The Jim Jefferies Show is a late-night talk show hosted on Comedy Central by the titular Australian comedian Jim Jefferies. On March 19th, during the season premiere of The Jim Jefferies Show, Jefferies turned his attentions towards the recent Christchurch Terror Attacks in New Zealand. In his segment, Jefferies featured clips of anti-immigrant activists discussing their beliefs and interviewed Jewish activist Avi Yemini, who appears in the segment to support blanket racial discrimination when it comes to immigration:
The next day, however, Yemini posted a response to Jefferies’ segment on his personal YouTube page, titled “Hidden Camera: Jim Jefferies EXPOSED”:
In his video, Yemini claims that Jefferies not only broke Yemini’s two stipulations regarding the interview, but that he also selectively edited and selected clips from a full, one-hour interview in order to paint Yemini as a radical and connect him to the Christchurch terrorist:
“So, a few months ago, Jim Jefferies’ producer contacted me and asked me to come on as a guest to his show. Now I agreed with two conditions: one, there will be no Neo-Nazis or Nazi sympathizers on the same segment, because I don’t want to be aligned to them and I don’t want to give them any legitimacy or anything like that. Common sense. The second one was that they don’t cut my answers from one question and put it to another.
Now, to my horror, but not my surprise, they did exactly both. Both those things. But they went even further. They connected me to the Christchurch shooter. To the terrorist.
So it’s important to remember that this was filmed a few months ago, and not in response to the Christchurch massacre, as they seem to be alluding to here.”
As viewers can see in the above clip from The Jim Jefferies show, the producers did feature Neo-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in the same segment; as Yemini states in his video they “broke rule one in twenty seconds.”
However, Yemini anticipated such deception, and took it upon himself to secretly record the entire interview with his mobile phone.
“Luckily, I’m not an idiot, and I knew what their plan was all along. They flew me to Singapore, put me in a hotel for a couple of days there, what was I to expect? It was a set-up. So, what I did was, I got there, and I secretly put my phone down to record the entire segment.”
Though the full interview was recorded, Yemini plans to release the footage incrementally over the coming weeks:
“Now over the next few days I’m gonna release a bunch of little clips that are important that he specifically didn’t add to the piece. We filmed for about an hour, and there’s about three or four minutes where he’s included little snippets.”
Yemini then provides a comparison between his answers as portrayed on The Jim Jefferies Show and the answers he provided during their interview. On The Jim Jefferies Show, the exchange was presented as Yemini giving a heated, angry response to a simple question:
“Jefferies: What gives anyone the right to tell anyone where they can and can’t live?
Yemini: When you import this culture, what do you think’s going to happen? Australia’s going to end up the same shithole that they came from, that they were escaping.”
Yet in the unaltered footage, Yemini can be seen providing radically different answers to the same, specific question:
“Jefferies: What gives anyone the right to tell anyone where they can and can’t live?
Yemini: Borders?
Jefferies: I know borders, but wouldn’t it just be nice if we got to a place in society, a utopia where we all just commit to this one idea?
Yemini: I think most sensible people would agree with you in theory, but in practice, it goes against human nature, it just doesn’t work.”
When compared, the two pieces of footage show that Yemini’s answers on air appear to be selectively edited, as Yemini himself points out:
“You bloody scumbag, Jim. You see those rubbish edits through the entire segment? I don’t even need to show you. You get my point. They put one answer to a different question.”
Aside from exposing Jefferies’ disingenuous editing practices, Yemini also puts forth evidence that Jefferies is hypocritical, as Jefferies’ behavior during the interview contradicts his purported respect for Muslims and their cultures:
“Today, what I really want to show you, is how Jim Jefferies speaks about Islam, about their Prophet Muhammad, and about Muslim themselves when he thinks the cameras aren’t rolling or when he knows he can cut it out.”
Yemini then plays a clip wherein Jefferies draws a picture of the Prophet Muhammad during the interview, despite Yemini’s protesting:
“Yemini: So Muhammad is considered the perfect man
Jefferies: Right, yes.
Yemini: Okay—
Jefferies: Can I draw a picture of him?
Yemini: No, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare, I’ve got enough death threats on me. Jesus Christ.
Jefferies: [After drawing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad and presenting it to Yemini: There he is. He looks like a wobbly ghost.
Yemini: [Speaking to crew members, referring to Jefferies] He’s finally going to understand after this shit comes out.
Yemini then shares two more clips, one of Jefferies claiming that he is not a ‘big fan of Islam’:
“Jefferies: I’m not a big fan of Islam. I think that wearing a burka is stupid and demeaning.”
And another wherein Jefferies insults those of the Muslim faith, insinuating that even wild animals find them disgusting, to which Yemini protests and condemns Jefferies’ statements:
“Jefferies: Islam is like a dingo?
Yemini: Is Islam like a dingo? Sneaky? Probably right.
Jefferies: Dangerous?
Yemini: Probably both.
Probably both.
Yemini:“The dingo ate the baby” it turned out it didn’t! [A reference to words attributed to Lindy-Chamberlain-Creighton in reference to the disappearance of her daughter Azaria Chamberlain]
Jefferies: If it ate a bloody Muslim baby, it would have vomited.
Yemini: Uh…I don’t actually agree with that.
Jefferies: Alright
Yemini: That’s not funny to talk about f****** killing kids. That’s crossing a line. There’s a f****** line.
Jefferies: We’ll edit this bit out, I never look bad in these interviews.”
In July of last year, Jawbreakers – Lost Souls author and owner of the YouTube channel Comics MATTER w/ Ya Boi Zack, Richard C. Meyer appeared on The Jim Jefferies Show to discuss the concept of ‘diversity’ within the comic book industry. When the segment aired, Meyer was painted as a bigot who hates the base concept of diversity, despite his own words in the interview specifically indicating that his issues were in reference to politics, and specifically identity politics. Though Meyers could not provide any evidence, Meyers claimed, like Yemini, that the video was highly edited and pointed out Jefferies’ own hypocrisy regarding the segment:
“Regarding the Jim Jefferies video, I’d describe it as an egregiously edited hit-piece that has hilariously back-fired. My enemies are gnashing their teeth over it and even his own fans realize it is a viciously inept hatchet job.
Regarding his pearl-clutching over the 4th grade swear-words I used once in a single video 9 months ago, I’m arching an eyebrow (higher than his) at the ten years of misogynistic rape jokes that he built his stand-up career on.
I could tell he had an abiding interest in diversity since one person out of his ten-person crew wasn’t white.”
Yemini ends his video with a plea to the audience to share the video ‘far and wide’ across the internet in order to expose Jefferies’ deceptive practices. Jefferies and his team have yet to respond, but social media users have taken to flooding posts from The Jim Jefferies Show account or his personal account with links to Yemini’s video.