American comedian Roseanne Barr's son has defended her after she was criticised for a podcast interview in which she said that six million Jews "should be killed.

In a conversation with provocative comedian Theo Von on her podcast, Barr, 70, said the Holocaust never happened, "but should have" as "Jews cause all the problems in the world."

https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1673699037541990400

Defenders of Barr, including her son Jake Pentland, insisted that the former sitcom actress was being sarcastic when she made the references, as part of a wider point about social media censorship.

Her son told "We are embarrassed that people are stupid enough not to recognize Roseanne is being sarcastic."

Von also defended Barr saying:"This Roseanne Barr clip was sarcasm folks. A clip was taken out of a long sarcastic rant she had during our chat. Can we not recognize sarcasm anymore?"

Barr, who identifies as Jewish, has previously attracted criticism for her controversial views on Jews and Israel.

In 2009, she dressed as Adolf Hitler for a cover for Heeb magazine, and posed pulling cookies shaped like people out of the oven.

Barr shot to fame as an outspoken comedian who was given her eponymous show Roseanne in 1988. The programme was a huge hit for ABC, running for 10 years before being revived briefly in 2018.

The show was only cancelled by the network in May of that year after Barr made a 'racially insensitive' post about a Black political advisor as well as posting support for the Qanon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories.

Barr was raised in Utah in a Jewish family, her grandparents on both sides were immigrants from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. According to the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, her grandfather changed his name from "Borisofsky" to "Barr" when fleeing persecution in the United States.