Rich Eisen has weighed in on the Kyrie Irving situation.
Last week, Irving promoted the film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which has a number of anti-Semitic tropes, including alleging that Jewish people worship Satan.
On “The Rich Eisen Show” on Roku, the host played a clip of Irving’s contentious back-and-forth with ESPN’s Nick Friedell, in which Irving told him “you’re dehumanizing me.” Eisen said this is what the Nets star’s promotion of the content did to him.
“You’re dehumanizing me, Kyrie. I’m a Jewish man,” Eisen said. “Descendant of people who died in gas chambers and got incinerated by Nazis. You’re dehumanizing me by putting on your platform a book and movie that is filled with anti-Semitic tropes that are designed or eventually lead to the dehumanization of me, and my children, and my ancestors who died because they were Jewish.
“It’s not funny, and I can’t believe I have to tell someone from Duke who’s clearly smart enough to know — you’re not promoting it with a tour — but when you put it in front of four million people who might not have known about it, you’re promoting it! You’re giving it your platform. When you give it your platform, you may not agree with all the things of the people who created the book or movie or theory that you say is true, you’re now owning all of that person’s opinions.”
Eisen said Irving’s promotion of this content normalized offense towards Jewish people.
“Yeah, it’s offensive, and it’s also really scary, because it’s normalized by somebody who puts a ball through a hoop, and is very famous and generationally rich for it, and you have a platform because of it, and it’s normalized,” Eisen said.
Nets owner Joe Tsai tweeted that he was “disappointed” that Irving “appears to support a film based on a book full of anti-Semitic disinformation.”
Irving did not face discipline from the Nets over the post, which he has since deleted.
