Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Nazi Jokes & Stand-Up Taboos with Tom Ballard

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Nazi Jokes & Stand-Up Taboos with Tom Ballard · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:03
  Gay humans!
• 0:04
  The world's biggest comedy festival is currently underway, so I popped down to Melbourne
• 0:09
  for a 10-hour live-streamed sub-stack marathon with five of the greatest comedians in today's
• 0:18
  first thrilling installment of the Uncomfortable Conversations comedy extravaganza, Tom Ballard.
• 0:23
  He is like a young Joel Oliver.
• 0:26
  He hosted Australia's national nightly satirical news show,
• 0:30
  To Nightly with Tom Ballard.
• 0:32
  He and I discussed getting cancelled for doing a Nazi salute on stage,
• 0:37
  punching down anti-Semitism, Gaza, Zionism,
• 0:41
  cancelled culture and offensive comedy.
• 0:43
  Here he is, the one, the only, Tom Ballard.
• 0:49
  Timothy Ballard, welcome back to the show.
• 0:53
  Lovely to have you again.
• 0:54
  We're in Melbourne, the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
• 0:56
  You've come straight from a rehearsal.
• 0:58
  Rehearsal.
• 0:58
  You're going straight to a show.
• 1:01
  I just love laughter, Josh.
• 1:02
  You do love laughter.
• 1:03
  Yes.
• 1:03
  Don't we all in these trying times?
• 1:06
  I'd say laughter is more important now than ever.
• 1:09
  I would say laughter is even the best medicine.
• 1:11
  Oh, wow.
• 1:11
  The best medicine of all.
• 1:15
  Apart from medicine, actual medicine, which is also better than laughter,
• 1:20
  usually depending on the symptoms i find you know like if you had for example some kind of
• 1:26
  weeping infected sore uh then antibiotics would be a superior medicine than laughter
• 1:33
  chemo is pretty good too yeah well not for a weeping sore sure but if you had cancer it would
• 1:39
  be uh so are you rehearsing already don't fuck with me on this show tom i'm dropping truth bombs
• 1:47
  all over the joint.
• 1:48
  This is Uncomfortable Conversations.
• 1:50
  Were you rehearsing the show that you're doing tonight?
• 1:53
  Because you're doing 17 shows all at once, and I get confused.
• 1:57
  I'm doing two shows to meet the incredible public demand
• 2:00
  for ballet comedy.
• 2:01
  Yeah.
• 2:02
  I'm doing a stand-up show called Be Funny Challenge Impossible,
• 2:05
  and then we're also-
• 2:06
  Be Funny.
• 2:06
  Be Funny Challenge.
• 2:07
  Colon.
• 2:08
  Be Funny Challenge, colon.
• 2:10
  Brackets.
• 2:10
  Be Funny, parentheses.
• 2:13
  Jesus Christ.
• 2:14
  Impossible.
• 2:14
  Be Funny Challenge.
• 2:15
  Be Funny.
• 2:16
  Brackets.
• 2:16
  Impossible.
• 2:17
  Close brackets.
• 2:18
  Now, this is a reference to a meme that was popular approximately five years ago.
• 2:21
  Okay.
• 2:22
  I was asleep during this one.
• 2:23
  Okay.
• 2:24
  I kind of missed it too.
• 2:25
  It was online.
• 2:25
  It was like, hey, Donald Trump, stop being racist challenge.
• 2:28
  Impossible.
• 2:29
  Okay.
• 2:29
  Parents, stop being annoying challenge.
• 2:31
  Impossible.
• 2:32
  Okay.
• 2:32
  Sorry, so it'll be funny for a comedian.
• 2:34
  You've got a very David Brent demeanor when you say impossible.
• 2:37
  Impossible in here.
• 2:38
  Impossible in here.
• 2:41
  Okay.
• 2:41
  So, be funny challenge.
• 2:43
  Impossible.
• 2:43
  Impossible.
• 2:44
  There are no colons at all in it?
• 2:46
  None whatsoever.
• 2:47
  They don't belong?
• 2:49
  Can't we sneak one in?
• 2:50
  Nope.
• 2:50
  Has it already been printed?
• 2:52
  We've done posters and everything.
• 2:53
  You've done posters?
• 2:53
  Yeah.
• 2:54
  Could I go around with a Sharpie?
• 2:55
  If you want.
• 2:56
  On all the posters?
• 2:57
  I feel like you should spend that time with your children, but sure, if you want to do it.
• 3:00
  You haven't met my children.
• 3:02
  Hey!
• 3:03
  Oh!
• 3:05
  My wife said she wanted to go somewhere she'd never been for Christmas.
• 3:09
  I said, how about the kitchen?
• 3:12
  Am I right?
• 3:14
  Is that Rodney?
• 3:15
  That's a Rodney.
• 3:16
  I think it's a Rodney.
• 3:17
  Um, uh, Rodney Dangerfield, not Rodney Rude.
• 3:21
  No.
• 3:21
  Who is a character, sort of, in a play that you're also doing, which is the second of
• 3:28
  17 shows.
• 3:29
  I'm claiming that you have too many shows to absolve myself of the guilt for not having
• 3:32
  watched your standup show.
• 3:35
  Right.
• 3:35
  Uh, which apparently you sent me and I didn't know.
• 3:37
  That's okay.
• 3:38
  About.
• 3:38
  But I did read almost all of the play.
• 3:41
  Almost all of it.
• 3:42
  Which is great.
• 3:42
  Well, I've, the plane eventually landed.
• 3:47
  the plane to melbourne eventually landed i had to stow my tray table sure and i had to put my
• 3:52
  put on my laptop away um but i loved where you're going with it thanks man and um so we just do you
• 3:59
  want to start by because now would you say that maybe during the peak woke because a lot of things
• 4:05
  you're wrestling with here are wokeness and cancel culture and taboos and comedy and yeah
• 4:09
  all that, that you were on board the woke train?
• 4:15
  Interesting to say, yes, to the extent that that, in a way, I'd suppose, yes, of course,
• 4:21
  I would like to, in a self-serving way of my own narrative, say, of course, I did it reasonably,
• 4:26
  and I had limits, and I didn't sign up to every single woke cause out there.
• 4:30
  Certainly,
• 4:31
  I would have used to have identified as sort of a bleeding heart, lefty, probably liberal,
• 4:37
  small or liberal, and would have subscribed to the ideas of what we describe as identity
• 4:41
  politics in many ways.
• 4:42
  Yes, that's certainly true.
• 4:46
  But I think my job as a comedian has been the
• 4:48
  thing that has often brought me in conflict with some elements of the extreme wokeness that
• 4:52
  occasionally makes me roll my eyes, go, come on, guys.
• 4:55
  We know what jokes are.
• 4:55
  We know what
• 4:57
  darkness is.
• 4:58
  We have ideas of what irony is.
• 5:00
  Surely we can have that understanding as we're
• 5:03
  processing comedy or making jokes with one another.
• 5:06
  And the more strict adherence of woke probably wouldn't allow for that.
• 5:09
  Right.
• 5:10
  For example, your Nazi, your affiliation with the German National Socialist Party is well documented.
• 5:16
  Endorsement.
• 5:17
  Which is not generally associated with, although some would say horseshoe theory of politics.
• 5:24
  Right.
• 5:25
  Gaza, you know, possibly there are some more extreme elements who were marching across
• 5:31
  Sydney Harbour Bridge, chanting Globalise the Intifada,
• 5:34
  who weren't that far away from your white nationalists
• 5:38
  in terms of their attitude towards Jews,
• 5:40
  but traditionally not understood as being a woke phenomenon.
• 5:44
  No.
• 5:46
  Yet that informs your new stand-up special.
• 5:48
  What happened?
• 5:49
  Yes.
• 5:50
  I used to have a routine that formed part of my 2024 show,
• 5:53
  Good Point, Well Made, that was about Victoria banning the Nazi salute.
• 5:57
  and it was simply a silly routine really about the logistics of implementing a law like that.
• 6:04
  Under a law like that in the state in which we currently are in public,
• 6:07
  provided you're doing it sincerely, the difference between the angle of your wrist
• 6:11
  is the difference between doing something like innocuous like giving a high five.
• 6:14
  You're doing it right now.
• 6:15
  And committing a crime.
• 6:16
  Is this offensive to you?
• 6:17
  No, but I'm worried that the Gestapo are going to come storming in and he was literally...
• 6:24
  Oh, we're in Karawati.
• 6:24
  If you're listening, yeah, he was literally doing like the Heil Hitler, like the hand,
• 6:29
  the vertical hand, Heil Hitler.
• 6:32
  And then he dropped his hand in a kind of a feet, like, yes, queen.
• 6:37
  Yes.
• 6:37
  Thing down to.
• 6:38
  Well, this is the routine.
• 6:38
  It was high five, crime, gay.
• 6:41
  Crime.
• 6:42
  Right.
• 6:43
  High five.
• 6:43
  Right.
• 6:43
  High five is like the Heil Hitler.
• 6:46
  Yep.
• 6:46
  No, no.
• 6:47
  High five is like generally a high five.
• 6:48
  Yeah.
• 6:48
  Okay.
• 6:48
  But it's also.
• 6:49
  Tip that straight ahead.
• 6:50
  Oh, I see.
• 6:51
  Then you got to crime.
• 6:51
  I'm not going to do it.
• 6:52
  No, you're doing it.
• 6:52
  I'm not doing it.
• 6:53
  Oh my God.
• 6:53
  I'm not going to do it in a state where it's illegal to do.
• 6:56
  This is what got you into trouble in the first place, Mr. Ballard.
• 7:00
  And then if you go all the way down.
• 7:01
  So you go, yeah, you go 45 degrees.
• 7:03
  And so if you want to go from high five to gay, you have to go through a crime.
• 7:05
  You have to go through a crime.
• 7:07
  Yes.
• 7:07
  This is funny retention.
• 7:08
  It's good.
• 7:08
  I like it.
• 7:10
  But nonetheless, they got you and you've spent the past three years in jail.
• 7:14
  Yes, I've been locked up and silenced.
• 7:16
  Now I'm anti-woke.
• 7:18
  But I did that show in 2024, toured all over the place, never an issue.
• 7:22
  January 2025, Elon Musk makes his little gesture at Donald Trump's second inauguration.
• 7:27
  That's a big news story.
• 7:29
  I'm hosting a comedy night that week.
• 7:32
  I get back on stage after a break and say, gosh, you guys are such a great crowd.
• 7:35
  My heart goes out to you.
• 7:36
  My heart goes out to you.
• 7:37
  A reference to Elon.
• 7:38
  Exactly what Elon said.
• 7:39
  And you did the gesture?
• 7:41
  I did.
• 7:41
  Fist against the chest, arm straight out, 45 degrees.
• 7:46
  Fist against the chest, arm straight out, 45 degrees.
• 7:49
  Fist against the chest, arm straight out, 45 degrees.
• 7:51
  There's footage out there if you want to check it out.
• 7:53
  Then went into my routine about Victoria banning the Nazi salute.
• 7:56
  Right.
• 7:57
  I don't want to brag, but it did pretty well in the room.
• 7:59
  Okay.
• 7:59
  People were laughing.
• 8:00
  People recognized the topical reference.
• 8:02
  We were all having a good time.
• 8:03
  Yeah.
• 8:04
  A gentleman in the audience did not like that at all, filmed it, made a complaint to the room runner,
• 8:09
  took the story to the media, and eventually wrote a very critical piece in the Jewish Independent
• 8:13
  saying, in this Australia, Nazi salutes are not funny.
• 8:16
  And so it was a very brief scandal that kind of came and went.
• 8:19
  Lots of people didn't even know about it, but it got run in the Herald Sun and Daily Mail.
• 8:23
  A little bit of silliness occurred.
• 8:25
  It all kind of died down within a week.
• 8:28
  But that sort of incident is the crux of this show.
• 8:31
  I'm trying to explain what happened there, my thinking behind it, and then what that tells us about our current political moment, obviously, with the broader social context of the conflict in Israel and Gaza and the anti-Semitism, the horrific consequences of violent anti-Semitism that we're seeing.
• 8:47
  It's a very funny show.
• 8:49
  I mean, I love it, and good on you for broaching it.
• 8:54
  If it's any consolation, the Jewish Independent ripped me a new arsehole as well for having written a piece in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald about my conflictedness about Israel.
• 9:10
  So you don't have to be even funny to be a target of their ire.
• 9:17
  I can't believe, I mean, I know John Safran a little bit.
• 9:19
  He's told me, you know, there are members of the Jewish community that have regularly said that his work is completely unacceptable and anti-Semitic and some Jewish comedians similarly.
• 9:28
  I guess it just proves that every community, including the funniest community in the world, has sourpusses.
• 9:35
  Like, I mean, I get it.
• 9:36
  Like, it sort of makes, like, who can argue with the claim that Nazi salutes are never funny?
• 9:43
  Like, I understand where you're coming from.
• 9:46
  Holocaust bad.
• 9:47
  Yes.
• 9:48
  You know, Holocaust not funny.
• 9:50
  Yes.
• 9:50
  But maybe there's a way to do it that is funny.
• 9:55
  I like to think so.
• 9:56
  In and of itself, it's such a silly, reductive thing to say that this thing is not funny.
• 10:01
  Yes.
• 10:02
  Of course, in itself, it isn't funny.
• 10:04
  No.
• 10:04
  That's why it's a challenge to try to do comedy about it, precisely because it's not funny.
• 10:09
  Yes.
• 10:09
  If it was hilariously, easily funny, then it wouldn't be fun to try to have fun with it.
• 10:16
  Well, there's a phrase in comedy, putting a hat on a hat.
• 10:18
  If something is already funny, you can't make a joke.
• 10:21
  Often an issue with Donald Trump.
• 10:24
  Yeah, he's too funny.
• 10:25
  Too funny.
• 10:25
  And like, what am I going to say?
• 10:26
  Look at how funny he was.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  So yes, there's a point in the show where I'm sort of saying, I'm pretty sure we had a pretty well established precedent that a comedian referencing a subject, a very dark, fucked up subject for the sake of their comedy, does not mean that the person thinks the reality of that subject is funny, shouldn't be taken seriously, or endorses the views of the thing they're representing.
• 10:46
  Whereas a very reactionary response is, there's nothing funny about that subject.
• 10:49
  And if you mention Nazis and then a room full of people laugh, no matter what you said about them or the context or the satirical target you're going for, you are saying that that thing is funny and we can laugh about it.
• 11:00
  And I can appreciate why people in the Jewish community would not want that to be the case when it comes to the most horrific crime in human history.
• 11:07
  But it just felt like a very simplistic, un-nuanced response to my little comedy.
• 11:14
  Yeah.
• 11:14
  I mean, so the target of the Elon Musk jibe is Elon Musk.
• 11:21
  Yeah.
• 11:23
  Who may just have been doing it because he's an Aspie weirdo, not a Nazi.
• 11:29
  And the target of the Nazi salute law is hate speech laws and the Victorian government.
• 11:36
  Right.
• 11:37
  Yeah, the, I mean, the target, I mean, just the amusing idea to me, the idea that it would be so funny to find yourself in a situation where you're like, hey, Josh, high five.
• 11:47
  Oh, no, I tipped forward.
• 11:48
  Oh, fuck, I'm doing a hate crime.
• 11:50
  And the cops would burst in and arrest you.
• 11:52
  Yes.
• 11:54
  Another important point, I think, is that, you know, once this story blew up in the media, we had the Victorian Multicultural Affairs Minister commenting it, saying that I may have broken the law.
• 12:02
  The police investigated this incident.
• 12:04
  They asked for security footage of the comedy gig.
• 12:07
  It's incredible.
• 12:08
  Like, this is how crazy it got.
• 12:10
  And, you know, to put anyone's mind at rest that I'm not a fugitive on the run, it says very clearly on the Victorian State Government's website that you're not causing an offence if you perform this gesture for an artistic purpose.
• 12:21
  for example when someone performs a salute in a theatre performance.
• 12:24
  So if someone's doing a production of Cabaret in Victoria,
• 12:27
  no one's committing a crime.
• 12:28
  Right, okay.
• 12:29
  And silly little Tom Ballard doing a silly little joke,
• 12:31
  which you can not find funny, you can find offensive,
• 12:33
  you can think whatever you like about it.
• 12:35
  Tom Ballard should not go to prison for that.
• 12:36
  What if during the performance of Cabaret someone rapes a child?
• 12:41
  Then is that, are they guilty of a crime?
• 12:43
  Sure.
• 12:44
  Yeah, that is actually a separate incident.
• 12:46
  Okay, that's dealt with under a different statute, is it?
• 12:49
  I just want to make sure that I'm clear because I was hoping I had an out when you said that cabaret, if you're performing cabaret, then you cannot be arrested for a crime.
• 13:00
  But I mean the musical cabaret.
• 13:01
  Yeah.
• 13:02
  That involved Nazis.
• 13:03
  Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 13:03
  Involved people doing the salute.
• 13:04
  I'm just clarifying that merely putting on a performance of the classic beloved musical cabaret is not sufficient to protect you from all criminal prosecution.
• 13:18
  It's a really good point and a really good point to clarify and I appreciate it.
• 13:22
  Otherwise, I would put on a production of Cabaret and do unspeakable things.
• 13:27
  I mean-
• 13:28
  Victoria isn't that gay.
• 13:29
  I would start with tax evasion.
• 13:33
  I would just be doing my taxes during Cabaret.
• 13:38
  I'd play Herr Schultz and I'd just be in the background with a ledger and a green accountant's cap.
• 13:45
  Great.
• 13:46
  And I'd do all of my taxes and I'd file them and they'd come back and they'd be like, this is flagrant tax evasion.
• 13:52
  I'd be like, I think you'll find that Mr. Ballard assured me that anything you do during a production of Cabaret can't be touched.
• 14:02
  I think you, a Jewish man on stage doing stuff funny with money, it's a little bit anti-Semitic actually.
• 14:05
  It is anti-Semitic, isn't it?
• 14:07
  Yeah.
• 14:08
  But the question then would be that I suppose you probably got
• 14:12
  from the Jewish people who were offended would be,
• 14:15
  would you do the same thing, would you have done the same thing
• 14:18
  about trans people or Indigenous Australians or someone else
• 14:23
  where the perception was that you were punching down?
• 14:27
  Or is the only group that you're allowed to, you know,
• 14:33
  be dismissive of their sense of offendedness towards the Jews.
• 14:38
  Yes, and I've heard this a few conversations with people,
• 14:40
  and I certainly don't think there's nothing to that, certainly.
• 14:44
  I think that's true, and I think the past couple of years
• 14:46
  I've been thinking a lot about that and why I think about that
• 14:50
  and whether there is a special exception amongst the comedy community
• 14:54
  or even in my own brain about when it comes to offence to Jewish people.
• 14:58
  I mean, again, I did not perceive this routine to be like,
• 15:01
  all this will piss off the Jews or if this offends Jewish people, I don't care.
• 15:06
  That's something that was not in my thought process going through it.
• 15:10
  And also, just by talking to lots of friends, some were Jewish, some were not,
• 15:15
  there are also Jewish people who are like, that wasn't offensive.
• 15:17
  I didn't find that offensive as a Jewish person at all.
• 15:20
  Yes.
• 15:21
  No, but there'd be a lot.
• 15:22
  A, they would say the fact you didn't intend it to be offensive, it doesn't matter,
• 15:27
  but it's just more evidence of the soup that we're all swimming in,
• 15:30
  in which Jews don't count as a legitimate minority,
• 15:32
  worthy of consideration.
• 15:33
  It doesn't even come up in your head
• 15:35
  because it doesn't fit the woke paradigm
• 15:39
  of power structures and power dynamics
• 15:41
  because Jews are kind of suspect and powerful
• 15:43
  and puppet masters anyway,
• 15:45
  so they don't really qualify as punching down on.
• 15:48
  So the algorithm doesn't just,
• 15:50
  they don't trigger the same reactive social justice response
• 15:53
  that we have towards all other minorities.
• 15:57
  And then secondarily,
• 15:58
  there would be lots of playful trans people who would probably have no problem with all
• 16:02
  kinds of gags that you could do about trans uh the trans community uh but you might still take
• 16:10
  pause in doing them yeah i mean in the show i sort of explore this idea that i'm like in my head well
• 16:16
  in my head that the routine was totally fine because i think it is perfectly reasonable to
• 16:22
  assume that the vast majority of people in any comedy room certainly in my audience or me
• 16:28
  think that nazis are bad right like that this is our starting point i know i know society's
• 16:34
  not in this room not in this room but in that room you and me are cool because you're a cool
• 16:40
  guy yeah and you get it yeah i get it and all the people stream it live yeah it's great
• 16:46
  so that's my starting point um and in fact in in the show i say like in my head i'm thinking
• 16:53
  this is fine i'm not anti-semitic my audience is anti-semitic surely everyone knows that
• 16:56
  anti-semitism is disgusting and acceptable what they what nazis and hitler did is completely
• 17:00
  is disgusting in fact as the example of the most evil thing that's ever happened
• 17:04
  surely that goes without saying right then there is a caveat within the show in which i'm saying
• 17:09
  well actually through the conversations i'm having with jewish friends and watching the news and
• 17:13
  thinking about things, it certainly doesn't feel that way to some Jewish people, right?
• 17:18
  Or lots of Jewish people because of the horrors that we've seen over the past couple of years
• 17:22
  and this febrile environment.
• 17:24
  So while on the show, I don't apologize for the routine.
• 17:26
  Like, I feel like my comedic intent was pretty clear.
• 17:28
  I think it was pretty clear where I was coming from.
• 17:31
  I do understand why, given the social context of January 2025, you know, that was not long
• 17:36
  after the Kosher Delhi had been firebombed, the synagogue had been bombed here in Melbourne,
• 17:41
  and the caravan had just been discovered a week before I did my little routine.
• 17:46
  This was a caravan that had some bombs in it that was going to blow up some Jewish thingy?
• 17:51
  Yes.
• 17:52
  A list of synagogues were presumed to be targets.
• 17:54
  It was later exposed as a hoax as part of organized crime,
• 17:57
  which is the most Sydney bullshit I've ever heard in my life.
• 17:59
  It's incredible, isn't it?
• 18:00
  It's wild.
• 18:01
  There was organized crime, but then there was also Iranian...
• 18:04
  Oh, no, that was not in Australia.
• 18:06
  You know the Iranians?
• 18:07
  I think they were connected with the firebombing.
• 18:09
  I don't think they were connected with the caravan.
• 18:10
  No, but I mean, it's incredible that like-
• 18:13
  It's all nuts.
• 18:13
  What we all thought was like homegrown anti-Semitism was actually just like people in Tehran and like mobsters in Sydney separately conniving.
• 18:26
  Pretty good.
• 18:26
  And sometimes working together.
• 18:28
  And I think that's great to see people working together.
• 18:30
  Coming together across religious and transnational boundaries.
• 18:34
  Yes.
• 18:35
  So given that social context, I understand why this guy, and this guy, this person in particular who complained and wrote this article, had spent the previous day in the Adda synagogue filming the ruins of that burnt down synagogue for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
• 18:49
  Right.
• 18:50
  My joke being, I can see why you need to laugh.
• 18:52
  Yeah.
• 18:53
  Tough crap.
• 18:56
  So I guess I'm trying to hold all that within the show.
• 18:59
  um but i guess i would i would push back against the idea that this was uh a joke that was
• 19:06
  inherently insensitive to jewish people or at least interpreting in that way as if it was an
• 19:10
  attack on or as if i was dismissive of the feelings of jewish people because i'm starting the point
• 19:14
  of like everyone agrees that nazis were uh evil and bad we could i feel like that's a pretty good
• 19:20
  presumption starting point um to go in there of course obviously the nazis uh horrifically
• 19:26
  persecuted the jewish people they also persecuted lots of other people as well um and i just feel
• 19:32
  like yeah that's a that's a pretty decent presupposition to go into that routine i suppose
• 19:36
  yeah and i also point out i mean look at the huge tradition of comedy since the end of the
• 19:41
  second world war in which nazis and hitler have been uh mentioned many many times yeah i i i
• 19:47
  appreciate it's different when a jewish person does that yeah yeah it's often funnier yeah
• 19:52
  But it's not exclusively Jewish comedians who have done that.
• 19:55
  I mean, what year was The Producers made?
• 19:59
  Because I remember...
• 20:00
  It's mid-'50s, I believe.
• 20:01
  I remember...
• 20:02
  It might have been 60s.
• 20:05
  I mean, I'm looking it up right now.
• 20:06
  Maybe 60s, maybe right.
• 20:08
  I just watched that Mel Brooks documentary, which is fantastic.
• 20:10
  Oh, great.
• 20:11
  So good.
• 20:13
  It can't be later than early 60s, I reckon.
• 20:16
  It was...
• 20:16
  No, it was 67.
• 20:17
  Oh, okay.
• 20:18
  So, so, uh, but 22 years after the Holocaust.
• 20:28
  So 2004 was the Holocaust.
• 20:35
  Yep.
• 20:36
  Right.
• 20:36
  From when, where we are now.
• 20:37
  Sure.
• 20:38
  Holocaust ended 2004 and they're already doing, having goose stepping Nazis singing springtime
• 20:46
  for Hitler.
• 20:47
  Yes.
• 20:47
  like that is balls that's pretty wild written by a guy who literally fought in that war against
• 20:52
  the nazis incredible yeah incredible so cool i mean that those kinds of time thought experiments
• 20:58
  always screw with my head as well like how close it is like you remember national lampoon's vacation
• 21:05
  chevy chase vaguely yes you know well vaguely okay uh let's pick another example um
• 21:10
  uh back to the future right i think this is true of back to the future back to the future
• 21:18
  was made closer to World War II than today.
• 21:22
  That's 85?
• 21:23
  Yep.
• 21:24
  Yep.
• 21:25
  21 years from today, 20 years from World War II.
• 21:29
  I don't like thinking about that.
• 21:30
  It's insane.
• 21:30
  Yeah.
• 21:31
  Like, it makes no sense in my brain.
• 21:33
  Like, how people who were watching,
• 21:36
  people who were going to the movies
• 21:38
  to see Back to the Future,
• 21:40
  it was more recent in the past
• 21:43
  that Hitler was alive
• 21:45
  Yeah.
• 21:46
  than that Back to the Future was in cinemas, like was opening for us.
• 21:53
  That's crazy.
• 21:54
  So, I mean, yeah, I mean, and look, obviously the social context,
• 21:58
  obviously the tensions around Israel, Gaza play into all this,
• 22:02
  the uptick in anti-Semitism, which is very real.
• 22:05
  So, I mean, in my show I'm saying, come on,
• 22:07
  there's been lots of comedy about Hitler and the Nazis,
• 22:09
  but, you know, that's perhaps not doing a service to the present moment
• 22:12
  in which people are particularly sensitive to that.
• 22:14
  Also, I think, like, the whole sensitivity, hypersensitivity about Nazi salutes and jokes about the Holocaust, I think, are misplaced and strategically mistaken.
• 22:33
  Because they make the Jewish community seem thin-skinned and, like, obsessed with, yes, something very bad that happened a very long time ago.
• 22:44
  and frankly nobody thinks is going to happen again certainly not the same way or to the same
• 22:49
  extent and i you know if there's anti-semitism again which i'm sure there will be it's the
• 22:53
  world's oldest hatred it's not going to show up in the form of rounding people up i don't think
• 22:57
  and shoving them into concentration camps it's going to be whatever a modern version of pogroms
• 23:02
  or something so it seems like the the actual consciousness raising that needs to that i think
• 23:11
  would be most strategically advantageous for Jews to help the left to see
• 23:16
  would be more about just the double standard of Jews not counting
• 23:22
  as a people whose opinion it is worth listening to about anything
• 23:27
  regarding their own sense of vulnerability.
• 23:34
  I think that's the blind spot on the left.
• 23:36
  It's that Jewish people are suspect and powerful and wealthy and well-connected and send secret text messages to CEOs to get people fired and convince the government to take pro-Israeli policies and manufacture the bombs that rain down on brown-skinned people.
• 23:59
  and therefore are affiliated with a genocidal colonial settler regime.
• 24:07
  And that therefore they are excluded from the courtesy that we grant towards all other minorities in our social justice framework,
• 24:17
  which is to give some credence to people who claim that they're feeling either vulnerable or
• 24:26
  as the targets of bigotry or something like that like you know it is no longer okay to
• 24:32
  say to a woman oh i wasn't being sexist yes you know you're being silly yeah you know or to a
• 24:38
  black person i wasn't being racist you're just taking it too personally but it's totally okay
• 24:42
  to say to a Jew, I wasn't being anti-Semitic, stop being so sensitive.
• 24:46
  Well, yes.
• 24:46
  I mean, this was the catch cry of the left and of the less productive elements
• 24:50
  of woke discourse for a long time, right?
• 24:51
  Like people get, you don't get to define my oppression,
• 24:54
  right?
• 24:55
  Something like to that extent.
• 24:57
  And I think that that is very limited and often
• 25:01
  counterproductive.
• 25:02
  And I appreciate, yes, I think that there probably is a double standard applied
• 25:06
  there.
• 25:06
  I guess my question is like, how does one do that?
• 25:08
  How does one say to someone,
• 25:10
  I think you are being unreasonable.
• 25:11
  When someone says something like, you know, the famous tweet, which is, I saw a free parking sign and I thought it said free Palestine, Jews are tired.
• 25:21
  I mean, what else do you say other than that's a bit silly?
• 25:24
  That's silly.
• 25:25
  Right.
• 25:25
  Prosecuting me for doing this routine, saying that this is the same thing as the actual neo-Nazis that are on our streets marching like as if they're the equivalent.
• 25:35
  That's silly.
• 25:36
  You're being unreasonable.
• 25:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:38
  And I would absolutely say there are lots of other minority groups who are also equally as unreasonable.
• 25:45
  I think Jewish people would just want you to start with them first.
• 25:48
  Right.
• 25:49
  Because it's the harder lift.
• 25:53
  It's the harder lift for the left.
• 25:55
  It proves the left's bona fides to tackle their own sacred cows than to always say,
• 26:05
  yeah but the only reason why i'm doing it to the jews is because i would also do it to everybody
• 26:07
  else you know what i mean it'd be like which is not to say you shouldn't do that that piece but
• 26:16
  like the suppose you had a routine in which like there was a new law again against gay hate crimes
• 26:23
  or something and the target of your law of your routine was um homophobes you know violent
• 26:30
  homophobes and in order to
• 26:33
  satirize them you're taking
• 26:34
  on the persona of a homophobe
• 26:37
  and just being like
• 26:38
  can't we just bash a few
• 26:41
  gays?
• 26:42
  This is not a good example because I'm gay and I would
• 26:44
  probably do this.
• 26:45
  Let's assume that you're not.
• 26:48
  Can't we just
• 26:48
  do a little
• 26:50
  gay bashing
• 26:53
  like that?
• 26:54
  If someone
• 26:55
  were to do
• 26:56
  that
• 26:58
  then
• 27:01
  and then they did a gag about like,
• 27:03
  why can't, you know,
• 27:04
  and then they did a gag and then Jews got upset
• 27:05
  and they were like, why can't Jews take a joke?
• 27:06
  Then I think they'd have more credibility
• 27:08
  to be like, you know what I mean?
• 27:10
  But like, yeah.
• 27:11
  Well, I did, I recorded a segment
• 27:12
  for John Safran's show about free speech.
• 27:15
  Yeah.
• 27:16
  Which is coming out, I think.
• 27:17
  And I think my segment's been cut.
• 27:19
  But anyway.
• 27:19
  I know.
• 27:21
  The SVS publicity person asked me,
• 27:25
  did John want to come on my show?
• 27:27
  And I also recorded a segment
• 27:29
  with him but i was like i assume that means mine's been cut because why wouldn't they just say
• 27:35
  as you know as you know he's done a movie uh because you're in it unless she hasn't seen
• 27:43
  the film and i'm like all over it and she's like so anyway but yes so you and i both
• 27:49
  we are cutting room floor well no from saffron's uh but he was sort of making the point he's like
• 27:54
  yeah like he's all up for the you know um you know there's no line do the comedy whatever you
• 27:58
  want, but don't have double standards and apply it across the board.
• 28:01
  So for example, he's like, would you do a routine that involved you showing the prophet
• 28:05
  Muhammad, for example?
• 28:06
  Right.
• 28:08
  And I guess that was a bit of a challenge, but I suppose just the framing wasn't entirely
• 28:12
  accurate to me.
• 28:13
  Like, again, I didn't sit down and be like, what is the routine that I can write that
• 28:16
  is going to upset Jewish people?
• 28:17
  Let's go, baby.
• 28:20
  It was more like I found my way to this funny thing and thought about it a lot and made
• 28:26
  changes to it as i do with all my comedy over time and i think i got it to a place in which
• 28:32
  i thought a reasonable person a reasonable person would look at that would see where i'm coming i
• 28:36
  don't think the reason why the muhammad drawing is uh an unfair analogy is because it didn't occur
• 28:46
  to you because the counter argument could be again that of course you didn't you weren't
• 28:52
  guided towards finding the prophet muhammad funny because your biases are that you don't joke about
• 28:59
  people's deeply held religious beliefs but in the case of jews they're exempt from that
• 29:05
  consideration because it just doesn't occur to you that their feelings should matter the same
• 29:10
  way that muslims feelings do i think the real reason the muhammad analogy doesn't work is
• 29:16
  because you'd be in physical fucking danger and we all know it that's true yes yeah that's
• 29:22
  The two communities are very different.
• 29:23
  Yeah.
• 29:25
  The most extreme Jew in the world is very unlikely to hunt you down
• 29:30
  and behead you for joking about Nazi salutes.
• 29:34
  It's true.
• 29:35
  There's a few extreme Jews out there.
• 29:37
  They don't want to do that.
• 29:39
  They'll write angry opinion pieces in the Jewish Independent,
• 29:43
  but they're not going to firebomb your house.
• 29:47
  They're not going to shoot up a beach because they got angry at you.
• 29:53
  But I mean, so it would have to be something where there was no personal, you know, you would have to pick an example of something where there was no personal danger involved.
• 30:02
  But yes, you could.
• 30:04
  I mean, mocking, mocking burkas.
• 30:10
  Yeah.
• 30:10
  Yeah.
• 30:11
  Yeah.
• 30:12
  I mean, doing a routine in which you ask why, you know, half the world's Muslims make women wear beekeepers outfits.
• 30:22
  would be would be going there yeah i mean i think stuart lee's talked about this too sort of people
• 30:28
  say why why don't you do the same you know you do jokes that sort of take the piss out of
• 30:31
  christianity why you do the same about other religions i think he makes a pretty decent
• 30:34
  point that he's like you also need to know stuff about uh that religion you need a common language
• 30:42
  reference points that will actually make sense to an audience you also need to be motivated or
• 30:47
  called to find yourself um talking about that yes um so yes i mean it would be a pretty boring
• 30:54
  job as a comedian if you were just sort of ticking off the check boxes right buddhists
• 30:57
  fucks up with them but i think stewart is he's more right about the christianity thing i think
• 31:04
  than you are about the nazi salute thing because also christianity is all-powerful so i mean in our
• 31:13
  culture.
• 31:13
  It's the defining
• 31:15
  tradition of Western
• 31:16
  civilization.
• 31:17
  So I think it makes
• 31:18
  total sense to make fun of
• 31:21
  ourselves in a way that
• 31:23
  you can't be accused really of
• 31:24
  punching down when you're punching against
• 31:26
  Western Christianity
• 31:28
  and Western civilization in a way that
• 31:30
  you can if you're punching down
• 31:32
  against
• 31:34
  Muslims or Jews.
• 31:37
  Yeah.
• 31:40
  It's interesting.
• 31:42
  It's online.
• 31:43
  People can watch the routine if they're like, oh, they can come see the show.
• 31:45
  Be funny.
• 31:46
  Come see the show.
• 31:46
  Pay more money.
• 31:47
  Yes, pay more money for that.
• 31:49
  Hopefully, you know, I'm sure there are some people.
• 31:50
  I mean, a guy tweeted me after the show last night said, no good.
• 31:54
  I'm sure it's not going to please everybody.
• 31:55
  But I've put a lot of work into it.
• 31:58
  And I feel like I am able to get it to a place where I at least say all the things that I want to say.
• 32:03
  That's good.
• 32:04
  And, I mean, people should respect the effort to actually wrestle with the things.
• 32:07
  because it is, I mean, a major problem in society
• 32:12
  that when things become difficult or complicated to wrestle with,
• 32:15
  people just shut up about them and stop trying to actually figure it out.
• 32:19
  And, I mean, it's really unconstructive, I think,
• 32:22
  for people to take this censorious, finger-waggy attitude of, like,
• 32:26
  how dare you do that thing on stage and this is why it's never funny.
• 32:29
  Like, I mean, do better, I want to say.
• 32:33
  I want to tweet, do clap, better clap.
• 32:36
  brown hands clap you know like you can't do those better you can't do the brown hands in honor of
• 32:42
  solidarity with the people of color mate um you know just like i think do you ever have do you
• 32:48
  have any older people in your life uh tom who haven't quite figured out the different colored
• 32:52
  hands and things like some older people so who will send text messages and there's like you know
• 32:57
  for some random random reason it's like a it's a black band high-fiving or like a black heart
• 33:04
  I don't think so.
• 33:05
  I think my dad who loves the thumbs up, I mean, it's the default yellow, white.
• 33:09
  Does he do a yellow thumbs up?
• 33:10
  Yeah, yeah.
• 33:11
  He's a racist.
• 33:11
  Well.
• 33:12
  Should be doing a brown, you know, solidarity, brother.
• 33:17
  Yeah, but I mean-
• 33:18
  Emoji face.
• 33:19
  Anyone who spends time actually trying to wrestle with it-
• 33:23
  Yes.
• 33:23
  In good faith-
• 33:24
  Yes.
• 33:25
  Should be rewarded for doing that, even if they get it wrong, because at least there's still an opening in which, you know, to grope our way towards a more useful and constructive way of understanding things instead of just like, don't do it.
• 33:39
  I mean, I hope so, yes.
• 33:40
  And I think I have an allergy to this.
• 33:42
  When people say, you can't talk about that, we shouldn't talk about that,
• 33:44
  there's no way you can talk about that, let's just avoid that conversation,
• 33:47
  which I think lots of people have been doing over the past couple of years,
• 33:50
  particularly on the very thorny issue around anti-Semitism, freedom of speech,
• 33:54
  Israel-Palestine, you know, I think that stuff's been driving me a bit nuts,
• 33:57
  which also feeds into the show.
• 33:59
  Yeah.
• 34:00
  And then, you know, spoiler alert, the show is saying,
• 34:04
  I think this comes back to the fact that we're very bad at holding multiple things
• 34:07
  could be true at the same time.
• 34:08
  And I sort of list a number of truths.
• 34:10
  And someone actually saw the show and they said,
• 34:11
  I think you should cut that bit.
• 34:12
  You're patronizing the audience.
• 34:13
  Like, we get it.
• 34:14
  And I was like, you know what?
• 34:15
  I'm actually going to keep it because the thing that's driven me crazy
• 34:19
  about the cultural conversation since October the 7th has been
• 34:22
  no one is prepared to just calmly state these simple truths,
• 34:25
  which is anti-Semitism is disgusting.
• 34:27
  It's on all of us to get rid of it.
• 34:29
  October the 7th was a horror show and Hamas committed war crimes.
• 34:32
  And that does not justify Israel's genocidal response.
• 34:37
  And there's no contradiction between standing against anti-Semitism and that genocide.
• 34:41
  People try to convince us that we have to choose between one of those two things is presenting us with a false choice.
• 34:46
  Yeah, I think it's important to say that because otherwise the false choices fester, regardless of whether or not people talk openly about them.
• 34:54
  people end up with a point of view that is informed only by either on the one hand they're
• 34:59
  like reflexive defensive israel or on the other hand uh their emotional response to
• 35:05
  seeing lots of dead babies on instagram uh and you know do better black clap black clap
• 35:13
  indian clap brown clap beige clap i think i'll choose one race no don't get greedy we're all
• 35:20
  in this together.
• 35:21
  That's the beauty of it, Tom.
• 35:23
  Now, is there a Jewish emoji clap?
• 35:25
  Is there a Jewish clap?
• 35:28
  Hmm.
• 35:30
  Good question.
• 35:30
  Is there one with money holding money?
• 35:32
  Oh, now that's unacceptable.
• 35:34
  Is there a hand holding money?
• 35:36
  It is never funny.
• 35:37
  Clap.
• 35:38
  To clap.
• 35:40
  Joke clap.
• 35:41
  About clap.
• 35:42
  Anti-Semitism.
• 35:43
  Clap.
• 35:45
  Now, the play that I was reading before the flight attendant
• 35:49
  rudely got me to stow my uh laptop is essentially also about how to do comedy well
• 35:56
  it's been on my mind a lot lately yeah exactly you're wrestling with this aren't you
• 36:00
  uh do you have a therapist tom you need to maybe get a therapist okay all right
• 36:07
  you here we are yeah here we are reverend josh uh and uh but this is more about what does it
• 36:14
  mean to be original what does it mean to be offensive what does it mean to be old school
• 36:17
  What does it mean to be new school?
• 36:18
  What does it mean to hold a retrograde opinion if you're from another era?
• 36:22
  What does it mean to admire comics who in today's light would be regarded as being retrograde?
• 36:28
  Like, where are you?
• 36:30
  Talk.
• 36:31
  Talk.
• 36:31
  Talk.
• 36:33
  I'll sit back for, it's been a long day for me, so I'll sit back for about 40 minutes.
• 36:38
  Brilliant.
• 36:39
  Timer on.
• 36:40
  Thank you.
• 36:40
  Take it away.
• 36:42
  Put on an eye mask and some earplugs.
• 36:45
  It's very rare for us to just actively admit.
• 36:47
  I'll be phoning this one in.
• 36:48
  I'll be phoning this one in.
• 36:50
  You have a blanket?
• 36:51
  The play's called Jokes, a Comedy,
• 36:53
  and it's set backstage at a comedy gig.
• 36:55
  It's five comedians hanging out,
• 36:57
  all of them very much based on a collection of comics, I think,
• 37:02
  composite characters make up these five comics.
• 37:04
  I play one of them.
• 37:05
  It's a play that I wrote and we performed at the Fringe last year.
• 37:10
  They're hanging out.
• 37:11
  It's a shitty gig.
• 37:11
  They're talking shit.
• 37:12
  They're trading jokes.
• 37:13
  One of the comics is a young comic, and they're running through a Q&A as to what they think about comedy, which is a-
• 37:19
  From a news-
• 37:20
  It's a news-
• 37:20
  Like a comedy website.
• 37:21
  Yeah, sort of like-
• 37:21
  A horrific chore that every comedian has done that asks all the most basic questions.
• 37:25
  News breaks that a comedy legend has died, has passed away, and that sort of sets off an argument about that comedian's legacy, about what is and isn't funny, about why we tell jokes, about the responsibility of comedians.
• 37:38
  and myself playing the role of Alex,
• 37:41
  who is a preachy homosexual socialist comedian.
• 37:44
  This is a real stretch for me.
• 37:46
  Up against Jace, who's a bit more of an anti-woke guy.
• 37:50
  Sort of have at it and try and interrogate, yeah,
• 37:54
  wokeness, the morality, the ethics of comedy and joke telling, I suppose.
• 37:59
  And look, if I'm honest, you know, it's a play that's perhaps
• 38:03
  should have been written like two years ago or something.
• 38:05
  It feels like there's been something of a backlash
• 38:07
  sure the conversations moved on.
• 38:08
  And I did think that until we did it in like October of last year
• 38:13
  and in September, you've got Charlie Kirk being assassinated and the incredible crumbling to me,
• 38:19
  the ultimate hypocrisy of the free speech anti-woke crowd fully backing in the cancellation
• 38:27
  of Jimmy Kimmel, the criminalization of posting a meme that might not mourn Charlie Kirk in the
• 38:32
  correct way.
• 38:33
  If anyone made a joke about Charlie Kirk dying, this was disgraceful and outrageous
• 38:37
  and offensive coming from the you can offend anyone people.
• 38:41
  So I thought that was a very funny or interesting cultural moment,
• 38:44
  I suppose.
• 38:46
  So, yeah, I hope it lands,
• 38:48
  and I hope the play explores all my very messy feelings.
• 38:50
  I do feel like I've been on each side of those debates.
• 38:53
  Yes, woke, left wing, care about the words I say,
• 38:57
  think about how that affects other people,
• 38:59
  but also love dark humour, push the envelope,
• 39:02
  have had a bunch of joke scandals in my time.
• 39:05
  so hopefully all that combines to make an entertaining hour and a 10 minute indeed and
• 39:10
  how do you feel about your own heroes who are of another era i mean jace says an interesting
• 39:17
  thing at one point the character in the play which is like you know the guy who just died
• 39:22
  who was a who was a an insult comedian like or an offense an offense comic uh you know uh when
• 39:30
  your character is like, you know, he was saying these terrible things about gay people or
• 39:35
  something like that.
• 39:35
  He was like, Jace is like, he had the attitudes that, you mean he had the attitudes of an
• 39:39
  80 year old man towards gay people?
• 39:41
  Yeah.
• 39:41
  Like what other attitudes did you expect him to have?
• 39:45
  Yeah, I think it's interesting that, isn't it?
• 39:49
  Because whenever people cite that, or whenever people say that was the time, that was the
• 39:53
  attitude of the time, almost every time you can cite examples of people who were alive
• 39:59
  at that time and do not hold those opinions.
• 40:01
  or our assumptions about the bigotry of people in past generations,
• 40:04
  I actually think is much worse than it often truly was.
• 40:07
  Or at least, you know, if you look at like Australia in the 1890s,
• 40:11
  there were contemporaneous voices at the time
• 40:13
  who were very much calling out the injustice
• 40:14
  of the way society was structured at the time.
• 40:18
  Obviously, they're very much in a minority,
• 40:20
  but I think it's worth pointing that out to say, like,
• 40:22
  it wasn't impossible to imagine that there have been people
• 40:25
  questioning the way things are in lots of different times forever.
• 40:30
  and I mean
• 40:31
  this old comedian
• 40:33
  who died
• 40:33
  his name is Dusty Franklin
• 40:35
  is a sort of a composite
• 40:36
  and inspired by the likes
• 40:37
  of Kevin Bloody Wilson
• 40:38
  someone like Rodney Rude
• 40:39
  now Rodney Rude
• 40:40
  is someone who's material
• 40:42
  I think he did
• 40:42
  whole bunks of jokes
• 40:43
  about poofs
• 40:44
  and like you know
• 40:45
  AIDS and all this stuff
• 40:46
  that I think on stage
• 40:48
  if you took it
• 40:48
  purely on based
• 40:49
  on what he said on stage
• 40:50
  would be homophobic material
• 40:52
  when the gay marriage
• 40:52
  debate happened
• 40:53
  in Australia
• 40:54
  Rodney Rude was on
• 40:54
  Facebook going
• 40:55
  fuck yeah
• 40:55
  let the gays get married
• 40:56
  I don't care
• 40:57
  he totally was
• 40:58
  interesting
• 40:59
  Whereas I think someone more like Kevin Bloody Wilson
• 41:01
  is a little bit more reactionary to his actual politics.
• 41:04
  I'm just imagining what American listeners are thinking
• 41:06
  when you say these names.
• 41:07
  Like, they would assume that you're making shit up.
• 41:10
  But there is actually a person called Kevin Bloody Wilson
• 41:13
  and actually a person called Rodney Rude.
• 41:17
  Yes.
• 41:17
  These were their stage names.
• 41:19
  They were popular.
• 41:20
  Believe it or not, Rodney Rude was quite rude.
• 41:23
  Yes.
• 41:23
  And Kevin Bloody Wilson said the word bloody.
• 41:27
  This is the caliber, ladies and gentlemen, of Australian comedy circa 1975.
• 41:33
  See, now British people will get it.
• 41:34
  I think they had the same generation.
• 41:36
  Yeah, they had Benny Hill.
• 41:37
  Yes, yes.
• 41:38
  Bernard Manning, that kind of thing.
• 41:39
  Yeah, what is the American equivalent?
• 41:40
  I mean, like the watermelon guy, the, what's his face?
• 41:44
  Racist.
• 41:45
  What?
• 41:47
  What?
• 41:47
  Who are you calling a watermelon?
• 41:49
  What?
• 41:50
  The guy who used to cut the watermelons in half.
• 41:54
  What?
• 41:55
  Oh, carrot top.
• 41:56
  no similar carrot top no um oh howie mandel no no but that kind of vibe but then they weren't
• 42:03
  like those aren't color weren't those aren't off color they were as lame those are prop
• 42:08
  those are like prop comics but they're not rude comics i mean the more sophisticated
• 42:14
  mainstream version of it was all in the family which was a remake of uh till death us do part
• 42:20
  the British show, which was about a very racist white character.
• 42:26
  But he was the target of the joke, so to speak.
• 42:30
  But that was a popular sitcom.
• 42:31
  What are you looking up?
• 42:32
  Gallagher.
• 42:33
  Gallagher.
• 42:34
  He was in Gallagher.
• 42:34
  Yeah.
• 42:35
  I've never seen him, but I know, like, you know, I don't know,
• 42:38
  him being mentioned in episodes of Seinfeld or something.
• 42:41
  Just like, yeah, that cringy generation, I suppose.
• 42:43
  But, yes, in Australia, I think, and also in the UK,
• 42:45
  it was certainly defined by, yes, a complete rejection
• 42:48
  of any kind of social niceties, racial humor,
• 42:51
  humor about gay people, about women.
• 42:53
  It was on for young and old.
• 42:54
  It's all about having a laugh.
• 42:55
  Well, to be honest, now that I think about it,
• 42:58
  a lot of the greatest comics of the late 70s
• 43:05
  and early to mid 80s, when it comes at least to homophobia
• 43:10
  in the States, were incredibly homophobic because they were,
• 43:13
  I don't want to say because they were black,
• 43:14
  they were black people who shared mainstream cultural opinions
• 43:18
  about gay people, which were more overt in the black community.
• 43:24
  So Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor and people like that were.
• 43:29
  But again, it doesn't land for me as...
• 43:32
  I don't judge them for it today because, yes,
• 43:36
  you say there were people at the time who did not hold
• 43:39
  those retrograde opinions.
• 43:41
  I always think that's a little bit of a fudge because...
• 43:49
  Take, for example, the question of would a typical social justice warrior today who is advocating for the removal of statues to Benjamin Franklin or Captain Cook or something like that because they were genocidal slave owners, would that person have owned slaves if they were alive during slavery?
• 44:12
  you can always say, well, they may well not have
• 44:17
  because there were people who were abolitionists even during slavery.
• 44:21
  Yes.
• 44:23
  But the people who are the most social justice motivated today
• 44:29
  would have to be exhibiting behavior that was incredibly counter-normal,
• 44:37
  abnormal, delusionally moral
• 44:41
  to be the kinds of people who would have been abolitionists during slavery.
• 44:46
  And they're not.
• 44:47
  They're conforming to the exact mainstream morality of their peer group.
• 44:54
  Mainstream morality to get rid of statues?
• 44:56
  In their peer group, yes.
• 44:57
  I mean, they're signaling their virtue about how virtuous they can be
• 45:04
  for opposing the white supremacist power structure
• 45:07
  that they and their peers think that they exist within.
• 45:10
  They could also sincerely feel that what they're doing is right
• 45:13
  and believe in that.
• 45:14
  I'm sure they do that as well.
• 45:15
  Yes.
• 45:17
  It's nowhere near as fringe as what abolitionism was during slavery.
• 45:23
  Like, if they were vegan, like, I will give credit to the people
• 45:27
  who are, like, eco-terrorist vegans who are strapping themselves
• 45:31
  to train tracks in order to, you know, climate zero.
• 45:34
  Those are the kind of people who actually wouldn't have believed
• 45:38
  joined the crowd yes but i'm talking about the people who are you know tweeting or posting
• 45:44
  reels on instagram about how you know irredeemably white supremacist uh america is and whatever
• 45:52
  those people really are just swimming with the tide of yes you're right that they're not you're
• 45:58
  raising your eyebrows if like they're not really mainstream because i understand that obviously
• 46:01
  they're operating in a context in which mainstream society does not agree with their particular
• 46:05
  opinion.
• 46:05
  The Murdoch press doesn't agree, the mainstream conservative parties don't agree,
• 46:10
  but within their milieu, they are absolutely consistent with the norms of what they believe.
• 46:18
  And it's a less, I think it's a less courageous thing in a cosmopolitan city in the 2020s to
• 46:27
  say that you think that racism sucks and that white, you know, colonial oppressors
• 46:34
  should have their comeuppance.
• 46:36
  That's a less crazy thing than to say that you think slavery is wrong
• 46:41
  in the 1820s in the Deep South.
• 46:43
  I would have said that.
• 46:44
  I would have been on the correct side of every position throughout history.
• 46:48
  That's just something I think.
• 46:50
  I just know.
• 46:51
  I just know that.
• 46:51
  I just feel it.
• 46:52
  I just feel that I would have been right.
• 46:55
  I mean, look, I'm not interested in, like, you know,
• 46:57
  cancelling Eddie Murphy or pulling him over hot coals.
• 46:59
  There's a moment in which my character, Alex, who is, again,
• 47:01
  basically me just sort of says uh the comedy i loved that made it meant a lot to me was the
• 47:07
  comedy of like daniel kitson josie long maria bamford these other people who were funny but
• 47:11
  they also were saying something that made me feel less alone and i remember seeing delirious and i
• 47:17
  remember seeing eddie murphy say talk about faggots with aids on their lips and it made me feel like
• 47:21
  shit so it's less about like let's hunt down eddie murphy and cancel him or if you watch that special
• 47:26
  you're a piece of shit it's more just like that is a message to me that the words that we say on
• 47:31
  stage the things that we say on stage can have effect on other yes yeah and it's not unreasonable
• 47:36
  to consider that yeah that affects us yeah that's that's the that's the crux of it um yeah there
• 47:42
  are there are lots of comedians who i don't agree with at all politically who are still fucking
• 47:46
  hilarious to me um but yes the the the play is something of a call to an interrogation of what
• 47:54
  you're saying why you're saying it how it could be interpreted how what kind of effect it might
• 47:58
  have on other people and you might arrive at a conclusion as i did with my little nazi salute
• 48:02
  to the routine that like i stand by this piece and i think defense is worth it but i do do the
• 48:08
  work i think to try and not be a dick yeah that's kind of reasonable yeah no i think that's true
• 48:13
  especially at a time where there's so much just being a dick for the sake of being a dick right
• 48:17
  Like there's so much just, it's like, God, talk about the U-turn that the right took.
• 48:24
  You alluded to Kimmel and Colbert and Charlie Kirk.
• 48:30
  Not only the hypocrisy on free speech, but also the emergence of just outrageous shitposting and outrageous remarks for the sake of outrage.
• 48:42
  It really baffles me.
• 48:43
  I don't know if it's driven just by algorithms and clicks or if it's driven by some other pathology or if it's a short-term reaction against the censoriousness of the woke left that will just die down now that we don't really have that phenomenon so much anymore.
• 49:02
  It's funny because years ago I did the roast battle at Montreal just for laughs, right?
• 49:07
  And this is the year, it was 2015, the year before they filmed it, before they made it into a show for Comedy Central.
• 49:13
  You just missed out.
• 49:15
  Well, then I did really well in the live one.
• 49:17
  Then the next year I taped it for Comedy Central and I bombed.
• 49:21
  That was sad.
• 49:22
  Because the audience was like way more PC, might I say.
• 49:25
  The audience were like groaners for TV.
• 49:27
  It was really weird.
• 49:28
  What year was this though?
• 49:30
  So 2015 live show, 2016 we taped the-
• 49:33
  We were also just starting to get woke.
• 49:35
  That was the dawn of woke.
• 49:38
  It might have changed.
• 49:39
  But it was so funny.
• 49:40
  And I was up against Tony Hinchcliffe at the time and Jimmy Carr and stuff.
• 49:43
  Wow.
• 49:44
  And, um, I was just thinking, and people said the most horrific, outrageous things in the world, but it was totally fine because you had two people on stage who had opted into that conversation.
• 49:56
  Every time someone said something horrific about your race or gender or sexual orientation, you had a right of reply.
• 50:02
  And it had, may I say, created a safe space for exactly that kind of comedy.
• 50:07
  I thought that was so instructive and interesting.
• 50:09
  It's like, yeah, this is a space in which everyone is absolutely fine with everything
• 50:15
  saying because there are some kind of rules or a basic level of understanding and mutual
• 50:19
  respect.
• 50:21
  And I think when those things don't exist, that's actually when that stuff kind of does
• 50:26
  break down a little bit.
• 50:27
  That's interesting.
• 50:28
  Yes, it does have a lot to do with context.
• 50:30
  But what the hell is the context of the right wing shitposting?
• 50:36
  I mean, like, I was just, what I see the other day, I was just surfing around Instagram, which I never do for this reason, and something popped up, which was the Jaws poster, the poster for the movie Jaws.
• 50:51
  I don't know if people remember it, but it's a cross-section of an ocean, and a woman is swimming up the top, and a huge shark mouth is coming up from below.
• 51:04
  And instead of jaws, it said Jews, and instead of the shark, it was a big Jew nose, and above the woman was a fish hook with dollars hanging off it.
• 51:17
  Jesus Christ.
• 51:18
  So it's like a satirical.
• 51:20
  Yeah, it's a good satire.
• 51:21
  It's great.
• 51:22
  Well, I thought it was funny.
• 51:23
  When I designed that poster, I thought it was like,
• 51:26
  I thought Jaws is really hot right now.
• 51:28
  Jewish independent.
• 51:30
  This is the exact kind of, this is the smoking gun they need.
• 51:36
  But like, I was like, so what's that all about?
• 51:38
  Like that, is that normal now?
• 51:40
  Is that just, that's just on social media?
• 51:43
  Like that's just, someone thinks they're being witty.
• 51:48
  like that's odd
• 51:49
  that's very odd
• 51:51
  that's been kicking around since like 4chan
• 51:53
  you would find that on 4chan forever
• 51:54
  but now it is mainstream
• 51:55
  why is it on Instagram
• 51:57
  why is Nick Fuentes on
• 52:00
  why do I know who Nick Fuentes is
• 52:03
  like why do we both know
• 52:04
  who that person is
• 52:06
  5 years ago that person would not be a person
• 52:08
  that would be a kid in a basement
• 52:10
  railing
• 52:12
  people say he's funny, he's not funny at all
• 52:15
  I don't know
• 52:15
  Oh, I don't consume a lot of his stand-up specials.
• 52:19
  Oh, he doesn't do stand-up.
• 52:21
  No, I mean, I'm joking.
• 52:22
  Oh, I see.
• 52:24
  People say he's funny in his videos.
• 52:25
  I've seen lots of clips.
• 52:26
  I'm like, I don't get it.
• 52:28
  I mean, there's a lot of, of course, you wouldn't get it.
• 52:32
  I'm sorry, I fuck Nick Fuentes, so I don't get your little incel world.
• 52:35
  You're a low testosterone.
• 52:39
  I don't know what the other.
• 52:41
  Cuck.
• 52:42
  You're a cuck.
• 52:43
  I'm a cuck.
• 52:43
  You're a low T.
• 52:45
  You're a low-key cuck.
• 52:47
  Of course you don't get a man like Nick Fuentes.
• 52:51
  But, I mean, there's, like, even all these,
• 52:53
  have you seen Louis Theroux's documentary about the Manosphere?
• 52:55
  Like, these guys, I get, I do get, like, especially the,
• 53:02
  I can't remember the name of the more, like, talkative,
• 53:05
  he was a former FBI guy, I think, and, like, he's down in Miami.
• 53:09
  He hosts a lot of, like, he has a bunch of
• 53:11
  Holocaust influences around him,
• 53:13
  but, like, kind of Hispanic-y looking guy.
• 53:15
  I don't know, but like very charismatic.
• 53:17
  And like when he's on and when he's firing, it's entertaining.
• 53:21
  I got to say, it may not be funny, but same with Fuentes of what I've seen of him.
• 53:25
  Like to be able to, they're like, you know, who's the big jacked up lefty guy?
• 53:31
  Hassan.
• 53:31
  Like, you know, really engaging, entertaining talkers.
• 53:37
  So I get it.
• 53:38
  But why do they have to be saying so much shit?
• 53:42
  Why do they have to be saying so much shit?
• 53:44
  Yes.
• 53:45
  And the anti-Semitism in that was crazy because, again, they were the parody, I would say, often of left-wing activists who happened to be critical of Israel.
• 53:51
  They were told, you're only saying that because you hate Jews.
• 53:54
  I'm like, well, that's not true.
• 53:55
  That's not my experience.
• 53:55
  And then you see these guys and they're like, yeah, fuck Israel because it's run by Jews.
• 54:00
  And it's like, well, no, you're just explicitly anti-Semitic.
• 54:02
  So that's you guys.
• 54:04
  So I don't want to get you on the board of the pro-Palestine movement through your hatred for Jewish people.
• 54:08
  Thank you.
• 54:09
  And do you see where one of them tries to entrap Louis into saying that Gaza is genocide?
• 54:17
  Yes.
• 54:17
  So he's like, you know, is Gaza genocide?
• 54:20
  Is Gaza genocide?
• 54:21
  And when Louis is doing the normal thing I think that a sane person would do when confronted with such a heated and thorny and complicated question in such a simplistic way, hedges and is like, well, then he's like, see, you're owned by the Jews.
• 54:37
  You're owned by the Jews.
• 54:38
  I can say whatever I want.
• 54:42
  I'm not censored by anyone.
• 54:43
  He's got Jewish puppet masters.
• 54:45
  Like a complete misreading of the attempt to address a complicated issue with some nuance.
• 54:55
  A man who recently did an incredible documentary about settlers in the West Bank that exposed the horrific nature of that project.
• 55:02
  Yeah.
• 55:04
  I once had a woman jump into a lift, an elevator with me and ask me the same question.
• 55:10
  It's like these people are script.
• 55:12
  She recognized me.
• 55:14
  And she said, oh, you're Josh Sepps.
• 55:16
  I was like, yeah, I thought she was a fan coming up.
• 55:18
  She was like, and she held the lift.
• 55:22
  She was holding the lift doors open.
• 55:23
  And she was like, I just, I can't believe that, like, what you're putting out, it was obvious she'd heard one of my very kind of hedgy, like, both sidesy sorts of, like, Netanyahu is a corrupt little hack and, you know, the way that Israel treats the Palestinians in the West Bank is a human rights, you know, abomination and the Gaza war is way too aggressive.
• 55:51
  and also, you know, all of the other things that one would expect me to say,
• 55:56
  like we shouldn't immediately leap to the conclusion
• 55:59
  that Jews are the only people who don't deserve to have any territory
• 56:02
  and we shouldn't, you know, irresponsibly and recklessly
• 56:05
  throw around slogans that we don't really understand,
• 56:07
  like from the river to the sea,
• 56:08
  because a lot of Jews are going to interpret that as meaning
• 56:10
  that there should just be an Arab state that sits on that whole landmass
• 56:13
  and they find that threatening.
• 56:16
  You know, but she'd obviously heard this and so she was like,
• 56:19
  Do you accept, you know, what off-the-shelf slogan can I throw at Zeps?
• 56:24
  You know, she's thinking that it will trap him.
• 56:27
  Do you accept that, like, it's a genocide,
• 56:30
  that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?
• 56:34
  And I did what Louis Theroux did because it's like,
• 56:39
  it's a bit like someone saying,
• 56:40
  will you apologize right now for the crimes of Western civilization?
• 56:46
  like well it's complex i mean i know what you're getting at the same about do you condemn hamas
• 56:54
  which was a constant phrase that sort of was wheeled out in order to justify or legitimize
• 56:58
  anyone in the response after october 7th uh not well i haven't heard that but that is probably
• 57:05
  just different circles that we swim in would you condemn hamas yes in the wake of october 7th
• 57:10
  every, not every, obviously, this is hyperbole,
• 57:13
  lots of interviews with anyone,
• 57:16
  at least if it's a Palestinian cause,
• 57:18
  was asked to condemn Hamas.
• 57:19
  I would not find it hard to answer that question.
• 57:22
  I don't think that question is the same thing
• 57:23
  because Hamas is a jihadist death cult.
• 57:26
  In the same way that if someone said to me,
• 57:29
  do you condemn the Netanyahu government?
• 57:30
  I would have no problem saying yes.
• 57:32
  Right, right, right.
• 57:32
  Yeah.
• 57:34
  But like, is Israel committing genocide
• 57:37
  is a little bit thornier,
• 57:39
  because it's not entirely obvious under genocide law.
• 57:45
  I mean, it's complicated under genocide law
• 57:47
  precisely why they were doing what they were doing.
• 57:49
  Nonetheless, she's holding the lift door open,
• 57:52
  and at some point, like, the lift is dinging,
• 57:55
  and I was the only person in the lift.
• 57:56
  I was like, just get in the lift.
• 57:58
  If you want to have it out, get in the lift.
• 58:02
  I hate the podcast for uncomfortable conversations, motherfucker.
• 58:04
  Get in the fucking lift, and I'll talk to you then.
• 58:06
  But she didn't mind.
• 58:07
  I don't think she wanted to share a lift with a Jew.
• 58:10
  So she went out and cleansed herself.
• 58:15
  She scrubbed herself down to try to get the Jew germs off her.
• 58:20
  Oh, dear.
• 58:21
  But that was tricky.
• 58:23
  What do you think?
• 58:23
  Can I ask you?
• 58:24
  Oh, sorry.
• 58:25
  Have we run out?
• 58:25
  No, we've got 15 minutes.
• 58:27
  I'd be interested in your thoughts in the,
• 58:29
  and I know that you've copped a bit of this, as you mentioned,
• 58:32
  flack from within the Jewish community when one dares to criticize Israel.
• 58:36
  I just find it pretty appalling the way that both anti-Zionist or simply Israel-critical Jewish people in the community are treated.
• 58:47
  Nick Durenforth wrote a piece in The Australian in which he said that anti-Zionist Jews either have daddy issues or they're doing what they're doing for the shekels.
• 58:58
  That's a direct quote from this piece that was run in The Australian, which is...
• 59:01
  Wait, The Australian was biased towards Israel?
• 59:04
  You mean Rupert Murdoch's?
• 59:06
  newspaper and had a conservative slant indeed but i would say and i understand that this is a jewish
• 59:12
  man commenting about other jewish people but i would say like that if anyone else were to use
• 59:17
  that particular that phrasing i think there would be alarm bells and outrage across the board no i
• 59:22
  think it's completely i think it's so so stupid and misguided and i the main criticism that i
• 59:29
  have had from, I would say there are several groups of diaspora Jews.
• 59:37
  And I say diaspora because I can't speak on behalf of Israelis.
• 59:40
  It's a very complicated society.
• 59:42
  Most of the Israelis I know are very depressed about the trajectory that the country is going
• 59:47
  in.
• 59:47
  And it's, you know, obviously a completely different thing to be an Israeli in Israel.
• 59:52
  Now, diaspora Jews, I would say, are loosely grouped into those who feel that to allow criticism of Israel or to show chinks in the armor of Jewishness, of Jewry, of like, you know, to show a squabble.
• 1:00:16
  Because we squabble about this all the time with each other.
• 1:00:19
  Go to any Friday night Shabbos dinner in Melbourne and the whole place is going to be full of a bunch of Jews arguing about Israel and Gaza and Zionism and all this sort of stuff.
• 1:00:32
  But to show that in the same way that I hope that Muslim families squabble a lot more about jihadism and the rights of women and so on, and I suspect they do internally than they present outwardly.
• 1:00:45
  But the sense that it does the community a disservice to air those grievances in public.
• 1:00:53
  And I would say that that is an opinion that is widely held among older Jews who still have a lived experience or their parents do of true, you know, being rounded up and herded away.
• 1:01:07
  And so feel like Israel is a bulwark, is like the ultimate sort of safety blanket and, you know, really needs.
• 1:01:14
  And they also still, you know, they spent most of their lives living with an Israel that was aspirational and not paranoid and warmongering.
• 1:01:25
  This is really a phenomenon of the post-second Intifada era of Netanyahu in which Israel has become, I think, almost irredeemably brutalized and brutalizing to the Palestinian population and has given so many of us so much pause.
• 1:01:46
  but they still remember an era in which it was a sunny quasi-socialist place of you know optimism
• 1:01:52
  and you know in which it was a given a foregone conclusion that the palestinians would get a
• 1:01:57
  state of course uh and you know it was a temporary accident that israel was sitting on top of the
• 1:02:03
  west bank because its neighbors had invaded it but they'll find a way to hand it back and you
• 1:02:07
  know everything will be okay so i think that older generation feels like you want to make sure that
• 1:02:13
  you're defending Zionism as a united front.
• 1:02:18
  Then, at the other end, you would have the committed anti-Zionists
• 1:02:21
  who just think that this is probably where I was five years ago.
• 1:02:25
  They just think that it makes no sense in the 21st century
• 1:02:28
  to have countries that belong to any particular ethnicity or people.
• 1:02:35
  That's a bit of a 19th century passé thing.
• 1:02:38
  And, you know, I don't really think that Saudi Arabia should be a Muslim country, and I don't really think that Pakistan should be the South Asian Muslim country, and I don't really, you know, cosmopolitan internationalist, so to speak.
• 1:02:56
  And so they're anti-Zionists who just think that, you know, Israel and Palestine should become a pan-Arab Jewish, you know, entity of some kind.
• 1:03:06
  And then there would be where I would put me now, which is in the squishy sort of more uncertain middle.
• 1:03:13
  But the only thing that I'm certain about is that it's wrong to think that we do ourselves a disservice by airing the grievances publicly.
• 1:03:23
  I actually am certain that the more wider society understands the Jewish community as a complicated, heterodox tribe of quarreling human beings who disagree with one another about all kinds of things, including their supposed homeland and the way it's being run,
• 1:03:46
  The more empathy people will have, the harder it is to post the Jew Jaws post-op because there's just a little bit more complexity and nuance in your understanding.
• 1:03:59
  The more likely a community is to not tolerate flare-ups of anti-Semitic violence, just in small ways.
• 1:04:08
  I mean, if you see a Jewish kid at a bus stop and they're being taunted or something like that, how likely are you as a bystander to tell the other kid to cut it out versus not cutting out?
• 1:04:20
  Those edge cases.
• 1:04:21
  I think everyone, every reasonable person can oppose a Jewish shot being firebombed or something.
• 1:04:27
  Whether or not someone gives a nasty look or a nasty remark to a Jewish family who are just walking down the street or something like that, and that's tolerated by the non-Jewish population around.
• 1:04:39
  I think that you win friends by acknowledging your own disagreements.
• 1:04:47
  And so a lot of the flack that I've gotten from Jews is you're betraying the team by allowing yourself to publicly pander to the disingenuous critics of Israel who only want to do us harm and who will never understand, who will never give us any consideration anyway.
• 1:05:09
  And you're a fool for thinking that honesty is, yeah, you're just hoping that you're the last person to be eaten by the crocodile.
• 1:05:15
  but the crocodile's got 5,000 years of eating Jews under its belt,
• 1:05:18
  and it's pretty good at it by now.
• 1:05:20
  So, you know, stop thinking that you can save yourself from it.
• 1:05:24
  Which is why I totally agree,
• 1:05:26
  and it's why I know the Jewish Council do not represent
• 1:05:29
  the majority of most of the Jewish community in Australia.
• 1:05:32
  I think that's fair to say.
• 1:05:33
  I think they're painfully aware of that.
• 1:05:35
  The Jewish Council is a group that set up recently
• 1:05:37
  that is a representation of progressive members of the Jewish community.
• 1:05:41
  I don't know if they'd say they're an anti-Zionist organization.
• 1:05:44
  and there are certainly anti-Zionists who are part of the Jewish Council,
• 1:05:46
  certainly a group of people that identify as progressive
• 1:05:49
  who are prepared to openly speak about and criticize Israel
• 1:05:54
  and talk about the war.
• 1:05:55
  Because, yeah, before that, my understanding was every Jewish group,
• 1:05:58
  every pink Jewish group was pretty firmly Zionist
• 1:06:02
  and pretty staunchly behind Israel.
• 1:06:04
  And so when you got quotes in the media from Jewish groups say this
• 1:06:06
  or the Jewish community says this, it was a pretty –
• 1:06:09
  they were singing from the same long sheet a lot of the time.
• 1:06:11
  I mean, just be careful, I say with a lot of love, about Zionist and about conflating.
• 1:06:18
  It sounds like you sometimes conflate Zionist with defender of Israel.
• 1:06:22
  So Israel, meaning the government of Israel, the country as it currently is, right?
• 1:06:30
  a country that is sitting on top of millions of people
• 1:06:33
  and depriving them of a homeland and, you know,
• 1:06:37
  keeping Gazans living in squalor and is obstinate about
• 1:06:41
  and has made no particular overtures towards peace
• 1:06:44
  in almost 20 years.
• 1:06:47
  There's that thing.
• 1:06:48
  And then there's Zionism, which in its literal sense
• 1:06:57
  just means that just as the Muslims of South Asia have a state in Pakistan
• 1:07:04
  and just as Arab Muslims have many states that are made for them,
• 1:07:10
  the foremost being Saudi Arabia,
• 1:07:12
  and just as the Japanese people have a state,
• 1:07:16
  the Jews also get to have some kind of state
• 1:07:20
  and that that's a legitimate aspiration.
• 1:07:22
  They're not the only people whose aspiration for a state
• 1:07:25
  is illegitimate.
• 1:07:27
  And that within the border of what was partitioned
• 1:07:32
  when the British left, which was supposed to be two states,
• 1:07:36
  there was supposed to be half of it for the Jews
• 1:07:38
  and supposed to be half of it for the Arabs.
• 1:07:40
  And it wasn't the Jews who went in and invaded the Arabs.
• 1:07:46
  And it wasn't the Jews who came back for another bite in 67.
• 1:07:50
  And it wasn't the Jews who came back for another bite in 73.
• 1:07:53
  And it wasn't the Arabs who were coming to the table
• 1:07:55
  trying to drag the peace process forward in the 90s and again in the 2000s.
• 1:08:00
  So to Jewish ears, part of the tragedy of the past few years
• 1:08:06
  is that the misbehaviour of the Netanyahu government
• 1:08:11
  has been so egregious that it really calls into question
• 1:08:14
  in a lot of reasonable non-Jews' minds the whole Zionist project.
• 1:08:18
  Like it makes it very hard to say, well, yeah, but actually,
• 1:08:21
  Actually, sure.
• 1:08:22
  In principle, the theory of Zionism is innocuous.
• 1:08:27
  Yes.
• 1:08:27
  Like, yes, it is a colonial project, and so was Australia,
• 1:08:31
  and so was America, and Israel exists now,
• 1:08:33
  and so does Australia, and so does America.
• 1:08:35
  So we all just have to get on with it, and that is life, right?
• 1:08:38
  Certainly.
• 1:08:38
  Some people were pushed out of that area.
• 1:08:40
  They had other areas to go to.
• 1:08:43
  All of the Jews who were in Israel were also pushed out of other areas.
• 1:08:46
  Heaps of Iraqi Jews.
• 1:08:49
  There were literally hundreds of thousands or millions of them.
• 1:08:51
  They were all driven out.
• 1:08:52
  They're not going back.
• 1:08:53
  They don't get a right of return.
• 1:08:54
  There was Zionist terrorists doing attacks to try and draw people back into Israel.
• 1:08:58
  Yes.
• 1:08:58
  I mean, the anti-Zionist argument would be that the Zionism, the creation of that state inevitably leads to the prioritization of a certain ethnic group over others.
• 1:09:08
  It is a racist ideology that is counter to democratic values, I suppose, the anti-Zionist.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah, well, I mean, it depends whether or not, you know, a fifth of Israelis are Arabs and they have all the same rights as Israelis do.
• 1:09:20
  With the exception of marriage is weird.
• 1:09:24
  Like you have to get married in a synagogue in Israel, I think,
• 1:09:26
  because it's a religious thing.
• 1:09:27
  But I think there are civil things.
• 1:09:29
  But other than that, it's bare equal.
• 1:09:34
  It certainly, it did not help the, when Israel was created,
• 1:09:43
  there was a lot, I mean, end of World War II,
• 1:09:46
  a lot of people were moving around.
• 1:09:48
  I don't know if you know that.
• 1:09:49
  I don't know if you've read your history books, Tom.
• 1:09:51
  Yeah, a little bit of that.
• 1:09:51
  A lot of people were moving around in a lot of places.
• 1:09:54
  A lot of boats full of people were going all over the joint,
• 1:09:57
  and a lot of boundaries were shifting.
• 1:09:59
  And, you know, if you draw the history books back to the end of World War I
• 1:10:05
  and the Balfour Declaration, the fall of the Ottoman Empire,
• 1:10:08
  I mean, this is a highly flexible period.
• 1:10:11
  So for Jews to hear that Zionism's the one thing out of that whole era
• 1:10:17
  that isn't kosher, pardon the pun,
• 1:10:22
  that like 80 years on, you know, we're cool with.
• 1:10:27
  Yeah, Ottomans have gone.
• 1:10:29
  The Jews of Iraq have been evicted.
• 1:10:31
  The Jews have been pissed off out of everywhere.
• 1:10:35
  They've had to, you know,
• 1:10:36
  I'm not going back to my grandmother's place in Poland.
• 1:10:40
  You're not going back to wherever.
• 1:10:41
  You know, the Aborigines have to deal with the fact that we're here.
• 1:10:44
  The Native Americans have to deal with the fact
• 1:10:46
  that the Americans are there.
• 1:10:48
  Lots of shit was going on all over the Middle East.
• 1:10:51
  There was supposed to be two states.
• 1:10:54
  One side was cool with it, and the other side wasn't cool with it,
• 1:10:58
  and therefore 80 years later, the side that was cool with it
• 1:11:02
  has to pay the price by having their national aspirations
• 1:11:08
  delegitimized because of their failure to cajole the other side
• 1:11:12
  into accepting half the pie instead of the whole pie.
• 1:11:17
  It feels a bit rich.
• 1:11:18
  Like, yes, the creation of the state entailed the dispossession of people.
• 1:11:25
  Yeah, I mean, that sucks.
• 1:11:27
  But it would suck less if cynical Arab autocrats and well-meaning international lawyers and foggy-headed lefties the world over hadn't sort of encouraged the vision of the Palestinians to be,
• 1:11:45
  we're going to get it back well if they'd settled for if like surely that river the desire to return
• 1:11:53
  to one's homelands of the land that was driven out either them or their parents like in living
• 1:11:57
  memory uh i don't think that's um a trick being imposed upon uh not at all people from lefties
• 1:12:04
  in the west that is that is a ground in a very yes real desire to return to the land yes they
• 1:12:10
  were ethnically cleansed.
• 1:12:11
  Yes, but history is full of examples of people moving into new places.
• 1:12:16
  I mean, the Jews coming back to Israel is an example of it.
• 1:12:21
  And setting new roots,
• 1:12:23
  and the history of Australia is an example of it as well.
• 1:12:26
  And making a life.
• 1:12:27
  It's not unreasonable
• 1:12:29
  at all for actual Palestinians in Palestine to have an aspiration that someday they're going to
• 1:12:34
  go back to the homes of their great-great-grandparents.
• 1:12:37
  What's unreasonable is that
• 1:12:39
  they have been prevented from
• 1:12:42
  facing the reality that would
• 1:12:43
  disabuse them of that notion by being
• 1:12:46
  dragged along by
• 1:12:48
  a bunch of narratives that
• 1:12:49
  mainly other Arab states
• 1:12:51
  keep perpetuating because it
• 1:12:53
  serves those Arab states leaders
• 1:12:55
  to keep portraying
• 1:12:57
  Israel as the bad guy
• 1:12:59
  and to keep placating their Arab street
• 1:13:02
  by
• 1:13:02
  you know it's a good
• 1:13:05
  it suits Egypt
• 1:13:07
  and
• 1:13:09
  I mean, Syria and Jordan and Qatar for the Palestinians to be in the shit.
• 1:13:18
  It's an easy way to get a rally going.
• 1:13:20
  And it's an understandable, I mean, you know,
• 1:13:22
  I have such enormous sympathy for the Palestinian people.
• 1:13:25
  It's just a terrible situation they find themselves in.
• 1:13:28
  I just don't think that the sole source of that terrible situation
• 1:13:32
  is prima facie the creation of Israel.
• 1:13:39
  And then we get to ignore the subsequent 60 years of Arab action, of repeated invasions and immiseration of Palestinians.
• 1:13:53
  So where would you say you land on the position of Israel being a Jewish state?
• 1:13:57
  What does it mean to be a Jewish state?
• 1:13:59
  And does Israel, as we know it and as it's conceived of, require a Jewish majority of the population?
• 1:14:07
  yeah i think you'd probably do this is the horrible pickle that like
• 1:14:11
  netanyahu and the right wing have put israel in which is isn't that impossible it's just
• 1:14:17
  isn't that impossible to for any well no i mean modern 21st century state to say
• 1:14:22
  for this nation state to continue as we envision it majority must be then i take back my answer
• 1:14:30
  You don't need it to be majority Jewish.
• 1:14:33
  It is 80% Jewish.
• 1:14:35
  You only need it to say in the Constitution
• 1:14:38
  that it is the homeland for the Jews,
• 1:14:40
  and you need it to say in the Constitution
• 1:14:43
  that any Jew in the world can seek refuge there
• 1:14:45
  and become a citizen, which it does.
• 1:14:50
  Now, the problem is, if you have the...
• 1:14:54
  You need to go and do a show as well.
• 1:14:56
  It's one minute past six.
• 1:14:58
  to wrap this up.
• 1:15:02
  And we will solve the problem with the Middle East.
• 1:15:06
  I don't think it should be a...
• 1:15:07
  I fix all this in the show, by the way.
• 1:15:09
  I don't think it should be a country
• 1:15:11
  where Jews have rights that other people don't.
• 1:15:14
  Yes.
• 1:15:14
  I think it should be an explicit place
• 1:15:17
  that is carved out,
• 1:15:18
  the only place in the world
• 1:15:19
  that is carved out for the Jews
• 1:15:20
  in the same way that there are about a dozen countries
• 1:15:22
  that are proudly Muslim countries.
• 1:15:26
  they are much more aggressively bigoted against non-Muslims
• 1:15:31
  than even the Israel of today is in Israel proper.
• 1:15:36
  The problem is that Israel is also sitting on top of the West Bank and Gaza.
• 1:15:43
  That's the problem.
• 1:15:44
  And that's not a problem that actually has anything to do with Zionism,
• 1:15:50
  strictly speaking.
• 1:15:52
  It has to do with, like, it's not health.
• 1:15:54
  What's the relationship between the Zionist political project and the aspirations for a greater Israel, the justifications for a greater Israel?
• 1:16:00
  This same logics of expansion, of claiming land, of driving out people who currently live there in order for us to live there because we feel we have a claim to these particular situations.
• 1:16:12
  No, not really, because I mean, I think the project of greater Israel, there are like religious, scriptural, delusional, Talmudic reasons for believing that Yahweh gave the chosen people all of the land that includes huge swathes of Syria and Jordan and a whole bunch of other countries.
• 1:16:31
  There's no reason why you would stop at the river.
• 1:16:33
  I mean, if you're a true religious maniac, then Israel, half the Middle East should be Israel.
• 1:16:41
  So that's one point of view.
• 1:16:43
  And I guess 100% of people who hold that point of view would also agree with Zionism in its limited sense.
• 1:16:51
  But more than 90% of Zionists, probably more than 95% of Zionists in the world, in other words, meaning people who think it was legitimate and appropriate in 1948 for the people who had been basically banging around in that area for 5,000 years.
• 1:17:10
  where if you go on an archaeological dig,
• 1:17:11
  you're going to find the, you know,
• 1:17:13
  the Temple of King David from thousands of years ago
• 1:17:15
  for them to go back and create a country
• 1:17:19
  not occupying the West Bank, not bombing Gaza,
• 1:17:22
  but just to have a little country next to all of the Arabs,
• 1:17:26
  that that was, the people who believe in that
• 1:17:28
  don't believe in a religious justification
• 1:17:30
  for a greater Israel.
• 1:17:31
  A greater Israel.
• 1:17:32
  I mean, a lot of the Zionists were secular.
• 1:17:35
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:17:36
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:37
  All right, well, I'm glad I gave you this TED Talk
• 1:17:39
  about Israel.
• 1:17:40
  Thanks for coming
• 1:17:41
  and being my student.
• 1:17:43
  Someday I should interview... Not a lot of laughs,
• 1:17:45
  Josh.
• 1:17:46
  Someday I should
• 1:17:47
  interview you.
• 1:17:50
  No, I love it.
• 1:17:50
  You should be the
• 1:17:51
  guest.
• 1:17:51
  I find it endlessly interesting.
• 1:17:53
  I'll be interested in your thoughts on what you make of this
• 1:17:55
  little show of mine.
• 1:17:56
  You'll get a chance to see it.
• 1:17:57
  Well, I will now that I know that I have it.
• 1:18:00
  Which is great.
• 1:18:02
  Where can people go to get
• 1:18:03
  tickets to...
• 1:18:05
  I always feel
• 1:18:05
  like it's such a stupid question.
• 1:18:06
  Where can people find
• 1:18:07
  you online when people end a podcast with that.
• 1:18:10
  Like, just Google fucking Tom Ballard.
• 1:18:12
  I don't know.
• 1:18:12
  You Google it.
• 1:18:13
  Comedy.com.au has all my tour dates.
• 1:18:15
  Be Funny, Challenge Impossible is going after the Melbourne Comedy Festival to Brisbane,
• 1:18:19
  Sydney, and Newcastle, and will eventually end up-
• 1:18:21
  They've already turned off.
• 1:18:22
  Everyone's turned off.
• 1:18:22
  Why?
• 1:18:23
  I mean, because they want to see you, but they know they can find out.
• 1:18:26
  Okay.
• 1:18:26
  Don't they?
• 1:18:27
  Okay, finish it.
• 1:18:28
  Now you look like a wounded puppy.
• 1:18:29
  Now I can tell you what I really think about the Jews.
• 1:18:34
  Are we off?
• 1:18:35
  Are we off?
• 1:18:35
  Are we off?
• 1:18:36
  Are we off?
• 1:18:37
  and jokes are comedy
• 1:18:37
  is the play
• 1:18:38
  at Melbourne Comedy Festival
• 1:18:39
  just six shows of that
• 1:18:40
  comedy.com.au
• 1:18:41
  is the play
• 1:18:41
  if you want to
• 1:18:42
  if you want to give
• 1:18:43
  Google any money
• 1:18:44
  no
• 1:18:44
  just go straight to
• 1:18:45
  comedy.com
• 1:18:46
  also if you go to
• 1:18:47
  Google these days
• 1:18:47
  then Gemini is going to say
• 1:18:49
  you know
• 1:18:49
  the Melbourne Comedy Festival
• 1:18:50
  was founded in Edinburgh
• 1:18:52
  in 1962
• 1:18:53
  you know
• 1:18:54
  by
• 1:18:56
  yeah
• 1:18:56
  Neil Armstrong
• 1:18:57
  while he was on the moon
• 1:18:58
  you're like
• 1:18:59
  what is AI doing
• 1:19:02
  thank you Tom
• 1:19:02
  thanks Josh
• 1:19:03
  I appreciate it
• 1:19:04
  lovely to see you again
• 1:19:05
  you too
• 1:19:06
  you