Much of Dave Chappelle's comedy is constructed upon the idea that hate is just as much a matter of ignorance as it is of perception (whether willful or blind).
And none of Chappelle's comedy touches upon this idea more explicitly than his brilliant character, Clayton Bigsby, who is presented as America's leading white supremacist, blind and -- unbeknownst to him -- black.
Here is the nine-minute sketch from The Dave Chappelle Show (NSFW):
For Bigsby, racism is fueled just as much by a perception (and ignorance) of the other as by his own self-perception (and ignorance fueling that perception).
Chappelle's sketch is intended to be a bombastic number penetrating the ridiculous heart of xenophobia and mocking it for what it is: a house of cards with no true foundation.
However, we have just as bombastic of a story playing out in real life with predictable, and remarkable, results. In Hungary, a man by the name of Csanad Szegedi had, until recently, been a rising figure within the country's ultra nationalist, anti-Semitic party (Jobbik). Szegedi himself had become notorious for targeting much of his hateful rhetoric against Jews, and his prominence within the party led to his garnering a seat on the European Parliament.
How hateful was his rhetoric?
[Szegedi] railed against the "Jewishness" of Hungry's elite and he founded the Hungarian Guard, a group which modeled its uniforms and salute on pro-Nazi Hungarian party Arrow Cross
But when Szegedi
learned that he was Jewish, everything changed. First, when approached by a citizen with information that his grandparents on his mothers side were Jewish -- which makes him a Jew according to
halacha (Jewish Law) -- Szegedi attempted to bribe him to keep the information quiet.
With internet rumors wildly churning and the inevitability of its release, though, Szegedi publicly admitted his Jewish identity recently, and in doing so effectively ended his burgeoning political career as a nationalist anti-Semite. Not only was he forced to resign from Jobbik, but last week the party forced him to give up his EU parliament seat as well. Because he's Jewish.
Szegedi, as one would expect, is now in the midst of an identity crisis, and appears to authentically be trying to learn more about his past and, in some respects, learn how to honor what he has for so long been an object of his hate.
After discovering he was Jewish, Szegedi met with Rabbi Slomo Koves, of Hungary's Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch community in early August, whose own parents were in their teens when they discovered they were Jewish.
[...]
During the meeting, Szegedi apologised for any statements which may have offended the Jewish community and vowed to visit Auschwitz to pay his respects.
Koves described the conversation as ‘difficult and spiritually stressful’, but said he is hopeful for a successful outcome.
The episode is bizarre, to be sure. And one might be tempted to wonder exclusively about how such a character could possibly visit Auschwitz with any authenticity, and whether or not his soul searching is real or a publicity stunt in an effort to remake himself.
But to focus on those things is to ignore the larger picture, a picture Chappelle has painted
relentlessly in his comedy: racism and xenophobia as one of humanity's most absurd and flimsiest of attributes.
And if it didn't cause so much pain, its existence would actually be funny.
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