He's believed to have crashed a far-right rally and gotten the public to join in a racist sing-along. He's made a career out of pranking people into revealing their own bigotry.
This is the story of Sacha Baron Cohen.
This is the story of Sacha Baron Cohen.
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00:00When Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing
00:04throw the jewel down the well
00:07it did reveal people's indifference to anti-Semitism.
00:11When, as Bruno, the gay fashion reporter from Austria,
00:15I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas,
00:19nearly starting a riot,
00:20it showed the violent potential of homophobia.
00:25And when disguised as an ultra-woke developer,
00:28I proposed building a mosque in one rural community,
00:32prompting a resident to proudly admit,
00:35I am racist against Muslims.
00:38It showed the growing acceptance of Islamophobia.
00:50People will say I am funny, I will curse them.
00:52Although I do have one joke for you.
00:54Let's hear it.
00:55There is a chair that isn't walking, la la la.
00:59A chair walking.
01:00You have heard this one already?
01:01I did.
01:02Ok, sorry.
01:25I've spent most of the past two decades in character.
01:34In fact, this is the first ever time that I've stood up
01:38and given a speech as my least popular character,
01:41Sacha Baron Cohen.
01:47And I have to confess, it is terrifying.
02:26At times, some critics have said my comedy
02:30risks reinforcing old stereotypes.
02:33The truth is, I've been passionate about challenging
02:37bigotry and intolerance throughout my life.
02:39As a teenager in England,
02:41I marched against the fascist National Front
02:44and to abolish apartheid.
02:46As an undergraduate, I travelled around America
02:48and wrote my thesis about the civil rights movement
02:51with the aim of changing the world.
02:55With the help of the archives of the ADL.
02:58And as a comedian, I've tried to use my characters
03:01to get people to let down their guard
03:04and reveal what they actually believe,
03:06including their own prejudice.
03:24It's right wicked.
04:24We hope very much that we will win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture, we will be
04:40insulted if not.
05:10Well I'm not like that guy Sacha Baron Cohen, I just saw that movie film Borat, I mean I
05:26found that in a very offensive stereotype of a foreigner.
05:56There we go, a bit of politics, it's not all gags and big knob comments.
06:20Today around the world demagogues appeal to our worst instincts.
06:26Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream.
06:30It's as if the age of reason, the era of evidential argument is ending and now knowledge is increasingly
06:38delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed.
06:44Democracy which depends on shared truths is in retreat and autocracy which depends on
06:51shared lies is on the march.