Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Alton Brown makes an Auschwitz joke — then apologizes

Last night, Food Network host Alton Brown — a lifelong conservative but a Biden voter this time around — tossed a query out to the internet about the future dress code of America: “Do you think the camp uniforms will be striped, like the ones at Auschwitz or will plaid be in vogue?”

Brown, who later deleted the tweet, was immediately challenged by a number of Twitter users who, rightly, resented his utterly excessive and unnecessary invocation of the Holocaust. When one user said, “Yikes dude. Take it easy.” Brown replied, “F—k you.” He also made a reference to the fact that his value at any future concentration camp might be lesser as he has “no gold filings.” Wow. Way to make it even worse somehow.

Even those who sympathized with Brown’s apparent intimation that, given President Trump’s apparent coup-in-progress, we are now particularly vulnerable to totalitarianism, wasted no time calling the Deacon of Food Science out for his offensive reference. Some screenshotted the tweets. Antisemitism Cow mooed. Some were moved to compare him unfavorably to the self-proclaimed Mayor of Flavortown, Guy Fieri.

Brown has issued a mea culpa, tweeting, “I apologize for the flippant reference I made to the Holocaust in my tweet last night. It was not a reference I made for humorous effect but rather to reflect how deeply frightened I am for our country. It was a very poor use of judgement and in poor taste.”

Got it. I guess.

We’re all worried here, Alton, but that’s no reason to trot out other people’s traumas to make your point.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.