Is Colin Jost a Present-Day Holocaust Denier?

According to Reddit, last Saturday, SNL’s open, “Russian Disinformation” was written by Colin Jost and Ben Silva. I’m going to write as if Jost wrote all the jokes, though in practice, I believe most writers have an opportunity to throw a joke into the mix.

What responsibilities do Harvard graduates have when they work in the public sphere?

Do I believe Colin Jost is a WWII Holocaust denier? I don’t believe so. But is he a present-day holocaust (genocide) denier? If he is, I can not tell from his writing that he isn’t. Bear in mind, that’s my point here.

In the summer of 1982, while I was a junior in college, Colin Jost was born. He grew up in Staten Island, as I did, years before. It was there, in my early teens, when a kid called me a “filthy sinking Jew.” Although I knew my father was Jewish I had never thought of myself as a Jew. (having no interest in the subject). My guess is the kid was only repeating what he heard at home.

This story has nothing to do with being Jewish. I’m only pointing out that ethnic, religious, and racial neighborhood stereotypes are not unique to Europe.

After I graduated college, I met a middle-aged executive in Manhattan who happened to live on Staten Island. He said someone had recently burned a swastika on his lawn. Like many Jews throughout history, the executive wondered if his family would be safer moving away.

Does that swastika on a Staten Island lawn make Colin Jost anti-Semitic? A holocaust denier? No.

It was the second swastika Jost carved, the day after, that makes him one.

Haha! Just a joke. No harm right?

Forget about my bad taste in jokes. What about Jost, who reaches 5 million people every Saturday night?

During the skit he perpetrated 7 falsehoods:

• That NATO “back ups” up the United States (Is Jost paid by Putin!)
• That Russia had a significant effect on the 2016 elections
• That Germany loves going to war
• That “every” country is sending supplies to Ukraine (only a few are)
• That Neil Young was confronting Joe Rogan (Spotify was his target)
• That the “Secretary of Defense”, who is black, could be in two places at the same time. The first, in the room he just spoke in, and the second that Chloe Fineman suggests off-stage. Otherwise, what possible person could Keenan have been playing?
• That young Ukrainians would call Russia the land of wealth and freedom

I found none of the jokes good enough to excuse fake facts.

Why write a skit on Ukraine if you’re going to ignore the bare basics of the crisis? Why go to college, let alone Harvard?

The prime complaint by Russia is that NATO “backs up” the United States. Russia accepts that the goal of NATO is to defend against aggressors towards Europe or the United States. What Russia accuses the U.S. of doing is using NATO to pursue global hegemony.

If Biden were ever to say what Colin Jost wrote, Putin would say to Europe: “I told you so”. It would be the end of NATO.

I bet many of my readers are thinking, it’s just childish comedy. Jost needs to cater to the lowest denominator viewer. He can’t go into any of these obscure details. Except he did.

In 2005, Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, met Vladimir Putin and showed him his Super Bowl ring. Putin put it in his pocket and no amount of Bush Administration diplomacy could get it back. Only a geopolitical wonk would remember this beyond-strange event. If SNL viewers could get this joke, why not some real one about the situation?

Then Jost and team make a clever joke, though I doubt on purpose.

Both parents of Jonathan Goldsmith, the real-life actor behind the Dos Equis commercials, are Jewish, from Russia no less.

Lithuania was essentially invaded by Russia in 1940. Germany also wanted to invade, but Russia got there first. Naturally, the Lithuanian Jews were happier that the Russians invaded, instead of the Germans, for obvious reasons. They didn’t like the Russian invading any more than the non-Jewish Lithuanians, but tell that to certain people in Lithuania when their favorite comedians called Jews Russian sympathizers.

So, when Germany invaded Lithuania do you think those Lithuanians blamed themselves for getting emasculated by a 2nd foreign power? The Germans barely set foot in Lithuania before many Lithuanians were taking out their humiliation on their Jewish population. Almost 200,000 were killed within the space of half a year. Think about that!

So that joke could have worked to Lithuanian Jews in 1939! They probably would have laughed. Should we laugh when only 1.6% of them survived past 1941, when Germany booted Russia out?

What I’m saying is that Russia, NATO, Ukraine, it’s serious business. Since 2014 over 13,000 people have been killed in the Donbas region, where Russia is supporting Russia-sympathizers against Ukrainians. This is happening TODAY. This isn’t history.

Real human suffering in Donbas, Ukraine — today, and on the night SNL played that skit.

What would happen to Russian sympathizers in Donbas should Ukraine over-run it? What would happen to Ukrainian sympathizers should Russia formally annex the Donbas region?

A holocaust denier isn’t only someone who denies that Jews were killed in concentration camps, or in the case of Lithuania, simply beaten to death with shovels. A holocaust denier can also be someone who believes genocide and death-squads don’t go on today, even in Ukraine.

NATO may be an anachronism. It may be what Putin accuses it of becoming, a sidekick of U.S. interests. Or it may be what it has always been, a bulwark against the kinds of atrocities that occurred all through Europe during the first two World Wars.

Jost can joke all he wants about Putin, Russia, Ukraine, NATO, Biden, etc. I just wish he honored his Harvard education, his success in life, to keep in mind, the people struggling in Donbas, scared for their life in Ukraine, the soldiers, the families of soldiers both in NATO and Russia.

Why use human suffering trivially, for a juicy paycheck and fame? There are many subjects Jost could have written a skit about — like football.

World War II may be long ago. Donbas isn’t. Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t. Many parts of Syria aren’t. Yemen isn’t. The two young kids, recently pulled from a civilian jet, tortured and rotting in a Belarus cell aren’t.

We need good thoughtful comedy about the U.S., Europe, Russia and Ukraine. It should touch on these darker problems. Otherwise, it isn’t really comedy, it’s cruel laughter at human suffering. The sad excrement of an unmindful nation. The same nation, by the way, that didn’t save hundreds of thousands — millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents, and on and on almost 80 years ago.

Have Harvard graduates become like the turn-of-the 20th century German, Russian, English and French aristocracy? Out of touch with the present-day holocaust conditions around them? It seems the case at SNL.