“What I’m aiming for is a mass liberal consensus… that dissolves on contact with air.” “I’m not interested in laughs,” the comedian Stewart Lee deadpans after a bit about economic inequality. Irony can equally disarm critique – “I was only joking” – allowing the previously unspeakable to be said.Ĭomics sometimes joke about their own inefficacy. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump have both made effective use of humour. (The Albasheer Show in Iraq has influenced the protests there.) But I doubt it happens very often, and when it does, the effects may be vicious as well as virtuous.

There may be occasions in which comedy has a direct impact on politics. Do autocrats fear laughter? Or do they simply dislike being laughed at and have the power to put a stop to it? Alas, there’s not much evidence that it’s true. It’s an inspiring thought – that comedy is consequential, a clear and present danger to the despot. “Dictators fear laughter more than bombs.” “Under the tyrannies of Hitler in Germany and of Stalin in the Soviet Union, humour was driven underground,” Arthur Koestler wrote in the 1970s. It’s a message that threatens authority and disturbs the settled order. “It doesn’t have to be this way” is the message of both the comedian and social critic. In an essay on jokes originally published as “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception”, the anthropologist Mary Douglas wrote: “A joke is a play upon form affords opportunity for realising that an accepted pattern has no necessity.” There are theories that identify a close affinity between jokes and social critique – especially the kind of critique that shows a practice deemed “natural” to be the product of contingent, often nefarious, social forces. Science and Technical Research and Development.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.

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