Reginald D Hunter's show at the Fringe Festival is at the centre of a "hate incident" investigation. Should he be cancelled? Euronews Culture's Jonny Walfisz saw his show and he's not sure.
ADVERTISEMENTAmerican comedian Reginald D Hunter has been cancelled from an upcoming September show at the Eastwood Theatre in the Giffnock suburb of Glasgow following an antisemitism controversy during his run at the Edinburgh Fringe.
During his ‘Fluffy Fluffy Beavers’ show on Sunday 11 August at the Assembly George Square Studios, Hunter spoke about a documentary of a man enduring an abusive relationship only for his wife to falsely claim she was the one being abused.
“When I saw that, I thought, my God, it’s like being married to Israel.”
Reportedly, after this an Israeli couple complained that the joke wasn’t funny, resulting in an interaction between the crowd, Hunter and the couple that resulted in them leaving the show.
The Telegraph reviewer Craig Simpson who was there that night then explained that he was aware a comedian overheard Hunter once say about a Jewish Chronicle review being behind a paywall: ““Typical f****** Jews, they won’t tell you anything unless you subscribe.” Simpson gave Hunter a one star review (on the Telegraph’s paywalled site).
Hunter has since apologised for the “unfortunate incident” and said that he is “staunchly anti-war and anti-bully.” Now, the Police have begun an investigation into a report of a “hate incident” at Hunter’s show.
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We have been made aware of a hate incident, which reportedly took place at an event in Edinburgh on Sunday 11 August. We are reviewing the circumstances.”
As part of Euronews Culture’s coverage of the Edinburgh Fringe, I went to see Hunter perform his ‘Fluffy Fluffy Beavers’ show on Tuesday 13 August, two days after the incident took place. I wasn’t there to witness how the crowd and Hunter handled the Israeli audience members, so I can’t speak to whether it is right or not that Hunter has been cancelled from the 28 September show at the Eastwood Theatre.
It’s possible that the way Hunter handled the situation was unacceptable, hounding two Jewish fans from his gig for expressing an opinion in contention with his. However, having seen the same show as theirs – he made the exact same punchline two days later – I fear that there may have been an overexaggeration.
For what it’s worth, Hunter’s latest Fringe show is bad. The format is a series of loosely connected short asinine anecdotes that all rely on a twist punchline of him saying something slightly controversial. Usually that involve Hunter saying the N-word.
The Israel joke followed a similar format to almost all the jokes of the set in that way. In no way was his comedy revolutionary. It was standard lazy controversy bait. Earlier in the set, he gratuitously mimes having sex with a partner to beyond a point where they’re consenting, before claiming this is what it’s like to keep electing the Conservative Party in the UK.
During the show I saw, Hunter was notably frazzled. He spoke nervously, checking himself between punchlines. The antisemitism furore since the Telegraph article had been published the day earlier had clearly gotten to him.
Throughout the show, he made the odd oblique reference to everything that was going on. At first, I assumed he was going to omit the joke from the set as the hour was drawing to a close, only to find out it was one of his final punchlines.
“Long as I’m ending my career” he said shortly after the joke.
I’d gone to the show open-minded, hoping to see some biting satire which would warrant the opprobrium he had generated. Instead, the joke was limp as was the rest of his set.
ADVERTISEMENTAs I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t there on the night that the incident took place. I don’t know how it looked or felt for the Israelis booed out of a room. But it’s hard not to see the irony in all this. A relatively inoffensive – on behalf of his inanity – comedian ends up cancelled on behalf of Israelis because he jokes about the Israeli state’s inability to paint itself as anything other than a victim.
Would there have been the same reaction by the press if Hunter had made the joke about Russia and two Russian audience members had complained? I don’t think so. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine isn’t identical to Israel’s offensive on Gaza, of course. But analogies can be made without too much stretching of the imagination.
While I could carry on discussing the logistical and semantical differences between the two military operations, ultimately, this situation comes down to Russians not being a protected minority and the Israelis being so by virtue of their assumed Jewishness.
As a British Jew, I have spent much of my life having to explain that my Jewishness is not tied to the Israeli state, and that to conflate Zionism with Semitism is antisemitism itself. Without knowing all the details, instinctually this feels like an occasion for enforcing that separation more strongly.
ADVERTISEMENTHunter made a mediocre joke that was ultimately anti-war. Two citizens of the country waging that war complained and he made little time for them. In any other situation, this would be another most innocuous story from an Edinburgh Fringe stand-up set.
