Stephen Fry will use next week’s Channel 4 Alternative Christmas Message to call for British Jews to “stand upright and proud in who they are” in the face of “the greatest rise in anti-Jewish racism since records began.”
Fry, who will say he “never thought for a single second” he would have to worry about being Jewish in the UK, will deliver an intensely personal speech in the wake of the huge rise in antisemitism following Hamas‘ brutal October 7 attack on Israel.
He will point to the 1350% rise in antisemitic attacks in Britain over the past two-and-a-half months – working out at roughly 50 per day – citing “shop windows smashed, Stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish properties, synagogues, and cemeteries, and Jewish schools being forced to close.”
“My Jewish grandparents loved Britain, believing that Jews were more welcome here than in most countries,” Fry will say, in the annual Channel 4 address that is intended as an alternative to the King’s message on the BBC. “I am glad they aren’t alive now to read newspaper stories that would have reminded them of the 1930’s Europe that they left.”
Fry said his being Jewish “may surprise some people” and that he doesn’t “think of [himself] as especially Jewish” but revealed he has “been on lists of British Jews that some ultra-right wing newspapers and sites have published over the years.” “And I’m frankly damned if I’ll let antisemites be the ones who define me, and take ownership of the word Jew, injecting it with their own spiteful venom.”
Stating that he “accepts and claims the identity with pride,” Fry will conclude by calling on Jews to “stand upright and proud in who they are” and on others to “speak up and call out venomous slurs and hateful abuse wherever you encounter them.”
“Knowing and loving this country as I do, I don’t believe that most Britons are ok living in a society that judges hatreds of Jews to be the one acceptable form of racism,” he will add. “So speak up, stand with us, be proud to be Jewish or Jew-ish – or, if not Jewish at all, proud to have us as much a part of this great nation as any other minority, as any of you.”
Fry is Jewish on his mother’s side but has said in the past he was not brought up in a religious family. His speech on Saturday will come a few weeks after the biggest British rally against antisemitism for 90 years, attended by the likes of Maureen Lipman, Eddie Marsan and It’s a Sin star Tracy Ann-Oberman.
Last year’s Alternative Christmas Message was delivered by Ameca, an AI robot, having two years prior been given by a deepfake of Queen Elizabeth II.
