Jerry Seinfeld likened the Free Palestine movement to the Ku Klux Klan — even saying those who use the phrase “Free Palestine” are worse than the white supremacist group — at a student event at Duke University meant to honor hostages who are being held in Gaza.

Seinfeld spoke at the school in Durham, North Carolina, to introduce a former Israeli hostage, Omer Shem Tov, when he made the remarks, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle. He reportedly started by saying, in reference to the Free Palestine activist movement, “Just say you don’t like Jews.”

“By saying ‘Free Palestine,’ you’re not admitting what you really think. So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here, because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ Okay, that’s honest,'" the Chronicle reported Seinfeld said.

    • Karjalan@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Been a while since I’ve heard about him tbf, but IIRC he jumped on the whole “can’t do comedy anymore because they’ll cancel you” shtick when getting criticised for transphobic jokes/remarks.

      I guess his is less offensive and more lazy. Just started rambling like an old man about cancel culture and comedy dying and hisow comedians “speak secret truths” instead of realising that the material wasn’t funny and was offensive and working on improving that.

      He’s definitely the weakest example from the list, I’d put him in the same vein as Chapelle actually.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      exposes that Stephen Merchant was the funny guy all along.

      more directly, he leans into the “legalize comedy” stuff basically, pretends that he’s too edgy and people constantly want to cancel him. when in reality he’s just doing transphobic hack comedy. he’s just generally super cringe.

      my favorite thing about him is James Acaster mocking the shit out of him on one of his shows.

      https://youtu.be/UHqma3rx-xI?t=154s