The racist “comedy” set at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday has set off a deluge of condemnation. Tony Hinchcliffe’s bigoted comments — about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage,” Jews clinging to money, Palestinians throwing rocks and Black people carving watermelons — were the type of stuff you’d expect from a pro-Nazi comedy act in Hitler’s Germany.
But we shouldn’t view them in a vacuum. To me, they speak to a trend: the MAGA movement’s tendency to fuel hate under the guise of comedy.
Tony Hinchcliffe’s bigoted comments were the type of stuff you’d expect from a pro-Nazi comedy act in Hitler’s Germany.
Particularly with Donald Trump’s rise in today’s Republican Party, conservatives have used a veil of silliness and surrealism to give his hateful rhetoric and policies a softer tone and feel, or an unserious one. (Full transparency: I think about this whenever Trump does that little herky-jerky dance thing).
There’s already been a chorus of conservative voices leaping to Hinchcliff’s defense, claiming that liberals just don’t know how to take a joke. See: Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.
To everyone mad at @TonyHinchcliffe
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 28, 2024
IT WAS A JOKE!
Of course, the “it’s just jokes” line isn’t actually a defense. We know from minstrel shows in the U.S. and pro-Nazi comedies in Germany alike that humor can be an effective tool in promoting bigotry and extremism.
It’s a point that writer Tauriq Moosa made for The Guardian in 2017, when covering how neo-Nazis were using humor to spread their messaging online. And it’s also a point that my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem made in 2022, when he explained how Trump’s tendency to lob insults has helped paper over his extremism:
Trump, too, has long embraced his own clown costume, even if he’s not always been in control of whether people laugh with him or at him. His oratorical identity as an insult comic who was willing to blurt out what no politician could or should say out loud seduced his devoted fan base, who saw his derision of the establishment and taboo-breaking as a badge of authenticity. At the same time, his status as fool both made his critics underestimate him and provided him an escape hatch of plausible deniability: He could always say he was just joking when he crossed one too many lines.
Today, it’s not just Trump who relies on this strategy. There’s an entire ecosystem of conservative-friendly — if not outright extreme — content creators who traffic in offensive rhetoric under the guise of what amounts to white frat bro “comedy.” From Jesse Watters to Tucker Carlson, from Greg Gutfeld to Charlie Kirk — the American media ecosystem is littered with white men (and their spiritual allies) eager to promote the most hackneyed hate speech as though it is edgy or comedic.
This is essentially the Joe Rogan playbook — and Hinchcliffe, naturally, is a close associate of his. I think there’s a clear message to take from Rogan’s success and the fact that so many others, like Hinchcliffe, seem to want to follow in his footsteps: Hate sells, especially if it comes with a couple of laughs.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.