This Edinburgh Festival joke has exposed the hypocrisy of our cultural elite

Reginald D Hunter’s gag is a pitiful reminder that we still treat anti-Semitsm as an ‘acceptable’ form of racism

Without freedom of speech, comedy will die. This is why, even though I may not like the joke, I will firmly defend the right of the comedian Reginald D Hunter to liken Israel to an abusive spouse. And it’s why I think that, during the American’s show at the Edinburgh Festival this week, it was excessive of an Israeli couple to shout objections to that joke.
Nonetheless, I’m glad they did leave. Because it meant they weren’t there to hear a joke that was far, far worse – and exposed the hypocrisy of our liberal cultural elite.
As Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph’s critic, recorded in his review, Mr Hunter recalled a time his female partner had tried to access the website of The Jewish Chronicle. According to him, she said: “Typical f—ing Jews. They won’t tell you anything unless you subscribe.” Mr Hunter then added: “It’s just a joke.”
Yes, it may well be a joke. But it’s one that perpetuates the ancient, pernicious stereotype that Jews are mean and avaricious. No doubt it would have raised a chuckle from Joseph Goebbels or Julius Streicher. But I’m surprised such a joke was told, in 2024, at Britain’s most liberal, middle-class arts festival.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be. Sadly I haven’t been to Edinburgh this year, so I don’t know whether any comedians there have been telling jokes based on pernicious stereotypes about other ethnic minorities. If there have been jokes about “typical f—ing blacks”, “typical f—ing Muslims” or “typical f—ing gypsies”, for example, I’m not aware of them. 
On the whole, though, I suspect there haven’t been any, because, if there had, we would most certainly have read about them – and, very possibly, the arrest of the comedians who’d told them. Even if those comedians had, like Mr Hunter, added that it was “just a joke”, I’m not convinced this would have saved them. A modern, progressive comedy audience simply wouldn’t have stood for it. In our inclusive new age, where users of social media can be jailed for posting racist comments about asylum seekers, surely someone would have reported jokes about “typical f—ing blacks/ Muslims/ gypsies” as hate speech. 
A joke about “typical f—ing Jews”, however, appears not to have sparked similar horror from the audience. In my eyes, this only reinforces the impression that has been growing since October 7 – which is that, in liberal circles, anti-Semitism is still treated as an acceptable form of racism. People who are outraged by any other form of bigotry, and proclaim themselves to be “anti-racist”, seem to have a peculiar blind spot to it. We talk about two-tier policing. Here’s a case of two-tier offence-taking.
Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on our cultural elites. Practically everyone who’s set foot in a Western university over the past 30 years has had it drummed into them that, because of “power imbalances”, only white people can be racist. In this light, I suppose we can hardly blame liberal audiences for thinking that, if a comedian happens to be black, he’s entitled to make as many jokes about Jews as he likes. The jokes can’t be racist – because the man telling them can’t be.
At any rate, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Hunter for supplying a helpful illustration of another point I often make. Which is that, wherever there is hostility towards Israel, anti-Semitism is rarely far away. 
It is of course perfectly possible to criticise Israel without being anti-Semitic. The question is: why do so few of Israel’s critics manage it?