Comedian Jim Jeffries spent his Tuesday evening agonizing over the scourge of racism and what factors have contributed to it the most in recent years. As you’d expect coming from a showbiz lefty, he’s concluded the onus of racism is on right-wingers, whose desire for a “pointless wall” and faith in the power of “thoughts and prayers” leads to both radicalism and inaction in response to acts of hatred.
On Comedy Central’s The Jim Jeffries Show, the Australian native conducted an oh-so-serious segment targeting the rise of white supremacy that has since lead to the recent New Zealand shooting. He began by stating, “You have to try really, really hard to try to not see the rising tide of white nationalism, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim sentiment around the globe.” Perhaps, but it’s hard to take Jeffries as little more than a political opportunist when, after that dramatic opener, he cuts immediately to images of America’s southern border as a sign of the times.
“Trump’s not the only one inventing border emergencies and talking about walls,” Jeffries sneered, as he recounted Germany and Poland’s new “ultra conservative groups.” Yes. Invented. Once you’ve linked mass murderers to US presidents, no logical leap is too far.
For the segment, Jeffries went on tour through his native Australia interviewing extremists and other objectively racist individuals — one of them insisting “Absolutely we can,” in response to Jeffries statement that “we can’t live in a society where we go, ‘This race can’t be in our country.’” He then asked the question, “Now what makes Avi suddenly feel so comfortable saying this shit out loud?” Hmm? Of course the clip jumped again to another image of the US president, with the voice over claiming, “Well just like in America, more and more Australian officials are comfortable saying this shit out loud.”
Jeffries referred to Australian Conservative government officials who questioned the safety of unbridled immigration, saying they “blamed” the victims of the shooting, and that this is them “taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook, ginning up fear of immigrants and clinging to one overly-simplistic idea.” You mean the wall, Mr. Jeffries? Ah, yes the immoral wall.
Somehow the appeal to conservative fear-mongering ended up just turning into a diatribe on the wall “being a waste of money.” Wasn’t the wall being a dangerous racist weapon supposed to be the main concern here? The conversation turned into lampooning the idiocy of a wall, with Jeffries traveling to Australia’s own border fence to point out that it doesn’t do much beyond keeping the dingoes at bay. He then went on to joke about dingoes coming into the country, that they “refuse to assimilate, living by their own set of laws.”
Isn’t it funny though, that Mr. Jeffries is really the only one equating immigrants with dumb animals?
Yeah the agenda points blatant. Jeffries summed it up, asking Avi, “What gives anyone the right to anyone where they can and can’t live?” And that’s where this really lies. Sovereign nations doing sovereign nation things end up inspiring New Zealand crazies to enact cold-blooded murder. Anymore nuance than that is off limits.
