What does a comic have to do to get cancelled at the Edinburgh Fringe? These days, you don’t even need to go to the trouble of aggressively misgendering someone, or exposing yourself onstage. Being Jewish, or expressing support for the Israeli hostages who were stolen by the jihadist killers of Hamas, appears to suffice.
In news that is as shocking as it is depressingly unsurprising, two Jewish comedians have had shows cancelled at the world’s biggest arts festival, after their venues pulled out at the last minute, citing “safety concerns” and “discriminatory” social-media posts
Philip Simon was due to perform his show, Shall I Compere Thee in a Funny Way?, at the Banshee Labyrinth pub. Now he’s out on his ear, accused by the venue of “align[ing] with the rhetoric and symbology of groups associated with humanitarian violations”.
Whatever groups might it mean? The venue reportedly cited Simon’s attendance at a vigil marking 100 days since Hamas’s pogrom on October 7 2023, a tweet saying we should “stand strong against terror”, and another warning that the women who were raped on October 7 are being forgotten. The bastard! That Simon was clearly condemning “groups associated with humanitarian violations” – ie, Hamas – seems to have passed the dimwits of the Banshee Labyrinth by.
This is the second time Simon has been cancelled at this year’s Fringe and the festival hasn’t even started yet. He was also due to host a show called Jew-O-Rama, with a line-up of Jewish comics, at Whistlebinkies, until it was pulled last week. Comic Rachel Creeger had her own show, Ultimate Jewish Mother, cancelled by the same venue. Apparently, an announcement that more police supervision would be necessary led some bar staff to complain that they felt “unsafe”.
Increasingly, even attending a comedy show as an Israeli or a Jew seems a risky business. Last year, comic Paul Currie was banned from the Soho Theatre after “subjecting Jewish audience members to verbal abuse’, telling an Israeli punter to ‘get the f*** out of here”.
Grimly, I’m sure a lot of British Jews are just pricing this kind of thing in at this point. They had been having to contend with a growing, ambient anti-Semitism long before October 7 – and have been exposed to the most unvarnished, open Jew hatred since. The arts world, marinated in the bigotries of postmodern Leftism, was lost to Israelophobia a long time ago.
We’ve allowed this to become normal – a bristling, unthinking hostility towards Jews that is now so intense that even reminding people of Hamas’s atrocities is met with, at best, an eyeroll and, at worst, accusations of racism and calls for cancellation. It’s perverse: merely acknowledging the existence of murderous, genocidal Jew hatred is treated as its own form of hatred.
We gentiles need to stop leaving British Jews to fight this foul discrimination on their own. So if you’re going up to Edinburgh this year, stay clear of the Banshee Labyrinth or Whistlebinkies.
What does a comic have to do to get cancelled at the Edinburgh Fringe? These days, you don’t even need to go to the trouble of aggressively misgendering someone, or exposing yourself onstage. Being Jewish, or expressing support for the Israeli hostages who were stolen by the jihadist killers of Hamas, appears to suffice.
In news that is as shocking as it is depressingly unsurprising, two Jewish comedians have had shows cancelled at the world’s biggest arts festival, after their venues pulled out at the last minute, citing “safety concerns” and “discriminatory” social-media posts
Philip Simon was due to perform his show, Shall I Compere Thee in a Funny Way?, at the Banshee Labyrinth pub. Now he’s out on his ear, accused by the venue of “align[ing] with the rhetoric and symbology of groups associated with humanitarian violations”.
Whatever groups might it mean? The venue reportedly cited Simon’s attendance at a vigil marking 100 days since Hamas’s pogrom on October 7 2023, a tweet saying we should “stand strong against terror”, and another warning that the women who were raped on October 7 are being forgotten. The bastard! That Simon was clearly condemning “groups associated with humanitarian violations” – ie, Hamas – seems to have passed the dimwits of the Banshee Labyrinth by.
This is the second time Simon has been cancelled at this year’s Fringe and the festival hasn’t even started yet. He was also due to host a show called Jew-O-Rama, with a line-up of Jewish comics, at Whistlebinkies, until it was pulled last week. Comic Rachel Creeger had her own show, Ultimate Jewish Mother, cancelled by the same venue. Apparently, an announcement that more police supervision would be necessary led some bar staff to complain that they felt “unsafe”.
Increasingly, even attending a comedy show as an Israeli or a Jew seems a risky business. Last year, comic Paul Currie was banned from the Soho Theatre after “subjecting Jewish audience members to verbal abuse’, telling an Israeli punter to ‘get the f*** out of here”.
Grimly, I’m sure a lot of British Jews are just pricing this kind of thing in at this point. They had been having to contend with a growing, ambient anti-Semitism long before October 7 – and have been exposed to the most unvarnished, open Jew hatred since. The arts world, marinated in the bigotries of postmodern Leftism, was lost to Israelophobia a long time ago.
We’ve allowed this to become normal – a bristling, unthinking hostility towards Jews that is now so intense that even reminding people of Hamas’s atrocities is met with, at best, an eyeroll and, at worst, accusations of racism and calls for cancellation. It’s perverse: merely acknowledging the existence of murderous, genocidal Jew hatred is treated as its own form of hatred.
We gentiles need to stop leaving British Jews to fight this foul discrimination on their own. So if you’re going up to Edinburgh this year, stay clear of the Banshee Labyrinth or Whistlebinkies.