16,000 people sign petition to have controversial Jimmy Carr special removed from Netflix

Over 16,000 people have signed a petition for Jimmy Carr's Netflix special to be removed after he joked that the killing of Gypsy people during the Holocaust was a ‘positive’.

In ‘Jimmy Carr: His Dark Materials’ which was released on Christmas Day, the comedian spoke of traveller, Roma and Gypsy communities that were killed during the Holocaust in a clip circulated on social media.

In the clip, he said: “When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine.

“But, they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever talks about that because no one wants to talk... about the positives."

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In response, a petition to Netflix was set up by The Traveller Movement on website Action Storm, titled ‘Jimmy Carr: The Genocide of Roma is Not a Laughing Matter’.

Traveller Movement said that Carr’s joke was “nothing short of a celebration of genocide”.

They said: “Hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, Roma, and Traveller people were killed in the Holocaust. Roma people call it 'Porajmos', meaning 'the devouring'.

“We appreciate that comedy is subjective but in our view, when punchlines are indistinguishable from the genuinely-held views of fascists and Neo-Nazis, a line has very clearly been crossed,” they added.

“There is no legitimate basis for this 'joke', and no positive to its inclusion which outweighs the profoundly negative impact it produces.”

Since the clip circulated on Friday, Carr has received intense criticism but some support from politicians, fans and fellow comedians.

At a gig at Whitley Bay Playhouse on Saturday the comic said he was "going down swinging” and that “the joke that ends my career is already out there.”

Indy100 has contacted Netflix for comment.

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