Anti-racist and LGBTQIAP+ movements refute the idea that ‘humor is humor’ after the Leo Lins case

The discussion around the censorship of the video by comedian Leo Lins, in which he makes jokes with social minorities, continues. Fabio Porchat, Antonio Tabet and Danilo Gentili were some of the comedians who defended their colleague and said they were against the decision of the Public Ministry, which determined the withdrawal of the comedy special “Disturbador” from YouTube.

On Wednesday (17), Porchat stated that he is against the offensive jokes that Leo makes, but that, “as long as it is not a crime, it can”. The position of the comedians reverberated among internet users and members of the anti-racist cause and the LGBTQIAP+ movement, who claim that content that relativizes the history of Brazil and reflects historical problems is not funny.

AD Junior, anti-racist communicator and presenter of the program Trace Trends (Multishow), says that the problem arises when Leo uses a crime against humanity —slavery— as a joke, and claims to believe that the holocaust shocks Brazilians more than a problem with still-current consequences.

“If you are a person aware of society’s problems, you would never make that joke. Black people continue to suffer the consequences of this. Content with crimes against humanity should not be acceptable. a time when people were born with work’? It’s not about censoring, it’s about raising awareness that this person makes fun of what hurts us every day”. And he asks: “Why does the pain of some hurt more than that of others?”

Junior also says that the comedian should think about and apply limits to the content he offers and that the special reflects a problem with Leo’s character.

“Humor is not humor, we are in the 21st century, people need to understand that it’s not funny to make jokes with ethnic groups. Where is the conscience of this human being who manages to find humor in the reality of black people, who remembers slavery?”

The president of the National Alliance LGBTQIAP+, Toni Reis, endorses Junior’s opinion and says that the creator of the joke has to have human dignity as a parameter.

“Humor, like any form of art, has to have freedom of creation. These jokes and violence become natural and are seen as normal. When you naturalize the violence that these groups suffer, these people become objects. One of the tactics of Nazism was dehumanize the Jews,” he says.

Reis adds that, even if it doesn’t kill physically, the speech “sharpenes the knife”. “From that, a perpetrator of a criminal act feels reassured about what he has done.”