On Humor as an Anti-Authoritarian Weapon

Authoritarians can't abide being mocked. Strategic mockery is thus important.

Good Morning:

Photo Credit: Igor Slabykh

It looks like an impressionist painting, but this is actually a photograph, completely unedited and unfiltered. It is the image as snapped—on my phone:

I want to offer ten thoughts in support of humor as a key strategic element of the fight against authoritarianism:

1. If we don’t laugh, we cry.

2. Humor can break through to people who don’t share our premises in a fashion that argument, and anger, often cannot.

3. Authoritarians hate being mocked. They want to make you angry. They want to make you scared. Laughing at them, and getting others to laugh at them, disrupts their control of the field of play. It seizes control.

4. Humor is brave. It shows fearlessness. Anger shows that they have gotten to you. Humor shows they have not. There is no quicker way to break down fear than laughter.

5. Humor is thus the ultimate expression of stoic self-control. To tell a joke on the gallows is the final fuck you to authority. (Groucho Marx used to tell a joke in which a condemned man is taken out on the gallows and asked if he has any last words. He responds, “Yeah, I don’t think this thing is safe!”)

6. Humor emboldens others. Emboldening others is important when people are scared.

7. I sometimes put a giant hand-drawn smiley face on the Russian embassy with the words “I’m back” to begin my projection sessions. A protest—even of the foulest, darkest deeds—that isn’t funny is missing an opportunity.

   

8. Humor is memorable. Anger is easily forgotten. Everyone is angry all the time. Anger blends right in and gets lost. Humor stands out and sticks with people.

9. Humor induces foolish reactions in the enemy, and enemy mistakes are exploitable. Put a flag on the Russian embassy and some idiot might chase it around the building with a spotlight. That’s a video that goes viral.

10. Humor is fun. And we all need to have fun—especially now.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, I discussed Matt Gaetz’s demise for a bit, then for another bit, then just a little bit more. Then the estimable Antti Ruokonen dropped by to tell us about a Finnish ballot initiative to ban a far-right political party, and the estimable Eve Gaumond and the estimable John Hawkinson had a lively discussion about the efficacy of forced password changes:

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Yesterday on Lawfare

Memorandum Outlines U.S. Government’s Role in AI Development

Janneke Parrish, Megan Thomas, and Omid Ghaffari-Tabrizi examine the Biden administration’s recent National Security Memorandum (NSM) on artificial intelligence (AI), including the background to the NSM, its contents and implications, the range of reactions to the memo, and more:

Accordingly, the NSM is the “first-ever” such document, with an overarching goal of responsibly, safely, and securely ensuring an “edge over rivals seeking to leverage AI to the detriment of [U.S.] national security.” The administration outlined “three core principles”: securing American leadership in AI, harnessing AI for national security, and accelerating responsible adoption via “clear rules of the road.”

The PLA's Cyber Operations Go Dark

In the latest installment of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren broke down the news, including the decreased visibility of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) cyber operations, the increasingly common exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities, Google and O2’s new AI scam-busters, and more:

Sekoia floats a number of hypotheses to explain the apparent decline of the PLA’s hacking relative to the MSS. One is that the MSS stepped up and assumed more responsibility for the worldwide strategic “steal all the intellectual property”-style campaigns that the PLA had been carrying out. Of course, what would that leave all the PLA’s hackers doing? Sekoia’s conclusion here is that the PLA has been retasked to directly support military operations.

On the Lawfare Daily podcast, Anastasiia Lapatina sat down with Fabian Hoffman to discuss the strategic and tactical effects of Ukraine’s use of Western long-range weapons inside Russia, what’s behind the timing of the U.S’s decision to allow this, and why it took so long for the U.S. to change its policy:

Ask Us Anything 2024: Lawfare’s Annual Year-End Podcast: Join us for our annual “Ask Us Anything” podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare editors and contributors your most burning questions of the year. To ask by phone, call (202) 743-5831, wait through the rings, and leave a voicemail with your name, where you’re calling from (if you’d like), your question, and whether or not you have a specific member of the Lawfare team in mind to answer. You can also record your question and send it to askusanythinglawfare@gmail.com, or include a written question in the body of your email. We look forward to hearing from you! Please submit by Dec. 16.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay, nominated by Roz Lang, is the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, the smallest sea turtle in the world. Two years ago, a small group of them were found cold-stunned on the shore in New England. The other day, one of them was safely released back to the wild: