Australian comedian Isaac Butterfield has declared he "won't apologise" after causing offence with a joke about the murder of 51 Muslims in the 2019 Christchurch terror attack.
The remarks, in which Butterfield uses a racist stereotype to make light of the mass shootings at two mosques, prompted a wave of outrage online after a clip from his 2020 show 'Anti Hero' began circulating on social media.
In response to the "thousands" of angry messages Butterfield received, he uploaded a YouTube video insisting even he was offended by his own joke - and that was the point.
"It is a joke. It is not real, it is make believe. I don't really feel like that, but that is what comedy is," he said.
"Was the joke rude, horrible, offensive? Yes. And that is the point.
"Everyone knows what happened in Christchurch is horrible, but we laugh about horrible things all the time. It's how people deal with tragedy," he continued.
"I understand why you're offended, because I'm offended by it too. That's the point. I won't apologise for it."
Several well-known Kiwis have slammed Butterfield's racist humor, including The Edge radio host Sharyn Casey, who urged her 70,000 Instagram followers: "Boycott this dude."
"People like this shouldn't be given the privilege of a mic to spew this sort of damaging racist bullshit," she wrote.
"It's unacceptable and not a one off from him."
Butterfield said in his video that he had also made a holocaust joke and a 9/11 joke in his Anti Hero show. Last year, Netflix cancelled his stand up special due to anti-Semitic comments he'd made and in 2018, one of his Facebook videos was banned after being deemed racist against New Zealanders.
Meanwhile, Kiwi filmmaker David Farrier shared a series of private messages from Butterfield, in which the comedian asked him to appear as a guest on his podcast.
Farrier responded "not a chance", telling Butterfield he should "stop podcasting and talking and start listening".
"I tried, but racist f**kwits don’t like to listen very much," Farrier captioned the screenshots on Twitter.
