Note: Contains explicit language.
In a recent contribution to this blog, Isabela Karibjanian takes readers to Serbia, where a comedian’s satirical bid for the presidency has attracted unexpected levels of support. Disillusioned with mainstream politicians and worried that the country’s democracy is eroding, Serbian voters turn to unlikely saviors.
Against this background, Karibjanian asks: Can comedy counter democratic backsliding in Serbia? ‘Probably not,’ she concludes, an answer as sobering as it is ambiguous. For one, it is unclear what ‘countering’ backsliding would look like. But the deeper issue lies at the heart of politically inspired humor and art. How do we gauge the effectiveness of political activism that upends convention?
To understand why this is a conundrum, look to Germany. In just four years, the country has seen the emergence of a powerful new political force – the Alternative for Germany (AfD, by its German initials). The far-right populist party has capitalized on widespread concerns about Angela Merkel’s welcoming refugee policy of 2015 and an uptick in Islamist terrorism, including a deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016. But the AfD has also drawn attention for racist comments and a revisionist approach to Germany’s history, with its leaders criticizing what they view as an institutionalized obsession with German guilt. This has come as a shock to the political establishment, which has seen an open and unapologetic engagement with the atrocities of Nazism part of the country’s modern identity.
As a result, the AfD has been a favorite target of comedians, who have used humor to criticize the party’s xenophobia and flirtations with neo-Nazism, or to reveal what they see as hypocrisy on the part of the AfD. But it is not always clear who benefits most from this type of criticism.
In April of this year, for instance, prominent AfD politician Alice Weidel made headlines for inveighing against political correctness, saying that it belonged “on the trash heap of history.” Weidel’s comment was broadcast by Extra 3, a satirical news show. The show’s presenter Christian Ehring nodded in mock agreement. “Yes! Let’s put an end to political correctness, let’s all be incorrect. The Nazi bitch is right,” Ehring said, adding, “Was that incorrect enough? I hope so.”
Weidel took offense and sought an interim injunction against a re-airing of the program. A court denied her request, arguing that the show had satirically exaggerated Weidel’s attack on political correctness and therefore exercised protected free speech. The show had landed a successful coup exposing the AfD’s double standards – showing that the party doesn’t like political correctness…except when it does.
However, the AfD has deftly used the episode for its own ends. In August, Alexander Gauland, Weidel’s running mate, came under fire for a comment about Aydan Özoguz, a minister in Angela Merkel’s government. Speaking at a campaign rally, Gauland suggested that Özoguz, who holds double German and Turkish citizenship, should be “disposed of in Anatolia.” The comment was widely condemned as racist. However, Gauland ruled out an apology, saying his comment was harmless in comparison to the phrase “nazi bitch” used against his colleague Weidel by Extra 3. Glossing over contextual differences, Gauland has successfully turned the satirical “nazi bitch” comment into a justification for his own non-satirical provocations and transgressions.
This is no exception. AfD leaders have consistently used satire and activism directed against them to their own gain. Take Björn Höcke, a regional AfD leader, who first rose to national prominence in late 2015 for warning about Africans’ “reproductive strategies.” In early 2017, Höcke criticized Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, as a “monument of shame.” Höcke also demanded a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance. In response, activists built a miniature version of the memorial outside Höcke’s home in a village in eastern Germany, having rented a neighboring property for the occasion. The activists are part of the “Center for Political Beauty,” a group that uses drastic “artistic interventions” to draw attention to a variety of political causes. The group has widely publicized its latest stunt against Höcke on social media. It offers a live video feed showing the miniature memorial against the backdrop of Höcke’s residence. It also documents harassment and threats against the group, presumably by AfD supporters.
But the group has not left it at that. It also claims that it spent 10 months spying on Höcke, acting as a self-proclaimed “civilian intelligence agency,” and has said that it would release details about Höcke’s private life unless he showed atonement by falling to his knees in front of its memorial. (The group is said to have dropped this demand after prosecutors announced they were investigating the group for unlawful coercion).
Whether the activists’ campaign has legal repercussions remains to be seen, but it has already given the AfD an opportunity to cast itself as the victim of an intimidation campaign. Höcke condemned the group’s stunt as terrorism and his party called it an “attack on human dignity.” This narrative is likely to resonate among AfD supporters and perhaps even the broader public.
This is not to suggest that satire and provocative political art are inherently damaging to democratic discourse – on the contrary. Perhaps more than any other forms of expression, they symbolize the right to ridicule, provoke and even offend as a way of expressing criticism and disagreement. Within certain boundaries, this is a legally protected mainstay of democratic pluralism. As such, it can be seen as an end in itself. But whether this form of expression helps protect democracy from extremist views or sometimes ends up empowering those views is a different question.
Photo License: CC0 Public Domain.
Germany is certainly facing a political instability now and I agree with you on the AfD issue. The AfD party represents the rising extremists on the far-right wing. AfD is the most surprising political party this year in Germany, it took really short time to collect support from over a million voters, and it is already the third biggest party in the country. This shocked some traditional strong party like SPD. AfD partisans are strong promote the strictest limitation on refugee problems, which is hard to be accepted by the left-wing parties. Sarcastically, the continually complain from German public towards refugees’ behavior and the suspicion to government’s policy can provide the evidence, that the success of the AfD party can be attributed to Merkel and her government’s recalcitrance and their ignorance to the voice from public. As the result, the AfD party will be the biggest winner if there will be an election next year – if Merkel stops working on the new refugee policy and settle the anger among people. The outcome of such mistake will lead to the uprising of populism and backsliding of democracy, which will further threat the stability of the country.
You make quite a strong argument that satire, while it is not the saving grace of democracy, is a necessary critical process for examining one’s own political culture. However, it is also worth delving into your cautionary statement at the end of your article, where you warn the reader that it remains to be seen whether the creation of political satire protects democracy from extremist views by allowing them to be critically dissected, or empowers them by giving them a platform. As important as satire is to democracy, harmful rhetoric can emerge from unchecked irony, and, in extreme cases, this rhetoric can evolve into harmful behavior and actions, and we end up with something like the Christchurch mosque shooting (Boseley, 2019).
In the age of social media, there is an undeniable need to address the political socialization which occurs in online communities. There has been a renaissance of satirical ideologies with the rise of the internet, social media, and the meme culture which permeates Gen-Z socialization. The ability to remain anonymous online permits people to be their truest selves, for better or worse. From behind the veil of anonymity, discussions of all types take place uninhibited by social norms. In many cases, the line between satire and non-satire is blurred, as radical or reactionary ideas are discussed freely without stigma. This poses a problem; while it is an invaluable tool for healthy political discussion, “ironic” support for political ideologies can easily get out of hand, leading to potentially dangerous consequences.
Political discussion on social media has real-world consequences. Social media was immensely influential in the 2016 election cycle; Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both widely made use of social media to promote their candidacies, to an extent never before seen in politics (Persily, 2017). Both candidates promoted their campaigns aggressively on Twitter, and each candidate’s supporters congregated and organized on websites like 4chan and Reddit (Herrmann, 2016).
Surprisingly, there are no other articles about 4chan on the Democratic Erosion website (at the time of this writing). As the spiritual birthplace of the “alt-right,” 4chan has a history of supporting anti-establishment, populist sentiment (Nagle, 2018). Beginning with the “Gamergate” controversy in August 2014, the alt-right movement itself started as a reaction to social justice and progressivism, within communities on 4chan and elsewhere online (Stone, 2014). In 2015, as the movement began to gain significant momentum, Donald Trump announced he would run for president. Trump represented everything the movement stood for; a populist, knee-jerk reaction to the culture of social justice, which they perceived as bringing about the decline of American society. Trump and the alt-right sought a “return” to a time before social justice. It was a natural alliance.
You also mention the German far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in your article. One can draw many parallels between AfD’s success in the 2017 Bundestag election and Trump’s victory in the 2016 American presidential election. For instance, as you noted, AfD politicians create almost unassailable positions with the Trump-esque strategy of deflecting criticism of the party back towards its critics. Furthermore, a common factor in both campaigns was their success on social media (Taylor, 2018), particularly on political discussion forums and amongst communities of open-minded young people (Lavin, 2019). AfD was the favorite choice of 4chan users, who, yet again, promoted their ideology primarily through memes and image macros (Gallagher, 2018). Eventually, ironic support of right-wing populism in these communities became serious, and communities sharing political satire found themselves increasingly dominated by serious adherents of the ideology they originally supported ironically.
Ironic 4chan ideologies are not necessarily right-wing, but they generally are populist. Another example of the many eccentric ideologies produced by 4chan is “National Bolshevism,” more commonly known as “Nazbol.” Synthesizing the reactionary racism and nationalism of right-wing populism with the anti-elitist, Marxist sentiments of left-wing populism, Nazbol is the ultimate populist ideology. The movement was popularized and continues to spread primarily through memes and ironic thinkpieces (noticing a pattern?) on 4chan and other websites (The Economist, 2018). Currently there exists little serious support for the movement, but the same could be said of the alt-right at its inception. If there is continued interest, Nazbol may serve as a useful microcosm of how radical ideologies propagate in online communities.
Political movements may start as reactionary satire, but invariably when a community forms around the “ironic” discussion of an ideology, it will attract those who seriously support it, which creates a positive feedback loop. The internet is the perfect tool for the creation and dissemination of extremist propaganda, and care should be taken to avoid falling into the trap of actually supporting the ideology one satirizes, both by those who produce satirical content and those who are at risk of being radicalized by it.
References:
Herrman, J. (2016, April 8). Donald Trump Finds Support in Reddit’s Unruly Corners. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/business/media/in-reddits-unruly-corners-trump-finds-support.html
Stone, J. (2014, October 13). Gamergate’s vicious right-wing swell means there can be no neutral stance. The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/13/gamergate-right-wing-no-neutral-stance
Persily, N. (2017). Can Democracy Survive the Internet? Journal of Democracy, 28(2), 63–76.
Nagle, A. (2017). Kill all normies: the online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. Winchester UK: Washington, USA.
How the grotesque online culture wars fuel populism. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://medium.economist.com/how-the-grotesque-online-culture-wars-fuel-populism-1912d083ef07
https://medium.com/@erin_gallagher/kraut-pol-afd-making-europe-great-again-mega-9fe332e7c282
Medina-Serrano, Juan C., Shahrezaye, M., Papakyriakopoulos, O., & Hegelich, S. (2019). The Rise of Germany’s AfD: A Social Media Analysis. 214-223.
The editors of The Economist. (2018, March 28). How “identitarian” politics is changing Europe. The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/03/28/how-identitarian-politics-is-changing-europe
Boseley, M. (2019, March 17). Inside the ‘shitposting’ subculture the alleged Christchurch shooter belonged to. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/national/inside-the-shit-posting-subculture-the-christchurch-shooter-belonged-to-20190317-p514xt.html
Lavin, T. (2019, March 19). The Death of Fascist Irony. Retrieved from https://newrepublic.com/article/153346/death-fascist-irony
https://democraticeros.wpengine.com/2019/05/03/social-media-and-democracy-by-justin-saint-loubert-bie/
https://democraticeros.wpengine.com/2018/03/15/german-right-wing-populism-in-the-age-of-social-media-by-ricardo-taylor-university-of-california-los-angeles/