How Artists Use Humor to Mock Tyrants
Berlusconi got media companies to fire comics who made fun of him
I just learned that the op-comic I did with Ivan Ehlers, “How Authoritarianism Creeps In,” has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, in both print and digital editions. I wanted to share it with you! Ivan is incredibly talented and you can check out the range of his work as a writer, illustrator, and art director here. Our opinion comic is about how authoritarians try and terrorize people, and the importance of resistance.
Images can reach and move people and capture emotional truths of political situations in ways that the written word cannot. My book Strongmen discusses the work of artists in Chile, the United States, and elsewhere who have used the language of images to resist authoritarianism.
Political humor conveyed through images can also be incredibly effective in reaching a broad audience. As the history of artists being harassed and persecuted by autocrats shows, such works also reach their targets and touch a nerve while exposing the brutality, vanity, and insecurity of the “strongman.”
Live performance and comedy have been important ways of mocking tyrants. Vaudeville shows and cabarets in Nazi Germany like Traubert Petter’s, which featured his chimpanzee, Moritz, giving the salute, did not last long. Berlusconi’s skill at using legal harassment to drain the finances of opposition media outlets and encourage them to fire or silence critics earned him the nickname “Al Tappone” (tappare meaning to plug or gag), after the American gangster Al Capone.
In the early 2000s, he had the journalists Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, and the comedians Daniele Luttazzi and Sabina Guzzanti fired from the state broadcaster RAI. He accused them of making “a criminal use of public television, which is paid for by all.” That none of these individuals worked for companies under Berlusconi’s direct control shows how 21st century strongmen count on corporate conflict aversion to do their work for them. Media companies have strong incentives to sacrifice a few individuals rather than lose access or enter into expensive legal proceedings.
Here is an August 2024 Lucid post which features video, print, photographic, and projection works that mock Trump, Pinochet, and Putin. It also discusses the autocrat’s brand of humor:
Authoritarians do have their own twisted sense of humor. Most of them are sadists, so they enjoy humiliating people, including their sycophantic enablers. Benito Mussolini loved to make fun of anti-fascists who had "repented" to reduce their prison sentences; he would read their confession/conversion statements out loud in Parliament, mocking them for having capitulated to him.
Trump behaves similarly, whether he is humiliating his GOP lackeys on television or mocking a disabled reporter. The point is to cultivate cruelty in his followers. Getting them to laugh with him means, at least in that moment, that they are not laughing at him — being ridiculed is the thing strongmen most fear.
I give Ivan the last word, or rather image, on this subject. It is from his work for the New Yorker, via his Instagram page.
I am in Chicago right now waiting to see what is tangible from Trump's war threats against our city. I appreciate the reminder in simple form of what we are looking at. I had just read and compiled a series of Substack articles that people have written about Blue State Soft Secession.
Right now I am watching on PBS Passport a series called "Soviet Jeans." There are 8 episodes that tell a story of a young Latvian guy who together with friends are involved in underground procurement of western goods that are illegal in 1980s Riga. So this is a black market operation, a very dangerous thing to do in a country with a secret police and informers at every corner. There is also a Finish stage director working at the State Theater to put on a production of Hamlet. She is learning about Censorship. The series does a good job of highlighting the hypocrisy of the people in charge of enforcing everything, and it is not clear if anyone who appears to believe in the regime is not just going along to get along, as opposed to true belief.
It reminds me of the book "The Illegals" by Shaun Walker where he tells us that by the time Stalin is in power no one really believed in the ideals of the Soviet Socialist Republic any more. So, you have people being raised in total corruption.
I am also thinking about the world that Putin grew up in and took over and is trying to hold onto. The Ukrainians don't want any of it. If you can watch this on PBS I recommend it. I think we should be using these artistic means available to understand the culture that is created under a fascist system.
Thanks for sharing the LA times authoritarian story & cartoon you did with Ivan. It's too small to read, even with online magnification. Do you have it available in another form with bigger type to circulate to Lucid members? Thx.!