Brett Gelman, one of the stars of Netflix’s Stranger Things, recently expounded on the anti-Israel sentiment washing over Hollywood.
In the aftermath of the attack on Israel by Gaza-based terror group Hamas on Oct. 7, Gelman says that antisemitism has exploded in Hollywood and when he started speaking out against Hamas and in support of Israel, he suddenly found a great number of detractors in the entertainment industry.
In an interview with ILTV, Gelman said that Hollywood is constantly ready to hear from “every single marginalized group in Hollywood except for the Jews.”
He added that “the propaganda that’s seeped into this country” has defined Jews as a “privileged” class, and therefore an enemy to the common man.
“Anti-Semitism and this propaganda that seeped into this country into the entertainment industry, into social justice groups, into universities that started to define race in a very binary way and decided to define Jews as white,” Gelman explained when asked how this new antisemitism so quickly ingratiated itself in Hollywood.
“I’m saying decided when really that was something I think that was engineered really by whoever was putting that propaganda into these institutions. And so that’s something that was very, at times whispered, at times spoken a little more loudly, but not for like long periods of time,” he added, “And I’d say like you know what happened with [Kanye West] and you know Kyrie Irving and the you know the meme that Bella Hadid put out in 2021 was sort of a rehearsal for what is happening right now uh which has exploded.”
Gelmen then spoke to his own decision to speak out in favor of Israel, saying, “there was just not enough of speaking out about it, I really do also sort of put it on the Jews, too, that we did not just immediately say hey this is not okay.”
“And I think that there’s an empathy to the Jewish people to where it was like oh we are like we are recognizing systemic racism, and homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, in our industry,” he continued. “We are recognizing that these people are not being represented in the way that they should. So the Jews in the industry became all about helping that, but what then started to happen, though, was they themselves without even knowing it bought into the entirety of that ideology, which does not include us, which discriminates against us, defines us as white, and which, uh, I mean surprisingly the biggest shock is the defense of Islamic jihadists as radical of radical Islamists.”
Brett Gelman speaks during ‘March For Israel’ at the National Mall on November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC. The large pro-Israel gathering comes as the Israel-Hamas war enters its sixth week following the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
After noting the he isn’t talking about average, everyday Muslims, but only about the extreme jhadis who want to rain down terror on everyone’s heads, he agreed that the radical Islamists actually disproportionately harms Muslims.
He lamented that calling out terrorists now makes one a “white supremacist” and said that Hollywood “doesn’t think things through” when it comes to social issues. “There’s a lot of fear of argument,” he said bemoaning the lack of a logical debate over the issues in Hollywood.
Ultimately, Gelman says that since he started vocally standing up for Israel he has lost fans.
“I mean, I’ve certainly lost fans, you know. People think I’m a supporter of genocide, you know. People think that I’m a white supremacist. People think I’m a war monger,” he said. “I really I can’t wait for this war to be over.”
“But the hostages have to come back and Hamas has to stop firing Rockets into Israel uh in order for that to happen,” he insisted.
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