David Chappelle’s “Space Jews”

Finally someone, male or female, white or whatever, str8 or lgbtq+, with the balls to give Israel the finger in the mainstream media. Chappelle is the American Hamas, lobbing his homemade rockets, flying his balloons out of besieged America at the dastardly foe, which relentless steals and then colonizes our minds, forcing us to our knees to atone for our inbred antisemitism.

His Netflix special The Closer is 99% about the silliness of the trans hysteria and the self-importance of ‘pride parade gays’, but the real bombshell was his idea for a movie: that UFOs are really earthlings who had an ancient civilization (who built the pyramids?) but “things go terrible for them on the other planet so them come back to Earth and claim the Earth for their very own. I call it Space Jews.”

The Detroit crowd loved it, clapping and chortling delight. One cat call. “All right. It’s gonna get worse than that. Hang in there.” It struck me how easily people cotton on to the Zionist ruse when they are given the chance. Biden could easily convince Americans to go after Israel as the last apartheid state if he had the courage. The Zionists would be left dumbstruck.

Chappelle skewers one shibboleth after another. His first jab was at the pedophilia hysteria. He admitted he’d had covid and felt dirty. “The last time I felt that dirty was when I a little boy and was molested by a priest … Don’t feel bad for me. I liked it. I used to get a kick coming in that fella’s face.”

It was after that, and some pointed words about black punching down on Asians as spillover from the ‘Chinese virus’ (his wife is Asian), that he got to his UFO bit. NPR’s (black) reviewer Eric Deggans was all in a tizzy over the special, not for the diddling priest or any of Chappelle’s other outrages, only the ‘antisemitism’.

“I don’t really care what point he’s trying to make; a joke that sounds like antisemitism gets a hard pass from me,” harrumphs Deggans. “The message Chappelle has for those who have criticized him about transphobic, homophobic or any other phobic jokes seems to be: Race trumps all.” Well, yes, maybe it does.

Truly fighting racism means fighting US-Israeli apartheid. It means dismantling gated communities, taking back our cities where money rules and acts as the barrier dumping 99% in one multicultural pot, and leaving the 1% in control. Yes, there is a sprinkling of nonwhites there, but if you are rich enough, the meaningless term ‘race’ truly becomes meaningless. Chappelle’s implicit corollary is: money trumps all.

Poor Deggans, stuck in the kneeling position, not to honour blacks and protest (very real) anti-black racism, but to fawn over our ‘masters of discourse’ as Israel Shamir calls the Israel/Jewish lobby, which is probably more fully represented around the world than the UN.

72% of Jews live ‘abroad’: United States (51%), France, Canada, Russia (3% each), the West Bank and Britain (2% each), Argentina, Germany, Ukraine, Brazil, Australia and Hungary (1% each), and the remaining 3% are spread around 98 other countries.

Each time Netanyahu/ Bennett blow the clarion call to arms, every one of them in 111 countries hears it. 90% of Jews support Israel. You do the math. The UN, even the US, pales into flabby impotence in comparison.

US blacks – US conscience

Listen closely to Chappelle’s rant and it sounds more and more like a sermon about compassion, tolerance, self criticism. That’s no coincidence. His mother Yvonne Seon worked for Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, and is a Unitarian Universalist minister. Family visitors included Pete Seeger. Chappelle’s inspiration came from Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.

Wow. America is coming of age, with the black traditions, from slavery to ex-slavery, to third world liberation, to today’s revival of the radical traditions of the Democratic party. You can feel America’s backbone getting stronger, as it grapples to extricate itself from its US-Israeli dead end.

Deggans’ pontificating about gays et al is more about silliness than racism. Chappelle lauds the old school gays who fought for freedom. “I’m a Stonewall nigger, a glory hole nigger.” Those gays were originally much more like blacks. He explained for the str8s in the audience that ‘glory hole’ was a kind of contract. “You had to hope for the best. It took a lot of courage on both sides of that contract.” Now the gay movement is too mainstream, too shallow, for his liking.

“Gay people were a minority till they needed to be white again.” His personal anecdote is telling. A (white) gay interrupted him at a restaurant (be glad you’re not a celebrity), trying to provoke him as an accomplice took a video. Chappelle lost his cool, marched over and told the dinner party what he thought. As the argument got heated, the gay phoned the cops. Despicable, as the cop will automatically be white and take the white’s side. Where’s the minority solidarity?

The trans highlight was when he went into a public washroom and a woman came in and pulled out her penis at the adjacent urinal. He was freaked out. “It would have been cool if a guy came in and turned away from the urinal to pee. I’d just figure this guy is peeing out of his butt. Must be a vet. Thank you for your service.”

He sides with Rowlands (“She wrote all those Harry Potter books!”) on trans women. “Every one of us comes into this world from between the legs of a woman.” He was labelled a TERF, which he had to google (trans excluding radical feminist), and made the telling observation: “TERF look at trans the way we (blacks) look at black face.” He also looked up ‘feminist’ (equal rights for men and women) and realized: “I’m a feminist!” He had a close trans woman friend, and was devastated when she committed suicide, so he set up a trust fund for her daughter and planned to tell her when she came of age: “I knew your father. He was a wonderful woman.”

Blacks get their own lecture. He recounted the case of an slave who was freed, given some land by his former owner, became rich … and bought slaves. And treated them badly. But that was really just an example of how perverse things were in 19th century America, newly capitalist, hypnotized by money. “He was just doing what was accepted.”

Chappelle is all about empowering the victim. Space Jews were victims on their new planet so came back to Earth though that doesn’t give them the right to victimize others. Nothing antisemitic about that. Kids should not be intimidated by adults if the adults are stepping out of line. Women should stand up to the Weinsteins, fire their spineless agents and band together. We are all Asians, all Palestinians, in Chappelle’s worldview.

Eric Walberg is a journalist who worked in Uzbekistan and is now writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. He is the author of From Postmodernism to Postsecularism and Postmodern Imperialism. His most recent book is Islamic Resistance to Imperialism. Read other articles by Eric, or visit Eric's website.