NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM
Sacha Baron Cohen has claimed that Donald Trump is an “overt racist” whose behaviour has emboldened others to reveal their “inner prejudices”.
The satirist, who is promoting the sequel to Borat that lands on October 23, also accused the US president of being an “overt fascist”. He added that the aim of the new Borat film “is to make people laugh” but that he also wanted to “reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism”.
- Read more: Who Is America? In the post-truth world Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy is less shocking than reality
Cohen highlighted to The New York Times the differences between the US now and when the original Borat film taped 15 years ago. “In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices.”
“Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists.’’ He added that President Trump is “an overt racist, an overt fascist,’’ which “allows the rest of society to change their dialogue, too”.
The sequel, titled Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, lands on Amazon Prime Video later this month. Cohen reprises his role as the titular Kazakh journalist, and has written the screenplay alongside Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman, and Lee Kern.
In the movie’s first trailer, Cohen (performing as Borat) is seen asking some men about the coronavirus. They respond by claiming the Democrats are more dangerous than the disease.
Cohen, however, did not criticise the men during his chat with The New York Times. Instead, he said their response proved “that they’re ordinary folks who are good people, who have just been fed this diet of lies”.
Referring to social media, he continued: “They’re completely different to the politicians who are motivated by their own power, who realised that they can create fear by spreading these lies through the most effective propaganda machine in history.”
Cohen famously attacked social media and internet giants including Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube last year in a keynote ADL speech. “All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history,” he said.
The post Sacha Baron Cohen says Donald Trump is an “overt racist” who’s allowed “the rest of society to change their dialogue” appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.
