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This will date me, but I’m old enough to remember when comedians knew how to unite all Americans through humor instead of dividing them through mean-spirited, partisan mocking. Yes, there was political humor, but entertainers like Bob Hope knew to bring audiences together by poking fun at all politicians instead of just the Republican ones. I’m even old enough to remember when comedians valued family entertainment instead of relying heavily (or entirely) on a relentless stream of profanity to distract from their lack of wit and comedic insight. What a sadly distant world that seems now.

Today, you can count on one hand the number of big-name comedians who aren’t openly left-wing and don’t smear the other half of the country as knuckle-dragging bigots. And yet the Left can dish it out but can’t take it. Mocking their sacred cows triggers Cancel Culture outrage. For years now, some older-school comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have been complaining that young audiences, especially on woke college campuses, have become too hyper-sensitive about race, gender, politics, pronouns, and other minefields. Comedy doesn’t entertain them anymore; it offends them (you know it’s bad if college students think Seinfeld is edgy).

As an example of the kind of comedy that unfortunately does not trigger offense in younger audiences in the Western world these days, check out this unfunny anti-white revenge fantasy from woke Australia’s Bangladeshi Muslim comedian Aamer Rahman:

Aamer Rahman’s “comedy” act is a fantasy about traveling back in time to convince leaders from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America to colonize and enslave Europe. He thinks this is the only real “reverse racism.”

I’m all for provocative comedy that forces… pic.twitter.com/u4XIVVUHel

— Stu (@thestustustudio) June 14, 2024

Yes, he got ecstatic applause and hysterical laughter for that bit, probably mostly from self-loathing white Australians, but it could only be funny if you hold the cultural Marxist belief that throughout history white people have been uniquely oppressive, exploitative, and inherently racist, and deserve to have the tables turned on them by oppressed, exploited, subjugated brown people like Rahman. In fact, as Freedom Center Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield put it, Rahman’s routine wasn’t comedy; it was aspirational.

Aamer Rahman, by the way, is best-known as one-half of a comedy duo that billed themselves as Fear of a Brown Planet, with material that was focused, as you can no doubt guess, on the issues of racism, colonialism, and immigration. They were awarded Best Newcomers at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and handed a raft of TV writing gigs, because multicultural hatred for one’s adopted Western homeland pays these days, and anti-Western immigrants would rather exploit that than assimilate like old-fashioned immigrants. But like too many comedians these days, Rahman is at his core a political activist, not a funnyman. He recognizes the power of comedy to push the sort of hate and division he wants to sow in the culture he wants to undermine.

Another man who understands the political usefulness of comedy is socialist Pope Francis, who hosted over 100 comedians from 15 nations at the Vatican last Friday, apparently to “establish a link” between the Catholic Church and artists with the power to reach many millions, according to a press release. The meeting aimed to “celebrate the beauty of human diversity … [and] promote a message of peace, love and solidarity.” The intention was for the event to “be a moment of meaningful intercultural dialogue and sharing of joy and hope.”

Although fully two-thirds of the attendees were Italian, the gaggle of jokesters also included the UK’s Stephen Merchant and US celebrities such as the insufferably unfunny left-wing propagandists Whoopi Goldberg and Stephen Colbert, Obama supporter Chris Rock, progressive lesbian Tig Notaro, lifelong democrat Conan O’Brien, and man-child Jimmy Fallon, who was once forced by the Cancel Culture Crowd to apologize repeatedly for “humanizing” his Tonight Show guest Donald Trump (so now, Fallon makes sure to mock him). Not a single English-speaking comedian in attendance could be described as even centrist or non-political, much less conservative (even Jim Gaffigan, who studiously avoids politics in his standup routines, went on an anti-Trump rant in 2020, calling the MAGA icon “a traitor and a con man who doesn’t care about you… a liar, a criminal [and] a fascist who has no belief in law”). So much for “diversity” and “intercultural dialogue.” (In all fairness, there may have been right-of-center comedians present from Italy or the other countries).

“In the midst of so much gloomy news, immersed as we are in many social and even personal emergencies, you have the power to spread peace and smiles,” Francis lauded the comedians. It’s true, they do have that power, but that’s not what they use it for; too often they use it to marginalize and demonize the “deplorables” on the other side of the political aisle and to get affirmation from their showbiz elite peers.

“You unite people, because laughter is contagious,” Francis continued. “Remember this,” he added. “When you manage to bring intelligent smiles to the lips of even a single spectator, you also make God smile.”

It’s hard to imagine that the likes of pro-abortion promoter Whoopi Goldberg puts a smile on God’s lips, but this is the same Pope who doesn’t seem to believe in Original Sin, who backs the Alphabet Agenda, and who demands that the already over-burdened West throw open its borders and embrace all the world’s migrants and refugees.

While the Pope, misguided though he is, seemed to want to harness the messaging power of celebrity comics for what he believes is the Good, left-wingers of a more totalitarian stance also understand its potential for subversion – and they fear it.

Totalitarian powers-that-be don’t appreciate subversive humor. As an example, check out the restrictions required of the participants in a forthcoming political humor event in Communist Cuba. The event, according to the Cuban Culture Ministry, will feature “the fight against neofascism” as its central theme and will welcome participants from 24 countries, who will compete with 225 “political humor” works over the course of two weeks, ending June 28.

So far, so good. Who isn’t against neofascism? (I’m joking; lots of people these days are pro-fascist). But Cuban cartoonist Arístides Hernández, one of the event’s organizers, stated last week that “there are limits to humor in relation to the historical figures of the Revolution and the formative concepts of Cuban national identity; there will be room for social criticism and satire as long as those points are not touched upon in a disrespectful or degrading manner.”

Put more bluntly: no jokes may be made at the expense of the regime. This is par for the course under totalitarianism. There is a scene from the brilliant 2007 movie The Lives of Others, set in East Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, which captures the state’s vulnerability to mockery. In one chilling scene, a Party official overhears an oblivious young soldier beginning to tell friends a joke at the expense of the Party Chairman. When the soldier realizes a Party superior is eavesdropping, he blanches in fear, but the official feigns amusement and encourages him to finish the joke. The punch line ridicules not only the Chairman but the rigid oppression of the system itself. The official then sternly demands to know the soldier’s name and department, warning him, “I don’t have to tell you what this means for your career. You were deriding the Party. That’s incitement, and likely just the tip of the iceberg. I will report this to the Minister.” Under totalitarianism, mockery threatens the Party as surely as armed insurrection does – perhaps even more so, because a revolution can be crushed by military might, but ridicule is a more insidious, elusive, and subversive threat.

Democrats have held the reins of cultural power now for over fifty years. Taking Machiavellian strategist and Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky’s dictum “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” to heart, they have weaponized comedy against their political opponents everywhere from the late-night talk show scene to daytime TV’s The View to Saturday Night Live.

But beginning with President Trump, who understood how to use their own tactics against the Left, they became the ones helplessly exposed by the spotlight of mockery, and now the cultural tide is turning. Witness, for example, the success of the right-leaning (but not rigidly so) satire site Babylon Bee. The Left is now personally experiencing the truth of Alinsky’s observation about ridicule, that “There is no defense” against it. “It’s irrational. It’s infuriating.”

Totalitarianism, like comedy, is serious business; but unlike comedy, totalitarianism doesn’t work if everyone’s laughing.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.