Before Isis exploded on to the scene, experts at Demos, a British think-tank, argued that antiterrorism policies should include humour to expose a terrorist organisation (at that time they were referring to al-Qaeda) as ridiculous. Citing how humour was used as a potent weapon against the British Fascist party in the 1930s, they said al-Qaeda’s image as a “tough guy” gang could be countered by showing the group’s incompetence.
Maybe so. But it’s not easy to draw the line between what is funny and what will be seen as offensive to victims of Isis. And some of what is online, including the unexpected jihad memes, is more distasteful than comical. As Simon Cottee, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent, wrote in The Atlantic: “We can certainly make fun of Isis but its very outlandishness narrows the scope of humorous material.”
June 10, 2015
"But is humour a useful tool in an anti-Isis campaign?"
Asks Roula Khalaf at The Financial Times.
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Sounds familiar. Monty Python: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ienp4J3pW7U
If we can produce "Hogan's Heroes," we can make fun of ISIS, goddammit.
Islam would be the humor target. ISIS just carries it out in a way that cuts out the option of polite indifference.
ISIS was created by the US "law prof". Get a clue. They got all their equipment from the US through Benghazi, and that's why Stevens was allowed to be killed by HRC. Where do you think they got all those Toyota Trucks? The Usurper was arming anti Asaad rebels who became ISIS. Duh, this is already common knowledge that the Obama licking media is trying to stuff down the rabbit hole, like all of the crimes of the Usurper.
How can Clinton be considered a POTUS candidate when she helped form ISIS and killed an ambassador? Because of the willfully blind media.
Can't be done. Once upon a time, perhaps, but using humor to try and undermine ISIS, while being careful to not go so much as an inch over the line to be assumed to be insulting Islam or Arabs is going to come across as craven and false.
You can't attempt to half-way undermine your enemies.
Political correctness. You can mock people like Pamela Geller and you can even mock the people who want to kill her, but you can't mock the Prophet with a cartoon, nor can you mock the sensibilities of those who are offended by such cartoons. Comedy in such a gestalt is like playing football on a mine field.
Nope. A .338 Lapua is a useful tool, as is a .300 Win mag or a .308. Humor, not so much. We've gone way past "lighten up, Mohammed baby"
Funniest thing I heard this week, and totally true: two ISIS guys get in a fistfight. One of them is wearing a suicide vest. BOOM.
I saw some funny ISIS humor on twitter a few days ago:
"i ignored an ISIS guy ranting 'Death To America' but then i saw the cover of Vanity Fair so i went back to listen to the ISIS guy some more"
I feel you have to have a certain degree of self confidence to mock others! "Look how foolish they are!" is the undertone of such humor. But if you lack that self confidence, you'll be easily browbeaten.
I could see a video supercut of their various attempts to use explosives that cause them to blow themselves up...to that Benny Hill "Yakkety Sax" music.
I bet ISIL eats up Baghdad this year. It will be one big happy Caliphate. Then they can start attacking Iran. So there is humor in this.
"Islam would be the humor target"
And that, of course, cannot be permitted. We need a Samizdat for that.
"But it’s not easy to draw the line between what is funny and what will be seen as offensive to victims of Isis."
In a way, then, the victims of ISIS are being used as body shields for ISIS.
ISIS owe progressives a great debt for creating the pervasive social climate that equates offense with injury. Without it, they would be far more vulnerable.
Humour won't work as it's too dry and often simply silly. Humor, on the other hand...
Blogger traditionalguy said...
I bet ISIL eats up Baghdad this year. It will be one big happy Caliphate. Then they can start attacking Iran. So there is humor in this.
This can't possibly effect us. We have no business interfering in their civil war.
Rusty: This can't possibly effect us.
Like hell it can't. The masses of refugees (and "refugees") from the last decade + of non-stop disruption in the Middle East and North Africa are already starting to cause destabilization in Europe, and it's going to get worse.
We have no business interfering in their civil war.
Had no business, either. Too bad our foreign policy establishment appears to be staffed with incompetents living in an alternate reality, all with the unshakeable conviction that they know how to interfere in just the right way to really fix things. Fix 'em good.
Rusty, I assume you are concerned/ confident about our southern border where god knows who streams across every day ?
Like hell it can't. The masses of refugees (and "refugees") from the last decade + of non-stop disruption in the Middle East and North Africa are already starting to cause destabilization in Europe, and it's going to get worse.
Yes - but that's a separate problem in itself. As long as the west insists on granting Muslims the right to migrate, live, (out)breed, collect benefits, demand cultural shifts, and establish themselves in London, New York, Paris, Munich, etc. etc... then nothing we do in the Middle East will make a lick of difference. You don't win a war by focusing on a tertiary front while the homeland falls.
And likewise, if we put a complete bar on immigration, and banned (or at least severely curtailed) Islamic practice in the west, then the activities of a bunch of idiots blowing each other up in the sand would be of minimal note - much as the Muslim world has been ever since the failed siege of Vienna up until the most recent bout of western madness.
Europe will get there in due time - they're just going to ensure the maximum amount of death and misery to their own people before they act.
Ron said...
I feel you have to have a certain degree of self confidence to mock others! "Look how foolish they are!" is the undertone of such humor. But if you lack that self confidence, you'll be easily browbeaten.
I think the bigger issue is it is impossible to mock the other side's incompetence when your leadership displays absolutely no competence whatsoever.
Alexander: Yes - but that's a separate problem in itself.
Unfortunately, it's not, because the people all gung-ho for "fixing" things in the Middle East, and the people all gung-ho about letting the "results" of that genius policy migrate into Europe (and North America), are the same people.
As long as the west insists on granting Muslims the right to migrate, live, (out)breed, collect benefits, demand cultural shifts, and establish themselves in London, New York, Paris, Munich, etc. etc... then nothing we do in the Middle East will make a lick of difference.
I don't think we're in disagreement about much here.
No, the leftist admiration of militant Islam makes it impossible to mock them. The Left is definitely NOT against ISIS. Never has been.
Don't know why they aren't since they oppose everything they claim to hold dear, but Fen has a law about that kind of thing...
Humor only works when the power it mocks is accountable. Humor against totalitarian regimes based on force doesn't accomplish anything.
We didn't beat the Nazis and Soviets by laughing at them.
Making our enemies ridiculous (as many anti-war comedians tried to do after 9/11) only discourages us from taking them seriously. If ISIS is an object of fun, why do we need to fight them? If they are so incompetent, then they'll fail without any help from us.
Humor is not an appropriate tool in fighting ISIS. It blinds us to their evil and prevents us from taking them seriously.
From Woody Allen's "Manhattan":
Isaac Davis: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Y'know, I read this in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, y'know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them.
Party Guest: There is this devastating satirical piece on that on the Op Ed page of the Times, it is devastating.
Isaac Davis: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point with Nazis.
I lost my head in San Francisco. Needs a video.
Humor and a .45 will gat you a lot further than just humor.
Michael K said...
Rusty, I assume you are concerned/ confident about our southern border where god knows who streams across every day ?
Doc. I was being ironic.
I have it from the usual suspects that we, here in the United States, have nothing to fear from Islamic militants. That they, being the other, are not inheritors of the wests concept of "rights" .
Humor should be one of the weapons, along with real weapons and diplomacy. Humor is especially effective if it is done so that the people who are of the same culture can see the target as funny and ridiculous. It undercuts their power and influence that way.
"Doc. I was being ironic."
Sorry, I've been around too many lefties lately.
Mockery worked pretty well against the KKK--Google Superman & the KKK sometime for a fun story.
The problem w/r/t ISIS, though, is that the humor has to work with the right people. It's fine for us to laugh at backwards goat-humping sand people who believe women should have to live inside black bags when in public. It's not useful, though, unless you can get the population of people susceptible to ISIS's control (people who would otherwise have some sympathy to ISIS's cause, support them passively, etc) to laugh.
Oh, Bullshit. People weren't laughing at the Mongols when they came to town, and they aren't laughing at ISIS, either. Humor is a luxury owned by people who live in countries safe and powerful. Mockery isn't going to defeat enemies who commit mass murder on camera and post it on the internet. That's ridiculous.
This sort of idea- that humor is a weapon against ISIS- shows how out of touch our elites are. The only thing that will stop ISIS is force. We all know that, but anyone who can sell the idea that something easier and cheaper will suffice will get a lot of attention. We're in denial and don't want to make the hard choice, so we grasp at straws to avoid it. Either we let a lot of people die and ISIS grows into a permanent Arab Islamic empire that will undermine the world state system, or we use force and crush it. Both choices have costs. We need to be serious about it, not pretend that ISIS can't win because... reasons.
"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?"
There's a lot of potential for humor. Stories of well to do ardent Western Muslims going to Syria to join the jihad complaining about being forced to clean toilets and carry water for the fighters out on the battlefield. (I read a story recently about a couple of young men who were begging their father to send money to get them out of there.) Or the story of eager young women from Europe who traveled to Syria to become wives of the brave jihadis cheering when the Yazidi girls were brought in as sex slaves. Caption: "Finally, some relief!" ha ha ha Funny, not funny.
Laugh at them - and shoot straight - to fight against ISIS.
IIRC, this Wendy's commercial initiated the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Nazis do the "Lambeth Walk"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdmk3GP3iM
Play nice here folks. Moderator du jour just might be deleting comments...
Because killing those fuckers would be too much apparently, our otherwise vicious government must analyze the scope of acceptable jokes? The child brides and raped and maimed girls surely appreciate that they would not be offended by any bad jokes that might be considered at their expense. Would that they might even learn of the bad jokes. Or is the concern about girls in NY and CA? Too bad they're not tea partiers or folks in Appalachia or Oregon. Easy, then.
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