The day I was scheduled to interview the comedy writers behind the X/Twitter account, The Comedy Brigade (@Comedy_Brigade), they were extra busy – because Roger Waters had opened his mouth, or rather his X account, yet again.
The Comedy Brigade is the brainchild of a group of 13 top American comedy writers who have worked for such programs as The Daily Show, The Tonight Show, Conan, Frasier, Roseanne, and a couple of others. They have even won a few Emmys. But now they are devoting part of each day to fighting antisemitism, or, as their X bio puts it, “Fighting the world’s oldest prejudice one joke at a time.”
Waters, known more for his often-bizarre antisemitic rants than for his music in recent years, was ticked off at fellow musician Nick Cave, who had just spoken out against the BDS movement. Waters had just posted:
Hey @nickcave, It’s ok to be wrong mate. Obviously you not opposing Genocide is a biggy? But hey! Nobody’s perfect? Just say you’re sorry. Not to me and @brianeno, we don’t give a f***. No, say you’re sorry to the Palestinians. Join BDS and we’ll let bygones be bygones. Love, R.
The two Comedy Brigade writers I spoke to were in the midst of conducting what they called a “comedy war room” via an online chat group with the other writers to try to come up with a funny enough response.
Eventually, they went with: “@rogerwaters Fun fact: If you play “Triumph of the Will” with the sound off and read Roger Waters’s posts simultaneously, they sync up perfectly.” They added, “‘Roger Waters’ and ‘one-sided counterproductive sloganeering’ - two things that also seemed cool on my freshman year!” and “If I had to be in a band with you I’d become a reclusive acid dropout too.”
The way they work, one of the writers told me, is that, “We go back and forth and everyone gives us their jokes until we come up with something that works.”
One aspect of the Comedy Brigade that they aren’t crazy about is that these writers feel the need to work anonymously on the account. While opposing antisemitism might not seem like a controversial issue to most of us, in image-conscious Hollywood, taking any stance on politics or current events is fraught.
The need for anonymity is “a sign of the times,” one of the writers told me.
First order of business
THE FIRST order of business each day is to pick an antisemitic tweet out of the many that go online each day. They search for one that is getting enough views to make it worth responding to.
“People need to see these funny responses to this hate,” one of them told me. “The antisemitic propaganda machine is very effective… There are a lot of arguments on X and the arguments don’t go anywhere. There’s this feeling that you need to go around the arguments and one effective technique for doing that is comedy, which can work better than an argument on the Internet. You get around the arguments to disarm people.”
They started the account in July, and recently received an endorsement from the popular, joke-filled X account, The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome, which reportedly belongs to a Canadian living in Israel, who wrote, “Since X is a platform that doesn’t easily ban Jew haters, one approach is simply to ridicule them. Follow >> @Comedy_Brigade. Every day we will bring you antisemitic posts to ridicule at your leisure.”
And since the antisemitism keeps coming, the Comedy Brigade is always busy. Just a day ago, they responded to a tweet saying, “Communism is when jewish gangsters take over your government, and then your economy. Capitalism is when jewish gangsters take over your economy, and then your government. Fascism is what jewish gangsters scream when you interfere with their takeover attempts,” by saying, “So…Antisemitism is when some idiot who knows nothing about economics blames everything on the Jews,” and “If Jews were gangsters, antisemites like you would be swimming with the gefilte fish.”
No, they’re not subtle, but that’s the point – neither are the antisemites. “We just want to make people laugh about how ridiculous these antisemites are.”
In one recent tweet, antisemites posted an image of a white man in a suit labeled “Civilization,” underwater, being dragged down by a boulder labeled “Blacks,” that he is tied to, while a shark labeled “Jews” approaches. The Comedy Brigade tweeted, “So, if I’m reading this correctly, Blacks are strong, Jews are fierce and Civilization is too stupid to untie a rope with its free hand.”
Noted one of the writers, “As Jews, we do comedy better than other people. It’s how Jews have always dealt with a terrifying world.” Making fun of antisemitic tweets is “steady work,” said his writing partner, and it was time for them to get back to it.