Borat returning just showcased Sacha Baron Cohen’s Islamophobia

  • Post last modified:October 28, 2024
  • Reading time:11 mins read


On Saturday 26 October, Sacha Baron Cohen returned to his ‘Borat’ character to make fun of the US presidential election. A lot has changed since Borat was released in 2006, and one change is that we know a lot more about Cohen and his ideology. As a result, public perception has proven less “very nice” than in the past:

Sacha Baron Cohen

Long before the current genocide, Israel was an occupying force in Palestinian territory (that or Israel/Palestine is an apartheid state in which Palestinians lack the rights of Israelis – pick your poison). And when we say ‘long before’, we mean decades before, with the situation existing in some form or another since 1948. Despite this, Cohen has long supported the Israeli government and its Zionist project (i.e. the creation, maintenance, and expansion of a Jewish ethno-state in the Middle East).

Mint Press News’s Alan MacLeod drew attention to Cohen’s links to Israeli and US state apparatus:

In the article linked above, MacLeod writes:

Baron Cohen is often reluctant to make direct political statements. But a close examination of the comedian’s background and views suggests that much of his work is pro-Israel, pro-Western propaganda masquerading as satire.

MacLeod expands on this in his article:

The pro-Israel propaganda was turned up to 11, however, in “The Spy,” a 2019 miniseries drama Baron Cohen produced himself and played the title character. Directed by former IDF paratrooper Gideon Raff, “The Spy” lionizes Mossad agent Eli Cohen, who goes deep undercover, embedding himself in Syrian high society, providing intelligence to the Jewish state crucial for its victory in the 1967 Six Day War against its neighbors. To this day, Israel illegally occupies Syrian and Palestinian land captured in 1967.

The series is a relentless celebration of Mossad and Israel, contrasting them with the barbarity of their neighbors. As The Daily Dot’s review of the show commented, the overriding message was “Cohen good/Syrians evil.” The Washington Post also noted that “The Spy” was a central part of a wider Mossad recruitment drive. Eli Cohen was a real historical figure and a hero to many of the most passionate Zionists. Sacha remarked that he sees himself in Eli and claimed that what they do is rather similar.

More recently, MacLeod notes that Cohen’s actions have lined up with the propaganda intentions of the genocide-perpetrating Israeli government:

In May, at the height of the Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the pogroms in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, Baron Cohen ran interference for Israel, publicly denouncing what he called “a surge of antisemitism on the streets” and on social media. Citing examples from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the movie star demanded that social media do more to stamp out anti-Jewish hatred. In contrast, he said nothing of the Israeli attack that killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, injured thousands more, and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. (In reality, social media companies were working overtime to censor Palestinian voices, including those at MintPress.)

The irony of Borat

People have long described the Borat character as an Islamophobic caricature, as Steven Salaita wrote in 2012:

With Borat, for example, Baron Cohen named an actual country, Kazakhstan, when the concept behind that movie could have accomplished the same comic purpose with a made-up nation. Even with a made-up nation, however, Borat’s appearance as a stupid, swarthy, sexist Muslim conflated the Third World with pre-modern sensibilities, a feat that could be accomplished only through an unspoken juxtaposition of whiteness and modernity.

Even worse, in showing Borat’s origin at the start of the movie, Baron Cohen ditched the sound stage in favor of a real village in Romania, Glod, whose residents were appalled to learn that the documentary they thought Baron Cohen was filming turned out to be a degrading parody, leaving the villagers divided and infuriated (“We all hate Borat: the poor Romanian villagers humiliated by Sacha Baron Cohen’s spoof documentary,” The Daily Mail, 17 October 2008) . Those who participated were paid a tiny sum for their trouble; Borat grossed more than $260 million.

(Romania, Kazakhstan, what’s the difference, right? If the assumption from which Baron Cohen worked — that to most Americans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are little more than a swath of backward foreign people — then it only reinforces the malice of naming actual countries and shooting on location, for the point had already been made before Baron Cohen decided to humiliate an entire village.)

In the latest Borat skit, Cohen said something which has proven ironic in a fashion he likely didn’t intend, as Variety reported:

Baron Cohan earned the biggest laughs by pointing Borat in the direction of Harris and saying: “You are a woman, a person of color and married to a Jew. I advise you not to come to Kazakstan. You already have made three of the four crimes punishable by death. Please do tell me you have made sexy time with an underage bear.

The irony, as MacLeod notes, is as follows:

In his latest TV appearance, Baron Cohen’s Borat character claimed that, in Kazakhstan, Kamala Harris would be arrested and executed for marrying a Jewish man.

This is a gross lie played for laughs with a public that has been fed decades of Islamophobic propaganda.

In reality, Kazakhstan was a haven for Jews during the Holocaust, the country taking in huge numbers of Jewish people from Eastern Europe.

Today, Jewish group praise the country as a model of tolerance.

But you know where it is illegal for Kamala Harris to marry a Jew? Baron Cohen’s beloved Israel, where inter-faith (i.e. interracial) marriage is strictly prohibited by law.

Borat: Mr Propaganda

In reaction to Borat’s return, many others have commented on Cohen’s propaganda. In some instances, this has been as much about what he doesn’t show as what he does:

And let’s not forget the time that Cohen was sued for $110m dollars after he labelled a Palestinian grocer a ‘terrorist’:

Cohen has also attracted criticism for his behaviour outside of the political sphere:

Khaz-face

If nothing else, watching the Borat character now seems weirdly archaic. Social media – while terrible in many ways – has at least made it possible for us to instantly engage with people from other countries. Back in 2006, few people knew anything about Kazakhstan and fewer yet cared. If a comedian invented Borat in 2024, we’d be hearing from Kazakhs within the hour, and the sketch would be dead and buried long before it hit the cinema.

Seeing that Cohen hasn’t moved on with the rest of us isn’t surprising once you understand his Zionist principles. The problem for him is that more and more people understand what those principles mean.

Featured image via The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon





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