Anti-Semitic joke backfires for Spanish official
An anti-Semitic joke that a newly elected official from the Spanish Indignados (Outraged) movement tweeted in 2011 unleashes a storm of criticism Sunday, a day after his group took over the Madrid city council.
Guillermo Zapata, who was chosen to become the capital city’s cultural councillor, closes down his Twitter account and apologizes for the damage he caused.
But the hashtag #ZapataDemision (Resign, Zapata) went viral in Spain, just one day after activists from the Indignados movement that organized mass street protests in 2011 became mayors in Madrid and Barcelona.
Zapata had made deeply offensive jokes about the Holocaust and gas chambers used by the Nazis during the World War II. In another tweet, he had also taken aim at a victim of an attack by Basque separatist group ETA.
In a statement posted on social media platform Tumblr on Sunday, Zapata apologizes, and says his jokes had been prompted by a debate on “the limits of humor.”
Claiming he does not identify with the content of his own tweets, Zapata says he was taking part in an online debate prompted by the sacking of a columnist of national daily El Pais, after he made a joke denying the Holocaust.
“Now some of those tweets, which were written within the context of a conversation on black humor, have been recovered with the goal of presenting them as though they represented my ideas — while in fact I do not defend them at all,” Zapata writes.
“I firmly condemn all forms of racism, and, of course, anti-Semitism. I believe the Jewish Holocaust teaches us a lesson that humanity must never forget, so that it is never repeated,” he adds.
— AFP