Patton Oswalt Calls Out Fellow Comics for Enabling Alt-Right By Making Racist Jokes: Handed Them a ‘Blueprint’

Comedian Patton Oswalt is calling out his fellow comics for paving the way for the alt-right to use irony as a defense for their actions.

On Sunday’s edition of The Al Franken Podcast, Oswalt went into sharp detail, about why he believes his generation of stand-up comics gave radicals a blueprint.

“I keep going down this rabbit hole of reading about Vienna right before the annexation, when Vienna was this very open society, cabaret, irony, and culture. And they were so ironic that they thought that the Nazis were a joke,” Oswalt said.

“They could not imagine of someone like Hitler, who just absolutely meant exactly what he was saying with no irony, no playfulness. And it was so ridiculous to them like we did with Trump. Like, ‘This is insane. Obviously he’s through’ — we didn’t see it coming. Cause we were so wrapped up in irony,” he continued.

“You’re talking about us?” Franken said, referencing their shared comedic backgrounds.

“Talking about us,” Oswalt clarified. “Especially my generation. We thought we were beyond racism. There was a lot of ironic racism amongst a lot of alt-comedy, a lot of Gen X, because we thought, ‘Well, we’re beyond it. We can make fun of that.'”

“We didn’t realize we were actually mapping out a blueprint for a lot of the alt-right people and a lot of the edgelords and a lot of the shit posters to use for them to go ‘I’m just being ironic,'” he continued. “You’re trying to grandfather your shit in and we are partially responsible for doing that.”

“I always feel like a good joke is much better than a bad joke,” Franken said. “Good jokes usually maybe have like actual irony in it. And actual meaning and actual dimensions.”

Oswalt replied, “Or at least they turn whatever harshness they’re sending out back on the joke teller to go ‘Well, no, this is actually ultimately about me.’ Whereas a lot of these edgelords, they just stop at the, ‘I just made fun of the different person and that’s where it ends.'”

“It is also dangerous that you can tell a joke where it’s absolutely clear what you mean and some people will object because there’s a certain element and you have to be very careful now,” Franken added.

Oswalt argued that for years, comedians have been trying to be taken seriously but now it’s time to use the platform they’ve been given responsibly.

“It’s like the thing that we wanted, ‘We wanna be taken seriously.’ Well, now you’re being taken seriously. Now they’re really looking at what you’re doing because they — they know that it matters,” Oswalt added. “It does matter. That kind of stuff does matter. And so act like you matter, you know, take it to just roll with it a little bit.”

“There is a thing where prior (George) Carlin, all those people — deliberately pushed boundaries,” Franken said.

“But they were pushing for more openness,” Oswalt argued. “The people that are doing the edgelord stuff now are pushing for, ‘Can we go back to the way,’ think, ‘Can I go back to being able to say these horrible things?’ It’s like, no, we gotta keep moving forward.”

Listen above via The Al Franken Podcast.