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The Guardian - UK

Entertainment

REVEALED: The left must learn to take and make a joke - The Real Truth

George Monbiot United States Jo Brand Margaret Thatcher

Spitting Image puppets of Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock. — Spitting Image puppets of Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock. ‘Humour is neither inherently leftwing nor rightwing – it is anti-hypocrisy, anti-power and often subversive.’ Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

George Monbiot manages to achieve something quite remarkable: an essay on the corrosive potential of humour that ignores the decades-long tradition of the left wielding satire like a broadsword (How does the right tear down progressive societies? It starts with a joke, 10 July).

Did we all dream Spitting Image, Saturday Night Live, Have I Got News for You, Ben Elton, or Jo Brand’s “battery acid” quip about Nigel Farage? The left practically invented modern political satire as we know it – and rightly so. Holding power to account through ridicule is not only legitimate but essential. But suddenly, when humour points the other way, it becomes seditious? Dangerous? Please.

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