Australian senator Ralph Babet demands the duo, Hollywood star Jack Black and musician Kyle Gass, be deported over the latter’s comment
The latest show on Tenacious D’s Australian tour has been postponed after senator Ralph Babet demanded the pair be deported following an apparent joke about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
American comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass were due to perform in Newcastle on Tuesday evening, but the show – part of the band’s Spicy Meatball Tour – was cancelled without notice on Tuesday afternoon.
Concert promoter Frontier Touring said on social media that it regretted “to advise that Tenacious D’s concert tonight at Newcastle Entertainment Centre has been postponed”.
Video from the event showed (Kyle) Gass being presented with a birthday cake and told to “make a wish” as he blew out the candles. Gass then appeared to say “don’t miss Trump next time” – just hours after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania that left the former president injured.
Unbelievable how every right winger shows up anytime a conservative white dude “just tells a joke and gets attacked by woke” but when the shoe is on the other foot they explode like the fucking Hindenburg
I think "the shoe is on the other foot" is cutting both ways here. Read this thread, it's filled with people defending banning people for hate speech, but the defending him here for literally asking for someone to be murdered.
Kinda like most liberals who generally scream about better gun control/laws... But are REALLY disappointed Trump didn't take that bullet to head directly.
How bizarre that an Australian politician is getting his panties in a twist over American politics.
I'm aware of the cultural absorption by other countries of American culture, but it really seems subordinate and pandering of politicians from other countries to emotionally invest themselves in American issues.
Almost as bad as the pandering, subservient American politicians themselves.
In case it's not clear to any Lemmings, Rupert Murdoch is an Australian and owns Fox News. His influence is the common thread between US and Australian conservative politics.
Babet is a weird little dude. He preaches during an empty chamber and puts it on his social media as though he makes a difference about conspiracy theory enquiries.
It's crazy because if they made the same joke in America few people might be pissed, that's about it. They wouldn't be banned, and their demographic is not the type to be mad about that comment. It would barely actually affect them here.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to political violence. Some portion of the populace will justify any specific violent action, and it's up to the history books to tell us which of those were actually justifiable. I get the feeling we'd land on different sides of this one.
Serious answer: I think it’s a worrying sign of the times if anyone thinks of political violence as anything other than abhorrent. The reasons they might: he’s stacked the highest court in the land with hacks who’ve handed him immunity. He’s succeeded on the back of lies and smear tactics. So he’s killed truth and justice, and he’s just getting started. His party have gerrymandered themselves into a perpetual obstructionist role that makes a mockery of democracy.
He’s a convicted felon and Russian asset who is about to be elected president. How far can we be taken into dystopia before “abhorrent political violence” becomes “absolutely necessary revolutionary action?”
Since google puts twitter feeds at the top and that cesspit is full of idiots i decided to check lemmy to see if i was alone in thinking this is a huge over reaction.
Pretty safe to say that people of lemmy are my people.
Personally i see it as a joke, maybe one in bad taste. Maybe one that shouldn't have been said. But a joke none the less. Its certainly interesting to see how the right react when the shoe is on the other foot.
Literally my first thought was "who the fuck cares"
Whether you find a joke funny or not, or in poor taste, or whatever... "WAAAAAH I GONNA KICK YOU OUT OF THE COUNTRY BECAUSE WORDS HURT" is not the appropriate level of response.
And besides, I thought these fucks were all about being tough, growing a thicker skin, getting over it etc
Suddenly it's not the same when it's one of theirs in the crosshairs this time? Or I guess iron sights, if I read correctly.
They shouldn't kick him out of the country. They should kick him out of the band and write a song about it. And than write a song about how they got back together
It's ironically very against the American ideology to do what he's doing. Free speech is kind of a big deal here. Again, ironically, the conservatives talk about this way, way more often than anyone else.
Is this the same angle you took when reacting to Dave Chapelle's recent controversies? For the record, I agree with you, I just don't see a lot of consistency on either side when it comes to stuff like this. Jokes are one issue where "both sides are the same" isn't too far off. People in general pick and choose what they're offended by and can't easily follow their own advice to let it go when the subject matter touches one of their pet issues.
This is a taste of what’s to come if Trump is reelected. Mocking Dear Leader in good taste or bad becomes a punishable offense. Freedom of Speech goes out the window, disrespecting snowflakes in office is not allowed.
I literally just had this argument with a friend. I made the same points as you. It was tongue and cheek. While not an OK think to say, it's comedians making jokes. Cancelling a tour and deportation seems like a gross overreaction to me.
Babet asking for deportation is not the real story - he's just an idiot making ridiculous statements for attention.
I don't really buy into the "just a joke" defense. There's plenty of things one could say "as a joke" that we would and should denounce as a society, and political violence is one of them. Celebrities have a responsibility to uphold social norms or at the very least not to normalise concepts we will not tolerate as a society including political violence.
Yes, you and me can see that what was said was "just a joke" but there's plenty of people who would hear that joke and assume that wishing Trump would be assassinated is a normal opinion.
There’s plenty of things one could say “as a joke” that we would and should denounce as a society, and political violence is...
Not one of them. Kyle isn't a militia member calling to arms and no vulnerable people are being harmed by being irreverent about a fascist preaching violence barely missing the consequences. Don't punch down, but do punch Nazis.
Celebrities have a responsibility to uphold social norms or at the very least not to normalise concepts we will not tolerate as a society including political violence.
PS: Elon Musk and the rest of the hypocrites can stuff their opinions about how to react to assassination attempts after the way they responded to Nancy Pelosi's husband being attacked.
i don't think that idiot killing him would accomplish anything but don't pretend it would've been a sad day if we lost a SELF-PROCLAIMED WANNABE DICTATOR.
Pragmatically it definitely would. Republicans have a fairly unpopular platform they’re running behind a demagogue. The rest of the party “stars” have the personality of a wet paper towel so hard to imagine them garnering anywhere near the enthusiasm.
It might not solve anything, but at least he'd be gone. We all know he isn't going to be punished in any meaningful way for anything he's done, so at least him being killed would mean he could no longer bring harm to anyone.
In the short term, the GOP would have to decide on a new candidate, and one of them literally shot the ear off the current candidate so fat fucking chance, mate.
He'll get stomped in November. Volunteer to drive people to vote, anything you can do to help others have their vote heard. Something the right works VERY hard on making sure doesn't happen because they know if everyone votes, they lose. If you think about it, that's the biggest problem we have. We have a minority making terrible decisions for us, because they're just in it for the money and their sponsors, the corporations. Their voters are fools that are fueled by hatred and stupidity.
I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.
It's also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.
Why does everyone say they would get a boost? Literally no one who is going to vote for Biden is going to change their vote because of that. At most it would energize the base but Republicans don’t really have an issue with that like Democrats anyway.
He was shot by a conservative. Why would there be a boost? It's not like this would be in an alternate universe where he was shot by an antifa supersoldier. If Joe Biden got shot by a Democratic loner people would think "man that's weird", not "we have to punish the Republicans".
It would definitely accomplish something. It's not clear if that would necessarily be a positive thing, but it would definitely be a pivotal moment in history. Even just the attempted assassination might eventually be seen as pivotal.
The right-wing is full of so many contradictory forces, and right now it's only Trump's cult of personality that's holding them together. It seems very likely to me that post-Trump they're going to fracture. If Trump becomes dictator he'll probably groom Don Jr. to succeed him, and he'll eliminate anybody who might question that decision. But, right now, Jr. is not in a position to take over from dad, so if Trump were no longer in the picture, there would be a power vacuum and massive infighting.
But, if the assassination attempt had succeeded, there would probably have been a lot more political killings, and just violence in general.
Babet is a known far-right crank who rode in with the antivaxer movement. He represents not even mainstream culture-war conservatism (the Liberal Party, currently in opposition, does that), but what Australians refer to as “cookers”: the fringe of conspiracy theorists and aggrieved boomers whose brains have been devoured by the Murdoch media. The kinds of people who smuggle horse dewormer to treat their wind-turbine syndrome.
He also claimed that he went into politics as a 'sacrifice' for his country - the pay wasn't enough for 'all the suffering' he'd have to 'endure' in parliament and all the work he'd be forced to do. He said he'd be much happier running his real estate business
Seems like it. Everyone is being told to stop the harsh criticisms of Trump because it's what fueled the political violence. Dont fall for the gaslighting. He's a fucking fascist and we should still treat him as such.
As far as immigration goes (even temporary) Oz still has the equivalent of moral turpitude regulations. They can be quite strict. They can also just say they don't like the cut of your jib.
Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison denied Djokovic was being singled out and said no-one was above the country's rules. But he added that Djokovic's stance on vaccination had drawn attention.
I'm sure all the fans that wanted to go to the show will be very thankful to the senator for cancelling the show at the last minute for political reasons. Free speech must not be allowed in Australia
Free speech isn't a constitutional right in Australia, or in most places. Conservative voices have been blocked from Australia before. In 2019 it was that Milo guy, and I think Lauren Southern was banned from the UK?
She's a far-right racist conspiracy theorist nutjob who was denied entry into the UK for spewing hatred. Her right to express herself ends where other people's rights for freedom, health and safety begin.
Babet's comments aren't the real story though - he's just a dog whistling idiot trying to get attention.
Jack Black cancelled the rest of the tour, and not because of what Babet said:
Jack Black, one half of the American comedy rock duo Tenacious D, says he no longer feels it is "appropriate" to continue the band's tour following a controversial joke by his bandmate Kyle Gass at the band's recent Sydney show.
"I was blindsided by what was said at the show on Sunday," Black wrote in a statement posted on Instagram.
Celebrities should not condone political violence. "It was just a joke" doesn't give you a free pass. There's plenty of things one could say as a joke which are completely inappropriate and unacceptable.
That's a relief I guess, but I still have a great sense of shame and remorse for our conservative politicians. In America they sell out to billionaires for huge rewards. In Australia they'll fuck the country for a bag of peanuts.
Australia is essentially just Texas without guns. It's run by an ultra-consvervative government that doesn't give two shits about anything other than resources extraction and pretending aboriginal populations don't exist.
Uhhh no. The current government is a centre-left party not too dissimilar to the US Democrats.
They’re still fucking useless but at least they’re not dangerously incompetent like the last few right wing governments, or dangerously competent as the current opposition leader (who is an ex-cop) would be in power
They're not getting deported. The senator who made that demand is on the fringe, doesn't belong to any major party or group, and speaks for nobody but himself. He couldn't have dialled up the histrionics any more if he'd actually tried.
Y'all are fucking weird. When a right winger makes comments encouraging violence, you denounce it and demand that person face the consequences of their actions. But the Trump assassination attempt has revealed to me that a lot of you are just as reactionary as right wingers. Trump is a horrible person and the world would be better off without him, but if you can't see why assassinating him is not only morally wrong, but also just a bad thing for anyone who has faith we can win the fight against fascism, then quite frankly you've lost the fucking plot.
Kyle went made a joke that condoned an assassination attempt hours after it happened. Literally everyone involved, including Jack Black, and Kyle himself realize that what he said was extremely inappropriate.
Literally everyone in the fucking world realizes that political assassinations are a bad thing, but y'all are over here in your bubble thinking it was totally justified because Trump is a horrible person.
Are you in favour of police brutality? Are you in favour of capital punishment? Why do you get to decide which violence is appropriate and which violence is inappropriate?
Seriously fucking annoyed with Lemmy's user base right now.
It wasn't too long ago that right wingers were marching the streets in the state of Victoria, calling for the then-Premier to be hanged. One woman who later got elected to the Victorian parliament said she wouldn't rest until she saw him hanging from the end of a rope.
Guess who didn't oppose those calls for violence? The same people who got their knickers in a twist over this one, that's right.
Literally everyone in the fucking world realizes that political assassinations are a bad thing, but y’all are over here in your bubble thinking it was totally justified because Trump is a horrible person.
As someone who would have been glad he was dead, that's not the entirety of the reasoning. Plenty of horrible people don't deserve to be killed.
However, Trump is a specific type of "horrible person". He's one that is campaigning to be king for four years again (thanks to the supreme court and the toadies that make up congress), after having just fucked up the entire country for four years and then trying to overthrow the government because he lost an election. This asshole not only evaded but also destroyed the system of any other type of justice he can face.
He's extremely likely to bring down whatever is left of our democracy when he (seemingly inevitably) returns to power in around six months.
So, I don't give a single fuck about his troubles.
EDIT: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
The idiocy is that the same people who normally advocate for freedom of speech and freedom of consequences, who oppose what they call 'cancel culture', and who think that you should be able to say anything you want, who don't believe that words have impact - they're the exact same people who are getting all hot under the collar over this, and are more than happy for this particular speech to have consequences.
You can't have it any which way. I don't condone what Kyle Gas's said, but it's interesting if not disturbing to see who's the loudest in advocating for severe consequences.
Read up a bit about Ralph Babet and you'll see what a massive hypocrite the guy is.
Go tell that the bombed out kids in Afghanistan and to all the innocents from all over the world. Cry me a river, cause I won't shed a tear over a self proclaimed wannabe dictator. You get what you sow.
The point here is not that this comment hurts trump in some way. But that it hurts democracy. It favors violence over reason.
Many believe that the world might be better if trump was dead, but on the other side, if assassination is an acceptable solution to politics then democracy is destroyed.
The people that are against Trump are also against fascism. And supporting his murder is contradictory and essentially hurts your own cause.
Choosing to be fair and respectful to your enemy is the best course of action. Even though it might be extremely frustrating.
I don't trust neoliberal democracy. It has killed far too many innocents all across the world, so I personally don't care, but I understand if others do.
I'm sure he's doing damage control, so that they can talk about it behind closed doors and ensure they don't step over that line again as a band or as individuals.
Jack is absolutely doing PR damage control. Even if he agrees and thinks it's funny, that comment isn't awesome for either of their image.
Even if you hate Trump and would have been fine with him getting assassinated, you can't just go around saying shit like that. The right is (very rightly) on blast for constantly saying shit like this, and it works both ways.
I just hope they figure something out and get back on track with the tour/band.
That's so upsetting, mostly because fuck anyone that takes that joke as a legitimate call to violence from some of the nicest guys to have ever toured.
I think you absolutely CAN make those jokes, and you should. Nothing is 'sacred' as a space for jokes, and surely not the literal satanic piss stain. The 'right' gets put on blast for making legitimate calls to violence, and making jokes. You have to do both.
This pearl clutching over "wish he died" jokes is so stupidly puritanical. The world WOULD be a better place if he hadn't pulled through, the same that it would have been if Bush had been taken out before the 27 middle east invasions. Same if you'd dropped Duterte off a building, Putin out of a window, Mussolini (his granddaughter, the people already got to the man himself) off a cliff. Authoritarians and warmongers and xenophobics have no place in the realm of polite, they gave up their seat, and so they can sit on the stage and be mocked for the spectacle they are.
Yup, I expect they'll lay low for a while (Jack's got plenty of other stuff to focus on, and I'm sure he doesn't want any of his other work impacted by blowback).
We don't have free speech in our constitution, but we have protection of free speech in common law, unless it's explicitly banned by legislation, like some hate speech is.
You mean to say that right wing politician can't take a joke without getting offended? What a bunch of snowflakes. Man up, facts don't care about your feelings!
Tenacious D were big promoters of Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan organisation dedicated to encouraging more young people to register and exercise their right to vote, to the point of planning a campus tour in partnership with them. Can't really appear nonpartisan if you (even jokingly) wish for a presidential nominee and former US president to be assassinated.
Black had a lot more to lose from this than Gass, since he's the one with an actual Hollywood film career.
No, actually most people aren't blood thirsty lunatics who are willing to kill their political opposition. Most people are able to disagree with others without wanting them dead.
Make a comment about a horrible man nearly missing his demise, cancel tour.
Horrible man rapes children, defrauded charities, wants to fuck his own daughter, cheated on all of his wives, tries to destroy democracy in America, yet he's still Republican's #1 choice for president.
Republicans are complicit in the destruction of America.
That definitely feels like Jables had a "come on man, you can't say that shit in public" moment with KG. I wouldn't be surprised if they lay low for a while on the band and focus on other stuff until this blows over.
I may not care about their music, but I support them. DJT and all of his frothingly mad followers are the whole reason that the violence and anger have wildly increased out of control in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, this is just them reaping what they've sown.
The latest show on Tenacious D’s Australian tour has been postponed after senator Ralph Babet demanded the pair be deported following an apparent joke about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Babet, a United Australia party senator, demanded the federal government deport the band after Gass appeared to joke about Donald Trump’s attempted assassination at a Sydney concert on Sunday.
Video from the event showed Gass being presented with a birthday cake and told to “make a wish” as he blew out the candles.
“I call on the prime minister Anthony Albanese to join me in denouncing Tenacious D, Jack Black and band member Kyle Gass, and I call on the immigration minister Andrew Giles to revoke their visas and deport them immediately,” Babet said on Tuesday.
While conservative and pro-Trump accounts online were heavily critical of Gass’s comment, Tenacious D did receive some support from others.
Black has publicly criticised Trump previously, and recently appeared at a celebrity fundraiser for Joe Biden.
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