A fascinating article about the history of political jokes in democracy and authoritarianism, from British caricatures to Eastern European gallows humour to the fine line of officially sanctioned humour and humour as propaganda.
Put simply, it is governments whose very reason for existence is to impose a grand ideological vision on humanity which provide fertile manure for subversive jokes.
The lineage of some authoritarian jokes stretches back far farther than the benighted twentieth century. One of the most popular jabs at the stupidity and dangerous arbitrariness of officialdom may have first been told by Arabs in the tenth century. The basic Arab version describes camels who run away because an idiotic new law is pressing mules into service. By the 1920s and 1930s, expanding on a Jewish joke of the tsarist years, the Soviet version described a group of rabbits who make a run for the Russian-Polish border. Applying for admission, the rabbits cry, "The Party has given orders to arrest every camel in the Soviet Union!" "But you are not camels," replies the Polish border guard. "Well, you try telling that to the Party," say the rabbits. Later versions were popular throughout Eastern Europe.
From a distance, it is easy to say that Russians recognized communism's ultimate absurdity and so laughed at it to "liberate" themselves before its "inevitable" collapse. But it may be more realistic to argue that, despite their recognition that communism was murderously absurd, Russians quietly cracked jokes just to endure it. Authoritarian jokes are not tiny revolutions; they are temporary pain relievers serving as a substitute for being allowed to participate in real politics.

(via Reenhead)

Posted by: TOBY | http://adbusters.org/ | Fri Dec 21 23:01:42 2001

Um... would anyone seriously imply that today, in the West, we are "participating in real politics"??

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Sat Dec 22 13:05:26 2001

For most people, it's real enough, or at least real enough to rationalise away the fact that they have very little say. (Though activism and such count as "real politics", and are severely restricted in totalitarian states.)

Want to say something? Do so here.

Note to spammers: This comment system applies the rel=nofollow attribute to the poster's URL and all links. Posting links to this page will not improve their search engine rankings.

Display name:
URL:(optional)
To prove that you are not a bot, please enter the text in the image on the right in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Remember my details.

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.