US President Donald Trump. Picture by Olivier Douliery/Pool, Sipa USA/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved. As a recent immigrant to the US, the spread and influence of political satire took me by surprise. After the election, many on the left have put a lot of faith in the power of political satire. They religiously watch Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah, cite John Oliver and Seth Meyer, and consider this a form of dissidence.
Comparisons have been made between the current popularity of political satire and laughtivism, which was a prank staged by a group of activists in Belgrade, introducing a new way of protesting Milosevic. Is there an equivalence between late night political satire shows in contemporary America and the Serbian style of laughtivism?
If you lived through populist regimes elsewhere, this excitement over getting under Trump’s skin to make him tweet out his outrage, probably wouldn’t make you cheerful. The cycle of lampooning the populist, receiving his vitriol, and making new jokes in response, serves only the populist and the entertainment industry.
