Some people say political humour is only 'letting off steam'. If that is true, why do dictators fear it? Here are some answers (just not that one).

1. Mao Zedong was mad at Nikita Khrushchev, so he scheduled a summit meeting where?
   
   • In a swimming pool: Khrushchev couldn't swim, and Mao could. Nikita looked wussy in a rubber swim ring.
2. What happened to Slobodan Milosevic's body after death?
   
   • It was dug up by a vampire hunter, who drove a stake through the heart. It's a Balkan thing.
3. What did Swedish activists drop from a plane over Minsk in 2012?
   
   • Teddy bears. We cry foul. That joke was stolen from a short story in the h2g2 Post.
4. On 22 January, 1941, a group of people met in the woods in Maryland, USA. What was their purpose?
   
   • To put a voodoo curse on Hitler. We guess he had more mojo.
5. When Ukrainian football fans chant, 'Putin Khuilo!', what sentiment are they expressing?
   
   • Extreme dislike for the Russian head of state. Putting it mildly. The word 'head' does feature in the insult.
6. In 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at Columbia University. What happened?
   
   • They let him speak, but heckled throughout. Something about 'the answer to hate speech is more speech'?
7. During the Second World War, people in Berlin called air raid sirens 'Meyer's Hunting Horns', to mock Hermann Goering, the Nazi official (and head of the hunting office) who was famed for having said, 'If one bomb reaches Berlin, my name is Meyer.' What is remarkable about this quote?
   
   • There's no record he said it at all. Don't wait for your dictator to say something stupid. Pretend he did.
8. At the end of the Second World War, the emperor of Japan was required to do something unusual for the future of his country. What was it?
   
   • Admit that he wasn't a god. We don't know what Venkman would have said about that.
9. Jumping back a bit in history, Madame de Stael was a witty writer in the days of Napoleon Buonaparte. She made Napoleon mad, especially since her jokes were better than his. How did Napoleon react?
   
   • He exiled her to 200 km from Paris. This is about the most French punishment we've ever heard of.
10. Is humour an important weapon against dictators? The Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies, (headquarters Belgrade) thinks so. What term did they coin to describe political action using humour, pranking, and mockery?
    
    • Laughtivism. We didn't make it up.

Now go and laugh at a dictator today. Preferably from a safe distance.

Schnickelfritzen die Sauerkrauten….

Dmitri Gheorgheni

21.05.18 Front Page

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