Make Jokes Not War
in 1998
otpor serbia’s non-violent pro-democracy
movement
while they were just a tiny group of
broke college students
but they decided to play a prank they
took an oil barrel
taped a picture of the serbian dictator
milcevich to it
and put it in the middle of serbia’s
capital city’s
largest shopping district next to it
otpor
placed a baseball bat then they went to
a local coffee shop
grabbed a coffee and watched
before long dozens of shoppers lined the
streets of belgrade for a chance to take
a swing
at milcivic milsivic was despised by
many at the time
but serbians were too afraid to
criticize him
for fear of imprisonment 30 minutes in
the police arrived
but what were they to do they really had
no grounds to arrest the shoppers
and the police had no clue who the
culprits were because remember
is just relaxing in a nearby coffee shop
but the police didn’t know that
so what did the police do they arrested
the barrel
the image of the two policemen quite
literally dragging the barrel to their
police car
went viral for months on end in the
words of one member of atpur
milosevic and his cronies became the
laughing stock of the nation
and antarpur became a household name
atapur called their version of
non-violent struggle against depression
lactivism in 2012 we saw a similar
event in serbia where a protest brewed
under putin’s russia
i put protest in question marks because
the siberian
pro-democracy protest featured no humans
only teddy bears lego characters and
south park figurines to name a few
when authorities arrived they didn’t see
any culprits
because there were no humans there so
what were they to do
you guessed it they arrested the toys
the toys were hauled off in official
police cars
to be detained for their illegal
behavior
better yet the government imposed an
official ban on all future toy protests
which then went viral almost immediately
reminding dictators that
laughter and humor is a dangerous
opposition force
we are convinced that the only ways to
combat oppression are with serious means
we protest we debate we go to war
but because of what i call the political
humor paradox
humor is an essential tool for combating
oppression
now the political humor paradox is
relatively simple
in general dictators and oppressors
can’t do much to prevent political humor
against them
there’s simply no defense against it if
dictators try and fight back
they only appear more ridiculous thus
causing
more political humor to manifest within
the oppressed
it’s the goal of an oppressor to
dehumanize their victims
and give them no hope of change after
all humor
illustrates their victims capabilities
for free
thought and there’s absolutely nothing a
dictator fears more
than free thought put simply the very
existence of
laughter and jokes means that a dictator
has
failed to dehumanize and demoralize
their victims
this is humor for a definite purpose
that is to ridicule the oppressors and
keep the oppressed hopeful
additionally it’s a surprisingly
reliable index of the morale of the
oppressed
where there is humor there is hope
where there is humor resistance is
likely
moreover the reactions to humor by the
oppressors give a really interesting
insight
into their own perceived strength when
oppressors can afford to ignore this
humor
they believe they’re strong but when
oppressors react violently
they’re not and as multitudes of
researchers before me have found
dictators are never really confident in
their in their success
by the very nature of a dictatorship we
know that authoritarian rulers
repression creates fear
which then breeds uncertainty about how
much support the ruler has
in response the ruler is forced to
repress further
and in a similar manner the political
humor paradox
tells us that if a ruler aims to be more
repressive
the shutting down of humor only breeds
more humor
moreover as long as the oppressor knows
that their
victims ridicule them they can never
really be sure of their victory
oppressors thrive on knowing that the
oppressed are afraid of them
and humor dispels this very fear
surprisingly perhaps the greatest
example of the political humor paradox
comes from 1930s germany where my jewish
ancestors were in concentration camps
they were trying to survive to the next
day
now when i was younger it seemed like
every week i learned more
and more about the atrocities of the
holocaust day
after day my ancestors never
saw their families again they watched
their friends disappear
and they feared for their lives in ways
we can only imagine
as a young jew myself i kept wondering
how my ancestors made it through
but then i found the story of antonin
obrador
now antonin remembers what it was like
living under nazi occupation
he recalls the anger that the germans in
czech slovakia washed away inscriptions
making fun of their fear
most vividly only for these
graffiti mocking hitler
to reappear again the next morning to
those under occupation the nazi’s anger
was hilarious
but moreover humor served as a no-cost
anonymous way of fighting back now two
jokes in particular were extremely
effective against the nazi invaders of
czechoslovakia
the first involves a calendar and a
pamphlet
now for a little bit of history soon
after the war broke out
german soldiers received and distributed
a calendar of events
that they believed would take place on
future dates
according to the schedule england was
expected to
be on our knees no later than august
15th
1940 but then august 15th came
and august 15th passed and england was
far from underneath
soon after the czechs who were being
oppressed by the nazis
distributed leaflets reading do you know
why hitler has not invaded
england yet because the german officers
could not manage to learn in time
all the english irregular verbs another
pamphlet distributed
at roughly the same time read do you
know why the daylight savings time has
been
exceptionally prolonged this year well
because hitler promised that before the
summer is over
he and his army will be in england the
pamphlet made the nazis
furious waves of mass arrests
actually followed the spread of this
pamphlet apparently
the nazis even though they were the ones
in power
didn’t enjoy being the butt of the jokes
and better yet
even the nazis people in control of
a government who was at the time going
to war
with the world well they couldn’t fight
back against
it because when they imprisoned the
people who made the pamphlets
more pamphlets were made and these
were much more anonymous but after these
pamphlets were spread
it was near impossible to find a check
truly loyal to the germans
according to one legend there was one
person loyal to the germans
who was found in an old man who
proclaimed on the street that adolf
hitler is the greatest leader
the germans are a noble nation and that
he would rather work for ten germans
than for one check
well the germans went up and they asked
him what he did for a living
and the czech nazi supporter reluctantly
amid
admitted to being a gravedigger
in fact waves of humor often followed
waves of restriction
or orders from germany herself when
foreign broadcasts were declared a form
of high treason
treason the following story allegedly
occurred
a czech guest is leaving the restaurant
one evening and says to his friend
good night now i’m going to listen to
the london and paris broadcast
now he’s overheard by a nazi soldier and
is followed to his home
but when the nazi soldier investigates
this man’s home
no radio can be found do you listen to
foreign broadcasts
ask the germans german man suspiciously
the check replies oh yes
i just can’t help then he kneels puts
his ear to the ground
and says that’s london there after that
he puts his ear to the wall of the
neighboring apartment
and whispers ah that’s paris there so
the nazi soldier
he hurries around to the adjacent flats
and in the below flat there’s a high
official of the german ss administration
and then the other one there’s the
german officer in uniform
moreover in the example of the jews
during the holocaust
jokes really mocked the torture that the
nazis inflicted on them
how take the example of survivor lily
rickman
she upon arriving at the camps like
every other jew was forced to shave her
head
she laughed at her free haircut
the laughter was rebellious if not a
little crazy to everyone around her
but it definitely caught the guards off
guard moreover she made the nazi guards
think that they were doing her a favor
not dehumanizing her moreover if the
nazi guards
chose to joke about the prisoners
themselves the jews would join in and
laugh at the same jokes
the ability to destabilize an oppressive
situation
by laughing at the expense of oneself
was extraordinarily common for the jews
during the holocaust
and by laughing at these jokes they
subverted the very power
the jokes may have had over them while
jokes were
at one point used as a weapon to oppress
jews made the same joke and laughed at
themselves thus getting rid of any power
that the jokes may have had
holocaust survivor ellie wiesel explores
this concept as novel
gates of the forest where gregor the
main character
is orphaned like so many others during
the holocaust
gregor is hiding in a cave when he meets
gabriel who teaches gregor how to employ
laughter to catch his oppressors off
guard gabriel’s humor allowed him to
rise
above the anti-semitism because to laugh
in the face of fear allows that fear to
dissipate
laughter becomes a concealed dagger
against oppressors one holocaust
survivor remembers how one day
the nazis guards were hitting them black
and blue and they were laughing while we
made fun of them
the guards ended up laughing as well
thus stopping the assault
now the nazis may have gotten the last
shot and the last punch
but the jews got the last laugh
now the political humor paradox gives us
insight into the power of humor as a
resistance tool as well
we’ve seen how comedy has been used in
the face of totalitarianism
and in the face of oppression but
this much is clear we must use comedy as
a tool of resistance
it’s not to be used all the time but
when we want to seriously
combat oppression paradoxically
we must joke about it now this is
counterintuitive
but history tells us that those who made
fun of their oppressors
had one of two things happen either
first the oppressor
ignored it thus elevating the spirits of
the oppressed through laughter
or second the oppressor tries to stifle
the laughter in some ridiculous way
which only spawns more jokes and that’s
the beauty of the political humor
paradox
it works sometimes we must
laugh in the face of oppression and by
making the oppressor the butt of the
joke
the oppressed gain power over the issues
that challenge them
now we see other examples manifesting
themselves today
the most prominent example are the
dozens of comedians
such as dave chappelle or chris rock who
are using humor to critique the systemic
oppression
painfully apparent in the united states
and the us government can do
nothing to stop them from doing so any
action that the government takes to
prevent
these comedians from joking will only be
met with more humor
from some of the funniest people alive
right now
in an age of social media where these
jokes can be
spread i shall leave you
with the story of my sister who was the
subject of an
anti-semitic attack when she was called
a rich
jew at elementary school she proceeded
to pull out her wallet pull out a 10
bill give it to her bowling and she said
buy some better insults
thank you