In a June 14 interview with comedian Theo Von on his podcast, This Past Weekend, Roseanne Barr went on an antisemitic, Holocaust-denying rant—even though she herself is Jewish.
“Nobody died in the Holocaust,” Barr said. “It should happen. Six million Jews should die right now because they cause all the problems in the world.”
Barr’s supporters and Von himself have argued Barr is simply being sarcastic, as if that makes this a comment worth saying. Later in the podcast, Barr went on to claim that Jews run Hollywood like “an organized crime network,” and that they supposedly brought about Barr’s downfall in the entertainment industry because of her own Jewishness. “Well, Hollywood Jews don’t like Jews, let’s be real,” she said. “I’m a Jew and I got fired from Jewish Hollywood.”
Barr has a long history of offensive and bigoted statements. In 2018, her series Roseanne was canceled after she compared former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett to “Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.” Earlier this year, she released a comedy special, Cancel This, in which she said her pronouns were “kiss/my/ass” and made offensive jokes about trans people.
What’s especially galling about her Holocaust statements (what, you didn’t think they could get any more galling? Hold onto your hats!) is that she’s not just Jewish herself; her grandmother’s family died in the Holocaust. As someone who also had family members die in the Holocaust, I can’t imagine how Barr’s grandmother would feel about her statement. Even if Barr tells herself it’s just a joke, how can she bring herself to spit on the memory of her own family?
Barr’s statements are especially dangerous right now, as antisemitism and Holocaust denial are on the rise. Just last week, far-right celebrity Matt Walsh claimed that Nazis invented trans identities, a statement that completely erased Nazi persecution of trans and other queer people. If a celebrity claims—even as a “joke”—that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but should, their followers are liable to internalize that message.
Now that we all know Barr’s thoughts on the Holocaust, she has my permission to stop talking about it forever. Here’s hoping she fades into obscurity, where she belongs.
(featured image: Rachel Luna/Getty Images)
