Roseanne Barr faces backlash for 'sarcastic' Holocaust comments

June 27, 2023 6:27 PM PT

If you’re wondering why “She’s Jewish” is trending on Twitter, it’s because Roseanne Barr is under fire ... again.

The embattled “Roseanne” star joined comedian Theo Von on a recent episode of the “This Past Weekend” podcast. When discussing the current social and political climate, Barr (who is “100% Jewish”) made comments that are being called “reprehensible and irresponsible.”

“Nobody wants to hear the real truth,” began Barr, before adding that social media guidelines have “mandated” what the truth is or isn’t.

“And don’t you dare say anything, that’s where you’ll be off YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and all the other ones,” she continued. “There’s such a thing as the truth and facts and we have to stick to it.”

Barr, who claimed she was fired from ABC’s “Roseanne” reboot in 2018 for voting for former President Trump, used the election results as an example of the “mandated truth” when talking with Von.

She was actually fired over a racist tweet about former President Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.

Barr was seemingly continuing to offer Von examples of conspiracies or often-spouted “truths” when she mentioned the Holocaust, using its denial as a means to support her tirade against “mandated truths.”

“And nobody died in the Holocaust either,” she said. “That’s the truth.”

“Yeah, it should happen. Six million Jews should die right now because they cause all the problems in the world,” she continued. “But it never happened.”

The one-minute clip of Barr’s remarks spread like wildfire on social media. The two-and-a-half hour-long podcast episode has no shortage of controversial comments on everything from women’s empowerment to female hysteria to the sex lives of trans women.

But it was Barr’s incendiary and abhorrent remarks about the Holocaust, specifically, that sparked public outcry. It’s not entirely clear whether Barr was being serious, or if she was being facetious and purposely saying something absurd to prove some kind of point about “truth.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, issued a statement via Twitter, saying, “Sarcasm or not, Roseanne Barr’s comments about Jews and the Holocaust are reprehensible and irresponsible. This isn’t funny. And shame on Theo Von for letting it go unchallenged and instead diving into conspiracy theories about Jews and Hollywood.”

“The Holocaust — the murder of six million Jews — is one of the most well documented crimes in history, made possible by antisemitic conspiracy theories. Invoking those dangerous theories and calling for the mass murder of Jews is an outrage,” the Holocaust Museum account tweeted.

Von came to Barr’s defense by tweeting out a nearly four-minute clip of their conversation, saying, “Here is the full clip of Roseanne Barr obviously using sarcasm and satire. She is a mensch and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”

“Hi Theo, I’m Jewish and I’m here to tell you that you’re completely wrong & Roseanne is completely Qrazy,” Tara Dublin wrote in response to Von’s tweet. “There’s NOTHING funny about saying Jews deserve to die. NOTHING. There are NOT two sides to the Holocaust. Please stop helping her spread propaganda.”

Joel S. attempted to decipher Barr’s message, tweeting, “In context, she’s not saying she actually doesn’t believe the Holocaust didn’t happen, but that believing the 2020 election was fair and Biden won is like denying the Holocaust. Which is … still really horrible and antisemitic. Even if she is Jewish.”

The comedian’s son, Jake Pentland, disparaged those upset by the remarks, telling TMZ that America had bigger problems to focus on, and that “We are embarrassed that people are stupid enough not to recognize Roseanne is being sarcastic.”

This isn’t the first time Barr has publicly talked about the Holocaust, and her previous comments indicate that Barr’s actual sentiments are likely antithetical to what the clip on Von’s podcast has led people to believe.

In April 2023, Barr spoke with Les Glassman, in an interview posted on YouTube, about growing up with Orthodox grandparents in a “hotbed of PTSD” in the “Jewish shtetl” of Salt Lake City. She told Glassman that she had an extraordinary connection with Holocaust survivors, who had suffered “unspeakable things” in her community and had “numbers on their arms,” and that she felt a duty to make them laugh and bring them joy.

She also said she was traumatized as a child from watching the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. “When I was 3 years old, my grandmother and her friends would watch the Eichmann trial. It was on television, and they would insist that I watch it too,” she said. “So that affected me in many, many deep psychological ways, and they would also tell stories of horror.

“And the pictures I saw, they showed me, and they said, ‘She should see, all Jewish children should see what they did to us.’”