Netflix proves they don’t care. Again.

A corporation is a corporation is a corporation

Sep 21, 2022

**Originally published on zarnajoshi.com on February 6, 2022**

Trigger Warning Rape, pedophilia, incest, rape culture, racism, Holocaust, genocide, slavery, Nazis, ableism. The list goes on and on and on.

Image description: A black and white original photograph of Romani children in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Two of the children look like they have tan skin tones and are hugging each other with one of them facing the camera and smiling, while another lighter-skinned child looks on, smiling. They are dressed in poor and dirty seeming clothes. Behind them stand others, possibly adults, but only their legs are visible so it’s not clear. The people in the background are wearing boots — Screenshot Romani children in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Jimmy Carr is a white male British comedian who has been a vile example of a human his entire career. He’s misogynistic, racist, and spews sexually violent content about raping children and women including disabled women. He’s made jokes about incest such as a true story of a child locked up by her father in a basement so that he could keep her as a sex slave, raping and impregnating her continually for decades. Carr is very proud of not caring about the most vulnerable people’s feelings all while presenting himself as “anti-racist” and “liberal” (he started his Netflix special with a “trigger warning” and comments about how he supported Black Lives Matter). Jimmy Carrs likes also to strongly imply that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.

Being British born, I was exposed to his content regularly for years and as a result I’ve not watched him for well over 10 years because of how traumatizing he is to me. I remember one show when he was talking graphically about wanting to have sex with a particular actress and what he wanted to do to her body for his sexual gratification. At no point do I remember him expressing any thought about whether she would consent to have sex with him and enjoy his actions, or if she would consent to him talking about her this way in public for his own profit and the laughter of others. It was the last act of his I ever watched until today when I saw what he’d done and how much worse he’d become. Or maybe he didn’t get worse, maybe I just blocked the full extent of his awfulness from my mind because I couldn’t stand it.

British TV has aired Jimmy Carr’s vileness for years. He was even described as the most “funny” British comedian last year. What does that tell you about British TV, British corporations, and what systems of oppression are operating in Britain right now?

So am I surprised that Netflix UK chose to platform Jimmy Carr of all people? Not at all. He’s exactly the type of person Netflix would chose to platform. If you’ve been paying any attention whatsoever to Netflix’s record of misogynistic, patriarchal, ableist, racist, violent, colonizing, Hinduphobic, transphobic, anti-Black content, you would not be surprised at all at this development.

This is what Jimmy Carr did in his latest special:

Image description: Headline of an article, black text on a white background. Headline reads: “Jimmy Carr sparks fury with Holocaust routine in Netflix special” Headline is dated below in grey text that reads: “Sat February 5, 2022, 6:17 AM” — Screenshot Headline of article.

Image description: Black text on white background. Excerpt from article that reads: “The comedian, who introduced his show as being “a career ender” and warned it contained “terrible things”, said a “positive” of the Holocaust was that thousands of Gypsies were murdered. The comments were greeted with applause and laughter from the audience. Between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.” — Screenshot Excerpt from article.

Jimmy Carr joked about how it was a good thing the Romani were genocided by Nazis during the Holocaust and the audience roared with laughter, according to the reports.

Most people say that between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani were murdered by the Nazis and that’s awful enough. The real number of how many Romani suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis is actually closer to 1.5 million, according to this report. That’s not including how many had already been exterminated, ethnically cleansed, forcibly assimilated, enslaved, and more in Europe for centuries prior.

The “G” word, by the way, is a racial slur and always has been. Romani people have been saying that for a long time and other people need to listen to them.

Image description: Black text on white background. Excerpt from article that reads: “”Hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti people suffered prejudice, slave labour, sterilisation and mass murder simply because of their identity — these are not experiences for mockery.”” — Screenshot Excerpt from article.

Did you know that the Romani were actually originally from India? They were originally Hindus, forced from their Indigenous land because of Islamic supremacist colonizer violence against them. They ended up scattered all over the world. They’re not Hindu anymore (although some retain disguised Hindu traditions like Goddess worship in the Christian saints they pray to), nor are some of them dark-skinned or even lighter brown-skinned anymore (particularly in Britain). They were forced into Christianity and lighter-skin and even white skin a long time ago through forced conversions and ethnic cleansing. The Romani suffered this much like many Jewish people who were also forced out of their Indigenous land and ended up scattered all over the world due to the exact same violence from Roman supremacy, Christian supremacy, and Islamic supremacy.

Did you know that there are people who make excuses for the persistent genocides of both these groups by saying there were periods of “harmony” between them and their colonizers and that the people in power had good relationships with them during “this” century and “that” century. To justify these stories they always give examples of the “nice people” rescuing the Jews, or Europeans being “curious” about the Romani, but what they ignore is the institutional power which is a system of oppression. That system of oppression profited from exploiting both Romani and Jewish people and therefore certain individuals being nice to some of these vulnerable people means absolutely nothing when we’re talking about systemic oppression. So don’t start with the “not all white people” nonsense. Did you know that Jews were taxed for not being Muslim in the Islamic empire? The only way to not be taxed into economic hardship was to convert or flee. Did you know that Romani people were criminalized and enslaved in Europe? The only way to escape those hardships was to flee or die. So the apologists for genocide and supremacy are exactly that: Apologists. When they say “harmony”, what they mean is segregation, economic exploitation, and forced assimilation. That’s how systems of oppression work. If they really did have such good relationships and times of “harmony”, why were these groups genocided right before and after such-and-such “harmony”? That would be like saying the period of racial segregation in US was a time of “harmony” for Black and white people in the USA in-between the periods of slavery and the drug war. But it wasn’t “harmony”, was it? It was slavery and genocide before, during, and after segregation because of lynchings, rapes, attacks on Black businesses and Black homes, stealing of land. Black people also have suffered criminalization and slavery the entire time since the Civil War that served to recapture freed Black people and force them into unpaid labor because they were prisoners convicted of a crime. That’s legal under the 13th amendment and it’s why the US has neo-slavery even today due to a drug war that disproportionately targets Black people.

This is why it’s best to stop and think before believing apologist excuses for colonizers and supremacists and that’s why it’s important to see the systems of oppression that allow corporations like Netflix to profit from such violent genocidal messaging.

This isn’t about Jimmy Carr. This is about how the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain as well as British corporations are openly proud of their racist white supremacist colonizing identity to the extent that they will publicly laugh at the people their own white supremacy has slaughtered. Netflix UK certainly seems to be proud of it or they wouldn’t have platformed it.

The good news is that a growing number of people are boycotting Netflix, including me.

I want to make clear that for me, this boycott isn’t about censorship. I’m not interested in censoring anyone because I believe in freedom of speech. Let Jimmy Carr’s Netflix special stay up there if he wants it there. Jimmy Carr and any other comedian or person can say whatever they want on their own platform and I will never advocate for their speech or their website or their social media to be taken down. What I’m boycotting is corporations who make money from such violent colonizing genocidal language.

And guess what? The boycott is working.

Image description: White text on a purple background showing a graph. Headline at the top reads: “Netflix plummets after earnings. SNFLX since 1/4/2016” Below headline is the graph showing from 2016 to 2022 with white letters and numbers. The line of the chart itself is in red. It goes upwards from 2016 until the end of 2021 when it drops drastically till now. Source is Yahoo! Finance in the bottom left corner. — Screenshot Netflix earnings from 2016 to beginning of 2022.

Indian Hindus in particular are boycotting Netflix all the way across the planet because we know that it doesn’t make any sense to give money to a corporation that hates you or other vulnerable people.

Image description: Black text on white background showing a headline of an article that reads: “Netflix’s lack of success in India ‘frustrating’, cofounder Reed Hastings says” — Screenshot Article headline.

Never forget that for colonizers and supremacists, it’s all ultimately about money. They colonize and oppress for money. Then they demonize and criminalize the people they colonize and oppress for money. Then they laugh at the people they demonize and criminalize and call it “entertainment” for money. Whether it’s Dave Chappelle erasing Black Trans women, or Jimmy Carr celebrating the genocide of the Romani, it’s all being done for money.

That’s why I’m boycotting Netflix and I’m not going to stop.