Jewish stand-up comedian Steve Hofstetter did a Nazi bit at his performance at a club in Vancouver, British Columbia on March 22, joking about how rioters in Charlottesville were chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
Hofstetter continued the act saying, “What the f*** job do you have that you’re worried that Jews are comin’ for ya? We don’t want to work at Hobby Lobby.” At that moment, an audience member interrupted him, answering the rhetorical question, and shouted “T.V.” Hofstetter responded, “T.V.? Oh, are you saying that Jews control Hollywood? Because you can leave…” After arguing with the man in the crowd about what he meant by his comment, the audience member replied, “Jewish people control TV and they do a great job of doing it.”
A few weeks after the show, Hofstetter posted a video blog on YouTube of the stand-up act, which included the incident that occurred. He said he received hundreds of death threats and more than 3,000 hateful comments about “the Jew.”
On July 2, he posted a follow-up “vlog” on YouTube called “A Jewish Comedian’s Response to Nazi Death Threats” breaking down the subsequent reaction to his original video and explaining the seriousness of the backlash he received on his original video. In just three hours of posting it, he received over 20,000 views.
Hofstetter explained that the reason for the tremendous amount of hate on his original video was because “it was featured by some vloggers, ranging from casual right-wing supporters to some actual Nazi paraphernalia-wearing hatemongers.”
Although the comedian admitted in his vlog, “I did not handle [the incident] correctly. I let my anger get to me,” he went on to say, “The easiest way to get someone to hate a group of people for being different is by starting small.”
Hofstetter brought the incident to the FBI to investigate the hate crime. “I forwarded them the email I’d gotten and screen-shotted some of the more explicit comments/Facebook messages,” he told the Journal in an email on July 2. The FBI confirmed that these messages came from actual “career criminals,” Hofstetter said in his vlog. “From what I understand, [the FBI] now [has] access to this stuff if they ever need to build a case against any of these people.”
Hofstetter added, “I have not let it change my daily life at all, other than to strengthen my resolve to fight it. I’ve actually written a bunch about growing up Jewish since, and it is one of the themes in my act now.”
You can watch Hofstetter’s vlog on YouTube below:
