netflix to drop his stand-up special

Jimmy Carr is under fire for a joke about the Holocaust on his latest stand-up special.

MP Nadia Whittome has accused Netflix of ‘legitimising and perpetuating racism’ for broadcasting the gag, which makes light of the Nazi genocide of Gypsies.

And The Traveller Movement has launched a petition against the line, saying: ‘We appreciate that comedy is subjective but in our view when punchlines are indistinguishable from the genuinely-held views of fascists and Neo-Nazis, a line has very clearly been crossed.’

Carr plays up the offensive nature of his jokes in the special His Dark Material, and introduces the contentious line by saying:‘This should be a career-ender. Ok strap in everyone – you ready?’

To the gasps of the audience he then says: ‘When people talk about the Holocaust they talk about the tragedy and horror of six 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.’

Carr defended the gag on stage, saying it was ‘fucking funny’, ‘edgy as all hell’ and had an ‘educational quality’.

‘Everyone in the room knows six million Jewish people lost their lives to the Nazis during World War Two,’ he says. ‘But a lot of people don’t know, because it’s not really taught in our schools, that the Nazis also killed, in their thousands, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and Jehovah’s Witnesses.’

‘People say "never forget", well this is how I remember. I keep bringing it up,’ he said.

The Traveller Movement, a national charity that challenges discrimination wrote on Twitter: ‘This is truly disturbing and goes way beyond humor. We need all your support in calling this out.’

And on their petition, they said: ‘Material like this normalises further discrimination, and even violence, against already marginalised communities.

‘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.’

Historians estimate that between 220,000 and 500,000 Romani and Sinti were killed by the Nazi regime, between a quarter and a half of the population in Europe at the time.

In her letter, Labour's Ms Whittome urged Netflix chief executives Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings to ‘do the right thing and immediately remove this programme from Netflix’.

She said she had also asked the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to bring streaming giants under the regulation of Ofcom, as conventional broadcasters are.

And the SNP's Martin Docherty-Hughes tweeted: 'I am utterly speechless at this disregard for the horror of the #holocaust & it’s impact on the #gypsy community of #Europe. A community butchered by the Nazi regime.’

This is not the first time Carr has made jokes that have targettted Travellers.  In 2006, the BBC had to issue an apology over a joke Carr made about Gypsy women, on Radio 4’s Loose Ends.

At the time, he said: ‘The male gypsy moth can smell the female gypsy moth up to seven miles away – and that fact also works if you remove the word "moth".’

Published: 4 Feb 2022