Fascism used aggressive humor to spread hatred and left a legacy for the radical right

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The acts of making fun of opponents and spreading sexist, sexist and racist jokes were part of the strategy of the Italian fascist regime to belittle opponents – whether politicians or dissonant voices in society – and to build and maintain consensus.

“It’s a complicity that leads to a feeling of belonging, a laugh made by and for men, which made them feel superior, virile, pure. A way to reinforce their own illusion of a cohesive identity”, he tells the Sheet Valentina Pisanty, professor of semiotics at the University of Bergamo.

This would even be one of the values ​​of continuity between the fascism installed in 1922 and the discourse of the contemporary radical right. “The moment a group feels strong, on the side of power, it takes aim at another that appears to be weak and makes fun of that victim. An easy way to build consensus is to identify and build an enemy.”

If they used to circulate in magazines and newspapers, nowadays this pseudo-humor can be found on social networks, especially in the form of memes, and in traditional media spaces, such as television programs. Not infrequently, given by the politicians themselves.

In Italy, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has a long list of sexist comments. In the US, former President Donald Trump was celebrated by voters when he made racist jokes. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, in his first speech as president, said that his victory represented Brazil’s liberation from “political correctness”.

“He and other far-right leaders set themselves up as defenders of free speech and freedom of laughter, as an excuse to be able to exercise their right to insult someone,” says Pisanty. “By doing so, they allow their supporters to have that kind of laughter, which gives them a sense of unity and superiority over minorities they have been mocked.”

The strategy has historical precedent in Italian fascism. Especially in the 1920s and 1930s, magazines such as Bertoldo, Marc’Aurelio and La Difesa della Razza (the defense of race) published a series of cartoons and vignettes with images and derision phrases that had as left-wing militant characters, blacks, women and Jews. .

In one of them, an Italian soldier, in a landscape that refers to Africa, holds a black woman, tied up and, in front of a post office, says: “I would like to send this souvenir to a friend of mine”.

In another, a man with a beard and a red flag — a caricature of a leftist — is beaten up by a fascist, who gives him castor oil, with laxative effects, to drink. In the drawing, under the inscription “effects of the cure”, the victim is depicted with feces running down his legs, to then wield a tricolor flag — a reference to fascist Italy.

It was a permissible humor and rooted in moderate common sense, which fascism began to explore in order to find points of identification with part of the population. “At that time, it was not something that caused scandal, especially African and Jewish stereotypes. The effect of indignation that this pseudo-humorism produces in us is much stronger today”, he says.

Researcher of topics such as humor, denialism, racism and political discourse, Pisanty has just published the essay “Fascist laughter: when you laugh to restore order”, part of the recently released book “Fascismo e Storia d’Italia – A un secolo dalla Marcia su Roma”, on the occasion of the centenary of the March on Rome. The event, which took place between October 28 and 31, 1922, signified the arrival of dictator Benito Mussolini to power.

In her research, Pisanty analyzed publications considered independent to identify traces of humor from fascist characteristics in cartoons and satirical vignettes. The aim, as in other essays in the volume, was to find points of continuity between historical fascism and the contemporary far right.

According to the author, fascist laughter can be defined as the result of a simple and rudimentary gear of humor, unlike other forms of humor, which make use of irony, self-recognition, reflection, indirect. “More sophisticated modes are the ones where there’s a kind of ironic twist that, in the end, it’s not clear who’s laughing at, the victim of a joke, for example, or who’s making the joke,” she says.

In the humor that circulated during fascism, the laughter was monotonous, unsurprisingly. “It is possible to distinguish the fascist laugh in the direct way in which it strikes the victim of the joke with the aim of annihilating him and reducing him to impotence”, explains Pisanty. “It uses the most banal stereotypes, such as sexist and racist, not to exploit contradictions, but to confirm them.”

Mussolini’s regime, the author argues, encouraged this kind of content in two ways. Allowing the operation of publications that adhered to this line of humor in satires —while not tolerating other forms of comedy, against itself— and acting directly in contact with the newsrooms, indicating campaigns. “One of them was against the crisis woman, a woman caricatured as an anorexic intellectual, who was not part of the figure of woman that the fascists wanted.”

Equivalent to a punch in the nose, as the expert says, fascist laughter is always on the side of power. It serves to delimit, maintain order and discourage any form of deviation. “It’s a laugh that seeks the complicity of some to marginalize others and humiliate them to the point of no longer being seen.”

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