Jon Stewart defends Dave Chappelle's SNL monologue, says censorship won't 'end anti-Semitism'

Jon Stewart doesn't think it's necessary for Dave Chappelle to pull his punchlines.

The former Daily Show host denied that Chappelle, his longtime friend, "normalized anti-Semitism" during his recent Saturday Night Live monologue on Nov. 12.

"I don't know if you've been on comment sections on most news articles, but it's pretty normal," Stewart said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday. "It's incredibly normal. But the one thing I will say is: I don't believe that censorship and penalties are the way to end anti-Semitism or to gain understanding. I don't believe in that. It's the wrong way for us to approach it."

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images Dave Chappelle and Jon Stewart

While on SNL, Chappelle remarked upon the anti-Semetic rhetoric espoused by Kanye West and Kyrie Irving in recent weeks. His routine was later condemned by the director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Stewart noted that Chappelle isn't the first comedian to discuss harmful stereotypes. "Comedy is reductive. We play with tropes because everyone has prejudices in their lives and the way they view things," he shared. "And comics rely on those prejudices as a shorthand for our material. Even the wokest of comics play with tropes to a certain extent."

Instead, Stewart said that anti-Semitic comments need to be dealt with "in a straightforward manner" or else "we will never gain any kind of understanding with each other."

"Dave said something in the SNL monologue that I thought was constructive, which he says, 'It shouldn't be this hard to talk about things,'" he said. "Look, I can't pretend that there aren't a [bleep] ton of people, in this country and this world, who believe that the Jews have an unreasonable amount of control over the systems."

"I'm called anti-Semitic because I'm against Israel's treatment of Palestinians. I'm called other things from other people based on other opinions that I have, but those shut down debate," he continued. "They're used as a cudgel. And whether it be comedy or discussion or anything else, if we don't have the wherewithal to meet each other with what's reality, then how do we move forward?"

While he might be arguing for attempting to find common ground, that doesn't mean Stewart isn't affected by the recent comments either.

"I don't enjoy it. Don't get me wrong. You know, when people I admire, with music I like, come out and say, 'How many of you are in show business?'" he shared. "If we all just shut it down, then we retreat to our little corners of misinformation and it metastasizes. The whole point of all this is to not let it metastasize and to get it out in the air and talk about it."

Watch Stewart share his viewpoint above.

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