Sacha Baron Cohen Is Today's Blackface

Blackface was never just burnt cork on a white man's skin, the paint represented a symbol, not the crime itself. The crime was that performers from a dominant supremacist group put on the masks of the people they were oppressing, performed the ugliest stereotypes and called it entertainment, all while real people were suffering the dehumanising consequences. The audiences laughed and sang along, the targets of the laughter bled in the streets. Lynched. It was entertainment mining the bodies of the oppressed for profit, and not much has changed.

Today, Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't paint his face, as the form of the racism at the heart of his performance has evolved. To a Muslim, black or gay person, watching him mock their people, faith and culture for white laughter while calling it "satire," the difference between him and a minstrel is barely possible to find. The mask isn't painted on, but he's still wearing one.

The cork was replaced by a costume, an accent and a defence that should have died with the minstrel shows. Cohen isn't a satirist, he's a racist who has found a loophole, to mock the powerless, while hiding in plain sight, encouraging an audience to laugh at people who never consented. Sacha Baron Cohen's latest piece of racist filmmaking is coming out in October, with his release of "Ali G: Who Iz I" and it looks to be his most vile blackface yet.

People are asking more frequently, "how have we got to where we are in western societies?" The answer in part is due to the same dehumanising laughter that once justified lynchings now runs rampant across western media and social media platforms to justify the abuse of Muslims, brown and black bodies and those who live in poverty no matter what race they are. Take Palestinians for example, who are stripped of all humanity in coverage of the ongoing genocide, as they collect what is left of their children into plastic bags. Look at who the elite owned media and bot accounts on Facebook, X and Reddit are telling you to hate, and ask why.

Dehumanisation is not a relic of the past, it's the active precondition for the drone strike, the eviction order, the extrajudicial killing, and the refugee boat sunk in the ocean, murdered by state "authorities". Cohen’s comedies didn't create this machinery, it embodies it, perfecting its most insidious features. As empire's wars grind on and far-right fascist parties continue gaining ground across the west, the question is no longer whether entertainment can kill, but whether the people laughing will ever decide to stop.

When Cohen performs "Borat," he's an amalgamation of white-informed, hate-filled caricatures: anti-Islam, anti-Romani, anti-Eastern European. He acts as violent, lecherous, unhygienic, stupid. He's everything western bigots already believe about the "Other" as their media has been manufacturing this hatred as part of a classic divide and conquer tactic for generations. Cohen joins the bigots, looks into their imaginations and acts their thoughts out on screen. The audience laughs at the cartoon, while real Muslims, Romani and Eastern Europeans absorb the damage he perpetuates.

Cohen as "Ali G" doesn't put on black makeup, he shrouds himself in black culture, mimicking vernacular, fashion, mannerisms and stereotypes. He isn't mocking racism, he's performing it. The fact his face remains white is irrelevant. Peter Akinti, editor of Untold magazine, put it plainly, "He's the new Al Jolson, he's effectively blacked up to take the piss out of a stereotype of young black men that's deeply offensive." Felix Dexter, a black British comedian, was even more direct, "I don't like the idea of a white guy playing a black guy anyway and when he's playing to a stupid stereotype it's even worse."

In "The Dictator," Cohen wears a fake beard, speaks in a thick faux-Arabic accent and performs every Islamophobe's wet dream: violent, misogynist, terrorist-sympathising, ridiculous. Dean Obeidallah, a comedian of Arab heritage, wrote "The Dictator is a modern-day minstrel show," arguing Cohen's performance is "essentially the same as white performers in blackface portraying black people in buffoonish negative stereotypes." Nadia Tonova of the National Network for Arab American Communities called his portrayal a reflection of how "Arabs are among the few cultures that Hollywood still exploits with impunity.” He's performing Islamophobia, to manufacture consent for aggression against innocent people, for profit.

GLAAD, America's largest gay rights organisation, condemned Bruno for reinforcing negative stereotypes and "decreasing the public's comfort with gay people." GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios said, "Some scenes hit the gay community pretty hard and reinforce some damaging, hurtful stereotypes. Scenes like that don't help America understand the hundreds of thousands of gay families who get up every day, do the carpool, then rush home to make dinner and be with their children."

Obeidallah asked the only question that matters, "What would the reaction be if a white actor in blackface mocked African-American culture?" The answer is swift rightful condemnation, and they may never work again. But when the target is brown, Muslim or poor and can't fight back, the question is rarely asked, the answer seemingly deemed irrelevant. An even starker question is, could a Muslim actor direct and star in a movie dressed as an exaggerated Orthodox jews, with frizzy payot, big nose, fur hat speaking in a grating whining New York accent, obsessively counting money, scheming to control the media to be satirical? And if not, why is Cohen, a zionist, allowed to do the same as blackface?

Cohen and his backers operate from within their capitalist framework, with his films having grossed over $1 billion. That money flows upward, to Cohen, studios and shareholders. Those subjected to his cultural appropriation and extractive techniques get humiliation, abuse and violence.

The minstrel show didn't invent anti-black racism, it inherited it, refined it and called it entertainment. And in making people laughable, it made them lynchable. White audiences didn't go from the theatre directly to a lynching, but the laughter turned dehumanisation into entertainment, making violence against black bodies feel acceptable. Black people were being dehumanised, for a purpose.

The same logic operates today. American Empire didn't invent Islamophobia, but they did create the "war on terror", genocide in Gaza, the bombing of Yemen, the occupation of Iraq, the invasion of Libya, the drone strikes across Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Palestine. These are material realities. Millions dead, millions more displaced. Cohen, like blackface performers before him, inherited this hatred and refined it. He sells hatred by portraying the Muslim as violent, lecherous, stupid and ridiculous. He makes the Muslim laughable, he makes them bombable. The public lynching in the town square has gone, the drone strike watchable on CNN replaced it. Empire is merely capitalism's military wing. The drone strikes that follow Cohen's laughter clear the way for resource extraction, for pipelines, for more military bases. His dehumanisation is the prerequisite for the profit as the final destination.

The Nazis understood this mechanism perfectly, they didn't begin with gas chambers, they began with caricature. Der Stürmer drew jews with hooked noses, greedy hands and lecherous grins, and Germans told jokes about jewish cowardice and filth. The entertainment came first, laughing dehumanisation into being. Only then came the laws, the camps, the crematoria. The laughter didn't cause the Holocaust, but the Holocaust couldn't have happened without the laughter and societal dehumanisation of the Other.

Cohen performs the same function in a different era, by depicting Muslims with beards, bombs and violent urges, by showing Romani people as incestuous thieves and rapists, by making Eastern Europeans into stupid, unhygienic animals. The laughter comes first, the drone strikes follow, and refugees are criminalised and turned away. The slaughter in Gaza is being justified by the same dehumanisation Cohen broadcasts to millions. His onscreen depictions do the same work the burnt cork once did.

The "Happy Negro" of plantation mythology was the enslaved person who sang while working, who loved his master, who was too simple for politics. Cohen's Borat is the same figure, the happy Muslim, too stupid to be a threat, too funny to be taken seriously, too ridiculous to mourn when the drone comes. Borat is the Happy Muslim, in the same way the Happy Negro was the content enslaved person: both figures exist to make violence against them feel unserious.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, white people displayed African and indigenous people in human zoos, caged and mocked for European audiences. Cohen doesn't bring his subjects to the core, he travels to the periphery, extracts his entertainment and returns it. He arrives with a camera, selects the most vulnerable, tricks them into performing their poverty and desperation, then profits. This is the logic of capitalism: turn everything into a commodity, especially human dignity.

Ask the villagers of Glod, Romania, who were tricked into appearing as incestuous rapists, prostitutes and thieves. They thought they were participating in a serious documentary about poverty. Instead, Cohen paid them $3 to $5 each and made them the punchline of a global joke. Dana Luca, a villager, said: "We thought they came here to help us, not mock us. We are poor people, but we are still people." Nicolae Staicu, their leader, said: "These people are poor and they were tricked by people more intelligent than us." They sued for $30m, as Cohen's project was "intended to portray the villagers as rapists, abortionists, prostitutes, thieves, racists, bigots, simpletons and/or boors." Cohen punches down on the most vulnerable people in society, performing exploitation with a camera.

Ask the disabled man whose name Cohen never bothered to learn, a man with one arm was tricked into taping a sex toy to his amputation stump. He wasn't told the purpose of the film, he provided no consent, he was never told the context. Cohen used a disabled man's body as a prop for a non-consensual sight gag for a global, predominantly white audience.

The Romanian villagers of Glod weren't collaborators, they were his exhibits, his version of a human zoo. Cohen isn't a satirist, he's a modern-day colonial ethnographer, extracting authenticity from the bodies of the poor and the brown for profit and racist entertainment.

Some viewers may genuinely believe they're laughing at the bigots Cohen exposes. And while that's not impossible, he doesn't provide a clean way to do that. The same joke that mocks a racist, mocks a Muslim. The same frame that exposes a bigot, humiliates a Romani villager. Ignorance of this trap doesn't excuse falling into it. Not all white people were entertained by and laughed at minstrels. Some understood what they represented. More people should understand what Cohen represents. He's an Islamophobe, perpetuating racist stereotypes just as minstrels once did.

Golliwog dolls of Britain and Europe were beloved toys for decades, parents gave them to their children, I remember seeing them on marmalade jars. They weren't seen as hateful to white people. They were seen as funny, and this is the same mechanism Cohen uses. The audience doesn't see themselves as bigots, but as enjoying a joke. For white people, the golliwog, like the minstrel, was a joke too. For black people, it never was.

The core of Cohen's "it's satire" defence relies on a lie: that the audience is laughing at the racists, not the mocked. Cohen's defenders claim his caricatures are so exaggerated only a true bigot would believe them, but the audience is laughing at the cartoon, not the critique. The white person tells themselves they're in on the joke, that they're the clever ones. They're not the ones being mocked, and they're laughing at the same stereotypes that fuel hate crimes, encourage refugee rejection, and manufacture consent for military interventionism. It's not big, it's not clever, it's complicity in racism.

"But he's Jewish." So what? Being targeted by one form of bigotry doesn't grant immunity to perpetrate another. The question isn't whether Cohen has the right to mock antisemites, it's whether his work harms black, Muslim, Romani, Eastern European and gay people. Their answer is a resounding yes, and that's all that matters. No one else's feelings matter.

If Cohen's work were satire, it would look very different. And yes, satire can punch in many directions, not just up. Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" mocked the Irish poor to expose English cruelty, but the difference is, Swift's victims were dead, and he didn't travel to Ireland, trick a 75-year-old woman into wearing silicone breasts and broadcast her shame to the world. The difference isn't the direction of the punch, but the flesh-and-blood on the receiving end.

George Carlin dismantled racism by attacking the structures and language that upheld it, not by performing the stereotypes he claimed to hate.

Richard Pryor and Chris Rock mocked racism from within, using their own lived experience, not a costume. Their comedy armed audiences to recognise and resist bigotry, it never asked white audiences to laugh at a brown mask for their own edification.

Real satire doesn't need a signed waiver, a pauper's wage, to trick amputees or to destroy the reputation of a poor Romanian village as entertainment to make its point. This behaviour is cowardly, and racism hiding in plain sight. Real satire doesn't require a production budget from a multinational media conglomerate. Cohen seems to believe his work is artisanal critique, when all it is is industrial-scale product, manufactured with pain as the commodity, designed to generate returns, with "it's just a joke" as the defence for racism.

Consider the double standard, if a white actor today wore blackface and performed a minstrel routine live on TV, his career would be rightly over. If anyone portrayed Jews on Netflix in the same way Cohen depicts Muslims, they would be arrested and prosecuted for hate crimes in places like Germany and the UK. That's what modern day Minstrelism is: poor brown pain is a commodity, it's dehumanising entertainment, it's manufactured racism to soften and perpetuate Empire's crimes of genocide, land theft and dispossession.

People are being murdered because people like Cohen manufacture hatred of the Other through racist entertainment.

Call him what he is.

He is today's blackface.