In ‘The Closer’ the veteran comic starts by comparing African Americans assaulting Asians to his own body’s fight against Covid-19 before turning his attention to Jewish people

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He said: “In my movie idea, we find out that these aliens are originally from earth — that they’re from an ancient civilization that achieved interstellar travel and left the earth thousands of years ago.

“Some other planet they go to, and things go terrible for them on the other planet, so they come back to Earth, decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own. It’s a pretty good plotline…I call it ‘Space Jews’.”

The joke received lukewarm applause from the audience which Mr Chappelle acknowledges saying “it’s gonna get worse than that, hang in there.”

He later returned to the topic while referencing a freed slave in the American South who later went on to buy slaves. 

Mr Chappelle said: “How can a person who went through slavery perpetrate the same evil on a person who looks just like him, it’s mind-blowing. and shockingly, they’re making a movie about him, ironically, it’s called Space Jews.”

Mr Chappelle’s set received outcry on social media and in reviews of the special, with NPR TV critic Eric Deggan saying it “sounds like antisemitism”. 

In his review of the special, he said: “Chappelle also knows reviewers like me will quote the joke and criticize him for it, which I am. I don't really care what point he's trying to make; a joke that sounds like antisemitism gets a hard pass from me.”

Mr Chappelle also came under fire over his comments on JK Rowling in the same set. He said: “They cancelled JK Rowling…. she said gender was a fact...they started calling her a Terf… I’m Team Terf. I agree man. Gender is a fact.”