Satire & Humour
"Humour can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle." GK Chesterton
Satirists and cartoonists can be highly effective in holding organisations, politicians and dictators to account for their attitude, policies, actions, promises or threats. There's nothing that powerful people like less than being ridiculed or made the butt of jokes.[1]
That said, satire is sometimes viewed as 'fake news' and is proving really difficult for legislators to deal with — except in autocracies like North Korea, Saudi Arabia and China.[2]
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Here's a selection of favourite cartoons, images and quotes about our post-truth world, where facts and opinions have become interchangeable, and experts, evidence and reasoned analysis are routinely scorned and dismissed.
1 Post Truth
2 National Leaders
In Defence of Democracy
"A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with
making truth itself appear like falsehood." William Shenstone
making truth itself appear like falsehood." William Shenstone
Donald Trump
The New York-based writer and comedian Sarah Cooper
makes videos that savagely lampoon some of President Trump’s most ridiculous moments. In this clip she uses her living-room lamp and household cleaner as props: “Supposing you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or in some other way” – at which point she gestures at her mouth before miming inserting a suppository. The clip went viral: in Aug 2020 it had more than 750,000 views on TikTok
and more than 21 million on Twitter.
Vladimir Putin
Xi Jingpin
Boris Johnson
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Satire is a highly effective tool for exposing lies, ignorance, dogma, humbug and privilege.
Peter Oborne and several of his journalist colleagues set up a website
specificaly dedicated to "the lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations of Boris Johnson and his government". The website includes a Mission Statement.
Jair Bolsonaro
"All just hysteria and conspiracy!!!"
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
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Other Celebrities
After Ivanka Trump tried to insert herself into a conversation between world leaders at the G20 in Osaka in June 2019 she was mercilessly ridiculed and #Unwanted Ivanka
went viral. You will find some examples of her being photoshopped into well-known historical images here.
3 Big Tech
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4 Humorous Quotes & Put Downs
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made."
Groucho Marx
"Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people."
Thomas L Masson
"It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you."
Will Rogers
Notes
1 Chinese blogger Wang Jiangfeng ended up with a two year prison sentence
for reportedly calling President Xi a 'steamed bun' on private chat groups and referring to Chairman Mao as 'Bandit Mao'. Use of the term 'Rupert Bear' can also land people in a lot of trouble in China as it's a banned nickname for the President.
2 In Sept 2018 the Public Prosecutor in Saudi Arabia announced
that "producing and distributing content that ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religios values and public morals through social media... will be considered a cybercrime punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of three million riyals ($800k)."
