The hosts of a child-appropriate Norwegian show on the country’s state television channel (NRK) joked about killing Jews in a broadcast last week.
During an episode of the show Nytt på nytt, which is aimed at viewers aged nine and up, host Bård Tufte Johansen said: “The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, believes that people with common sense should thank the US when it destroys ships loaded with fentanyl – but if you replace fentanyl with Jews, it will no longer sound okay.”
His statements were met with applause and laughter. “It’s very important to do things like that every now and then,” he continued.
The US has been striking boats off the coast of Venezuela to prevent narcotics from flooding into the US. Replacing the word with “Jews” suggests it would be funny to prevent Jews from entering the US.
After the laughter died down, a separate host referenced an earlier joke about how a long time ago, porn magazines were smuggled from Sweden to Norway: “Imagine smuggling Jews from Sweden to Norway; it wouldn’t have worked.”
Isalill Kolpus added: “Go to Sweden to buy porn. Replace that with ‘Jew.’ Doesn’t work.” This was met with more laughter.
However, these ‘jokes’ have been met with horror from Jewish and Israeli groups.
“It is profoundly disturbing that children as young as nine years old are being subjected to such toxic antisemitic propaganda, which risks normalizing hatred and shaping the next generation’s prejudices against Jews,” On Elpeleg, an Israeli educator who lives in Norway, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“Equally alarming is the silence of politicians and media outlets, who neither condemn nor confront this dangerous trend,” he added.
The Israeli embassy in Norway lamented that Norway’s state media outlet NRK uses public funds to broadcast antisemitic “jokes” about Jews.
“NRK clearly has an institutional antisemitism problem, which must be recognized, condemned, investigated, and stamped out,” it added.
'Antisemitism disguised as a joke'
Senior Deputy Director General for Public Diplomacy at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Yacov Livne, said, “Antisemitism disguised as a ‘joke’ doesn’t hide the hate – it exposes it. It’s time someone in Norway’s state media was held accountable.”
Eytan Halon, charge d’affaires at the Israeli embassy in Norway, tweeted: “Once again, Norway’s state-run media outlet NRK broadcasts outrageous ‘jokes’ about Jews. Antisemitic humor on NRK has become a frequent occurrence. Where is the condemnation? It cannot continue.”
“What if the program had suggested replacing the word “Fentanyl” – with the words “Palestinian,” “Hamas,” “Arab,” or “Islamic”? Not as much fun for Bård & Co as “Jew”?” commented a member of Norway’s Jewish community on the ‘Stop antisemitism on Norwegian TV’ Facebook group.
Other members of the community compiled a list of antisemitic incidents in the channel’s past.
In 2008, Otto Jespersen, on an NRK-affiliated program, joked about “billions of fleas and lice” that died in the gas chambers together with the Jews and claimed that Jews killed Jesus. In 2016, NRK aired a cartoon comparing student debt to Nazi concentration camps, using Holocaust imagery.
In 2021, NRK downplayed an imam’s Facebook post calling for Jews to be killed as a “strongly worded statement.”
Just a week before the fentanyl incident, on October 17, 2025, a Nytt på Nytt sketch mocked the Nazi-era deportations of Norwegian Jews.