Fascism portrays itself as irreverent even as it represses dissent

July 17, 2024 11:23 AM

Making Hitler funny may be a break with the reverence Hitler demanded at gunpoint. But it also ends up being a way to give Hitler back his aesthetics and part of his glamor. When Downfall Hitler launches into an attack on road construction, it’s incongruous and absurd. But it’s also Hitler getting you to cheer along as he attacks the incompetence and inconvenience of a sclerotic democratic bureaucracy—and attacking sclerotic democratic bureaucracy is a thing that the real Hitler actually did. A dollop of humor makes the anti-establishment rage go down easy, not least because it distracts you from the fact that the “establishment” in question is just anyone the fascists decide to target. As the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein explains, “drain the swamp” is a successful slogan precisely because it’s a catchier way to say “liquidate our enemies.” from Fascists Know How to Turn Mockery Into Power [Foreign Policy, from 2020; ungated]
posted by chavenet (30 comments total)

Noaaaaah, god, if you can't be serious about fascists, and you can't be funny about fascists, what can you be?

(also: in before someone quotes sartre!)
posted by mittens at 11:32 AM on July 17 [4 favorites]

you can ABPF (Always Be Punching Fascists)
posted by logicpunk at 11:40 AM on July 17 [12 favorites]

Remember everyone: stay sexy, or the fascists win.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:43 AM on July 17 [5 favorites]

This is clearest in the proliferation of memes from Downfall, in which clips of the film are decked out in new subtitles so the Führer ends up throwing a tantrum about his broken PlayStation 4 or about the Red Wedding scene in Game of Thrones. The triviality makes Hitler look preposterous. But it also makes the serious portrayals of Hitler look fusty and tired. A whole movie of Hitler being evil and boring? Lighten up, dude.

I know this rhetorical question is being floated as a hypothetical thought process, but it's seriously at odds with how Hitler is portrayed in Downfall: as a charismatic, human figure rather than some stereotypical demon, and all the more chilling for it. When he blows up in that scene that got lifted for the memes, it's terrifying and pitiful, and anything but boring. Personally, I never found the memes that funny, because they always made me think of the scene in context, in one of the best films of the decade.

Chaplin said he wouldn't have made The Great Dictator if he'd known about the concentration camps, but what does that tell us? That being too precious about serious things staying in the serious lane can cost us great works of art. Great political cartoonists of the 1930s like David Low made merciless fun of Hitler, too, but at least in Low's case it was with an edge that left no doubt about his serious opposition to the man (Low was on a Nazi death list, and knew that if England had been invaded he wouldn't have lasted long). I think of Ann Telnaes as his spiritual heir for the 2010s and 2020s... I would be highly surprised if anyone was taking her Trump satires as a call to MAGA.
posted by rory at 11:45 AM on July 17 [9 favorites]

But also: I was seriously thinking about this this morning. How Katy Perry just had a big music flop. And her videos are usually ridiculous / over the top / sexy-colorful.

Why can’t she make a music video just utterly ridiculing a TFG-like character. Is that how he gets taken down? Like just the most raunchy disrespectful we have zero f to give music video. Show no reverence, no “both-sides”-ness, just show him as gross and over the top and rub your a&$ over how disgusting he is. And then have the character lose face and be scrambling and bumbling to try to seem dignified. Adopt the attitude of We have zero fear of you because you’re down there. Would that work? Is that how we snap people out of this collective hypnosis?

Help us Katy Perry you’re our only hope!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:49 AM on July 17 [5 favorites]

Well, this was a hell of a thing to read after watching a film about Fascism in Italy....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:59 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]

Mockery is on the table! From the article, "Nazi claims to humor, like all Nazi claims, should be ruthlessly refuted, spat on, and mocked."

I note the omission of The Producers , the Mel Brooks comedy about the production of a Broadway play celebrating Hitler, done in the middle of the Serious Hitler period. (Trying to avoid spoilers, but read the Fanfare post for both the film's portrayal of Nazis and its reception.)
posted by mersen at 12:00 PM on July 17 [6 favorites]

The jig clearly was up for Hitler when his daily Lage Ost map briefing started mentioning U-bahn stations like Pankow.
posted by torokunai at 12:02 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]

I think I realized that your basic Trump jokes wouldn't hurt him when I saw a 2016 sticker sold for him caricaturing his hair: "We Shall Overcomb." They hurt me, anyway, not because of the scolding about body-shaming but because they aren't funny and I have to pretend they are or risk looking like a sympathizer.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:05 PM on July 17 [3 favorites]

"But the final reason why the importance of ideology in fascism must be denied is the fact that it exists in more than one form. In fact, historically it has proved to have three different faces. One “out of power” that tends almost to be revolutionary and subversive, anticapitalist and antisocialist. One “in power but not secure"—this is the sensational aspect of fascism that we see on screen and read of in pulp novels, when the ruling class, through its instrumental regime, is able to suppress the vanguard party of the people’s and workers’ movement. The third face of fascism exists when it is “in power and securely so. ” During this phase some dissent may even be allowed. In Italy, Trilussa the poet wrote and published more bitter and biting satires attacking the political regime than can be found in any of the so-called liberal democratic states. In April 1925, three years after the fascist March on Rome, Benedetto Croce was able to publish a clearly anti-fascist manifesto[...]

The point here is that fascism emerged out of weakness in the preexisting economic arrangement and in the old left. And the weakness must be assigned to the vanguard party, not the people. The People’s Party failed to direct the masses properly with positive suppression of their class enemies and their goons. Mussolini was able to proclaim that fascism held the only solution to the people’s problem—by default. Fascism, the new arrangement, the rearrangement, the strengthening and reforming of laissez-faire competitive capitalism, was antisocialist from its inception. It attempted to conceal the reality of class struggle by disguising itself as a new solution to “national problems,” by deifying the interests of the “whole state”—which turned out to be the interests only of the state’s ruling classes."

- George Jackson, Blood in my Eye, finished days before his assassination at San Quentin.
posted by Richard Saunders at 12:09 PM on July 17 [10 favorites]

I've always been curious about the failed British sitcom Heil Honey I'm Home!. How the hell did that get made?
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:14 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]

Help us Katy Perry you’re our only hope!

Katy Perry voted for Rick Caruso and made her latest album with Dr. Luke. She is not on our side.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:14 PM on July 17 [8 favorites]

Being gross and over the top is the appeal, unfortunately. Equating fascism with low status makes it more appealing to those who are told they are low status. No one dislikes Charlie Chaplin because he's the Tramp. We like him because he's the Tramp.

There's no fighting fascism directly because it thrives and only gets stronger the more you engage with it. Uncle Remus gave us a term for this that, unfortunately, was destroyed by the exact kind of idiots it applies to, and that is an excellent example of the problem.

The only way out is to make people feel like they aren't low status so that appeals to destroying the establishment are less enticing. The Tramp does this by showing that the lower class is likable and relatable.

We should give Tramps more attention than Hitlers.
posted by betaray at 12:17 PM on July 17 [7 favorites]

That making fun of Hitler didn’t stop him is a pretty old observation, but the intentional deployment of irony and humor by supporters of fascist ideologies feels like more of a contemporary, postmodern phenomenon, rooted in more recent ideas about what it looks like to be antiestablishment? I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that historical fascists had much of a sense of humor about themselves.
posted by atoxyl at 12:39 PM on July 17 [4 favorites]

>"The only way out is to make people feel like they aren't low status so that appeals to destroying the establishment are less enticing."

I see where you're coming from, but many people are lower-status in our society, which is premised on a number of hierarchies determining our status. This is a basic critique of society coming from the left as well.

Where fascism becomes nightmarish and bloody is the hijacking of that critique to take you down the following path: (1) there was a former "golden age" that our society must return to (e.g. Make America Great Again); (2) there are specific bad ("weak", "decadent", "vermin", etc, but also "powerful," "devious", "smart" etc) people who are responsible for our fall from that golden age into this age of decadence who must be rooted out; (3) you must give yourself wholly to the fascist leader, right or wrong, regardless of his cruelty or mania -- giving yourself can mean everything from donating money, to ratting out friends & family, to joining armed groups, and so on until you give your life.

It isn't that the establishment has been put into crisis by fascist (or the centrist both-sidesing "extremist") forces, it's that the fascists take advantage of the crises of capitalism and other hierarchies to direct dissatisfaction toward its own ends.

I wonder if a media project that includes a trenchant critique of the status quo and a leftist social movement could also make fun of fascists as isolated, weak, and missing out on the good times to be had in the leftist movement, without too much risk of boosting them.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 1:05 PM on July 17 [4 favorites]

I wonder if a media project that includes a trenchant critique of the status quo and a leftist social movement could also make fun of fascists as isolated, weak yt , and missing out on the good times to be had in the leftist movement, without too much risk of boosting them.

The only thing historically that seems to douse these fires once they start in earnest is a great deal of blood.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:09 PM on July 17 [2 favorites]

The article, and this discussion, and especially

conceal the reality of class struggle … by deifying the interests of the “whole state”—which turned out to be the interests only of the state’s ruling classes.

prompted a few summarizing thoughts:

1. Fascism is one of many social systems based on dividing people into bullies and victims
2. In any system based on bullying, all bullies are also victims.
3. Fascism's particular trick is using mass media to make bullying cool and to invite everybody to join the bullying
4. "Everybody" is limited to potential members of the in-group, defined by nationality and race and religion etc
5. Joining the bullies is usually rewarded by coolness, not by a share of the spoils, and that's enough for most people (who go fascist).
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 1:41 PM on July 17 [3 favorites]

Sort of on topic, in a number of ways, as well as topical
posted by chavenet at 1:59 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]

interesting.
"Annette Insdorf, in her book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (2003), writes that "There was something curiously appropriate about the little tramp impersonating the dictator, for by 1939 Hitler and Chaplin were perhaps the two most famous men in the world. The tyrant and the tramp reverse roles in The Great Dictator, permitting the eternal outsider to address the masses".
Article doesn't mention Jan. 1940' "You Nazty Spy! satirized the Nazis and the Third Reich and helped publicize the Nazi threat in a period when the United States was still neutral about World War II and isolationist sentiment was prevalent among the public. During this period, isolationist senators such as Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye objected to Hollywood films on grounds that they were anti-Nazi propaganda vehicles designed to mobilize the American public for war."

There is something to this, this gear of making the enemy funny, human, just a gaffer with an agenda and the means to implement them. For example, the short-lived 'Tran and Helle films.' "Tran and Helle's shorts were discontinued in the fall of 1940, possibly due to the authorities becoming concerned that audiences might sympathise with the duped but essentially human Tran, who would on occasions utter ideas contrary to the Nazi regime." Ludwig Schmitz (Tran) was a member of the SS from 1934 and a member party from 1937, filmed Hurrah! I'm a Father, a comedy filmed in 1939. He fell into disgrace in 1941 that did not really startperforming again till the 1950s.

perhaps the philosophical divide is that don't make Nazis funny people. to digress, the OSS and British went to Great lengths to put out false stories about Hitler. Producing films at that time that satirized Hitler and his policies, demeanor and character were influential but Hitler had a sociopathic sense of humor. In the Wikipedia article it says that Hitler watched The Great dictator, twice, alone and Chaplain wondered what Hitler thought. to me, this seems a moot point because of Hitler sociopathic and psychopathic sense of humor, the dehumanizing aspect comes back as imputus for those who carry out such fiendish policies. But American television, Hogan's Heroes, my uncle was a prisoner of war, he found that show funny as hell. but this is post war and I really don't think it fills into the philosophical framework. interesting that within the Chaplin Wikipedia article is mentioned how he and a French filmmaker watched triumph of the will and the French filmmaker freaked out, Chaplin laughed. I really don't think it's a matter of who laughs last but how lasting the laughter will boast morale, addressing people uninformed, or marginalized about aspects of looming fascism.
philosophical aspects of humor within a subject matter so grave should not seek to rehumanize those who seek to dehumanize.

for example, the allies countered the story that Hitler loved dogs and dogs alone that dogs were his only true connection to the world etc etc. Home footage of his dogs actually are interesting some Blondie oscowering when he's around. it's quite fitting to Hitler that he used his dog to experiment on his batch of cyanide intended for himself.
posted by clavdivs at 1:59 PM on July 17 [5 favorites]

> many people are lower status in our society,

Yes, that's the thing we need to fix. No media project is going to make people feel like they're missing out on the good times of the left movement if the leftist movement isn't offering those people good times.

We can have movies where paroled convicts save an orphanage, but the Blue Brothers movie doesn't stop fascism. We need a reality where those we treat as low-status have the power to protect those things that have improved their lives. The best media can do is what the Blue Brothers movie did, and treat that as a desirable state. Demonizing your enemies is engaging in fascist tactics and, unsurprisingly does little to diminish fascism.
posted by betaray at 2:04 PM on July 17 [2 favorites]

No media project is going to make people feel like they're missing out on the good times of the left movement if the leftist movement isn't offering those people good times.

Not only have I never, once, in all 57 years on the planet, felt that the leftist movement was offering people good times, but I have also never, once, seen what exists of a leftist movement here in the USA act other than as if to offer a good time would be somehow betraying the spirit of leftism. I'm having trouble even imagining what a good time leftist movement would look or sound like. Humorless and/or angry scolds all the way down, is all I've ever seen. And I say this as someone who believes firmly that all businesses should be seized by the workers.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 2:20 PM on July 17 [7 favorites]

Not only have I never, once, in all 57 years on the planet, felt that the leftist movement was offering people good times, but I have also never, once, seen what exists of a leftist movement here in the USA act other than as if to offer a good time would be somehow betraying the spirit of leftism. I'm having trouble even imagining what a good time leftist movement would look or sound like. Humorless and/or angry scolds all the way down, is all I've ever seen.

....Well, I've encountered plenty of good times and fun as a member of the left, during my own 54 years on the planet. Maybe my not going into conversations with them assuming they're going to be "humorless angry scolds" has helped?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:29 PM on July 17 [5 favorites]

Coming in for Mel Brooks references. The blink-and-you-miss-it gag in Blazing Saddles where a Hitler actor is eating film studio canteen lunch with his friend, and says ‘they lose me right after da bunkah scene’, is one of that film’s sublime moments, and just gets funnier the deeper the levels you go.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:51 PM on July 17 [4 favorites]

Maybe my not going into conversations with them assuming they're going to be "humorless angry scolds" has helped?

I've certainly tried, and have always got humorless angry scold, no matter what my approach. But you're right, it's probably me.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:13 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]

i understand the actual meaning of the phrase "making fun of" but there is a distinct difference between fun and ridicule. and ridiculing fascists is always appropriate, unless there is an actual gun to your head. even then, it might be the only course.
posted by lapolla at 3:57 PM on July 17

The People’s Party failed to direct the masses properly with positive suppression of their class enemies

Mmmm, Leninists gotta Leninize.
posted by doctornemo at 4:00 PM on July 17

My mother was a young girl in Nazi occupied territory, and humour was an essential survival skill, especially after the Nazis destroyed all of the schools to prevent any of the local language, history or culture to be taught.

It allowed a different perspective on the oppression, so that when the Nazis provided free silk flags in abundance, red silk petticoats became exceptionally common. Similarly, once first aid kits were being handed out, the bandages would be twirled into thick thread which was then used to knit fashionable chunky sweaters. The master's tools could not be used to destroy the house, but they could be used to keep you warm and well dressed.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 4:37 PM on July 17 [5 favorites]

There’s a long history of Jews playing Nazis on screen

For decades, Jews have played Nazis on the small and silver screens, including — startlingly, amazingly — during the height of the Holocaust.

As I started exploring these roles of Jews portraying Nazis, I couldn’t help but get a little verklempt. Many of the earliest portrayals of Nazis were by immigrants and refugees — some even were German Jewish actors who left Germany when Hitler first rose to power — as well as the children of immigrants from countries whose Jews were brutally slaughtered.

Here they were on screen, these vital, successful Jewish actors, often mocking those who wanted their demise. What better revenge against the Nazis is there? This isn’t just that Jews are thriving, creative and successful — they’ve also taken their deepest traumas and turned them into art.

Examples include The Three Stooges in You Nazty Spy!, Jack Benny in To Be or Not To Be (1942), Otto Preminger in Stalag 17 (1953), and basically all the Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes.

A Crash Course on Hitler Satire: From Yertle the Turtle to Jojo Rabbit, a brief history of spoofing der Führer.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:13 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]

My hot take is that mockery is just fine but you want to reach for a subtext something like, "Ha ha ha, you're total clowns. STAY IN YOUR FUCKING CLOWN BOX YOU CLOWNS! Ah hah hah haaaaaaaaa." With a little pat on the cheek maybe.
posted by VTX at 5:13 PM on July 17

When he blows up in that scene that got lifted for the memes, it's terrifying and pitiful, and anything but boring.

That Downfall Scene Explained - What Is Hitler Freaking Out About? An excellent explanation.

The Famous Downfall Scene Explained: What Really Happened in Hitler’s Bunker at the End?
posted by kirkaracha at 5:36 PM on July 17