The Nazis Eliminated Their Comedians, Now It’s Started Here

Alex Borgella is a Social Psychologist at Tufts University. Blogging on Flipboard recently, in an article entitled “The Science of Laughter,” Borgella said:

Philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato alluded to the idea behind the superiority theory thousands of years ago. It suggests that all humor is derived from the misfortunes of others—and therefore, our own relative superiority. Thomas Hobbes also mentioned this theory in his book Leviathan, suggesting that humor results in any situation where there’s a sudden realization of how much better we are than our direct competition. … Charles Gruner, the late expert on superiority theory, suggests that all humor is derived from competition.

The Greek philosophers agreed with the superiority theory but surprisingly, did not see the value in humor that we see today:

Because of these objections to laughter and humor, Plato says that in the ideal state, comedy should be tightly controlled. “We shall enjoin that such representations be left to slaves or hired aliens, and that they receive no serious consideration whatsoever. No free person, whether woman or man, shall be found taking lessons in them.” “No composer of comedy, iambic or lyric verse shall be permitted to hold any citizen up to laughter, by word or gesture, with passion or otherwise” (Laws, 7: 816e; 11: 935e).

Greek thinkers after Plato had similarly negative comments about laughter and humor. Though Aristotle considered wit a valuable part of conversation (Nicomachean Ethics 4, 8), he agreed with Plato that laughter expresses scorn. Wit, he says in the Rhetoric (2, 12), is educated insolence. In the Nicomachean Ethics (4, 8) he warns that “Most people enjoy amusement and jesting more than they should … a jest is a kind of mockery, and lawgivers forbid some kinds of mockery—perhaps they ought to have forbidden some kinds of jesting.” The Stoics, with their emphasis on self-control, agreed with Plato that laughter diminishes self-control. Epictetus’s Enchiridion (33) advises “Let not your laughter be loud, frequent, or unrestrained.” His followers said that he never laughed at all.

Too bad for Plato. He doesn’t know what he was missing and he never would have gotten through the debates without the live blogging and tweeting going on by various comedians and without the round up at the end of the day/week by Stephen Colbert and John Oliver; two men who are not only comedians but in this political climate, guardians of the cultural moral compass.

Critic Clive James wrote an essay about the persecution of comedians and entertainers generally in Germany, after Hitler was elected Chancellor:

“Horrific evidence suggest that the Austrian Nazis, when their armbands were still in their pockets, put the café talk high on their long list of Jewish intellectual pursuits to be trampled out of existence when the great day came. The future firebrands and executioners had been listening in for years, probably inflamed as much by sincere disapproval as by thick-witted jealousy.

After a single orgiastic day of violence in March 1938 there was no-one left who had anything to say worth hearing. Hugo Sperber, already worn out from too many years living on thin pickings, was thrown to the ground and kicked until he fell silent for good. Fritz Grunbaum, one of the stars of the “Simplicissimus” cabaret, was arrested within hours of the takeover, shipped to Dachau, and beaten to death.”

The alt-right of Nazi Germany were jealous of the talented and the luminous and their envy became all consuming and compelled them to destroy people who had attained a stature that they themselves could only hollowly aspire to. Oswalt, in his blog, expresses a similar sentiment about the alt-righters of today and their motivations to destroy anything that they don’t agree with.

By getting rid of popular entertainers in general and comedians in particular, who arguably were in the best position to “pull the Nazi’s covers” and expose their hypocrisy and lies for exactly what they were, the Nazis were able to effectively subjugate the populace.  After the comedians were taken away in 1938, any criticism of the Regime was, if spoken of at all, articulated in a hushed whisper in a dark corner; no longer broadcast from the floor of the local caberet.

It is sobering that a comedian like Patton Oswalt would be getting the hate dialogue that he’s been receiving via social media from self-proclaimed alt-righters. He is not alone, unfortunately.

Comedy and in particular, political satire, are the best tools we have to maintain stability on the rocky road which we are on, and which promises to become only rockier and steeper as the days go by. Hopefully our First Amendment protections, something that the German people did not have in place in 1938, can protect this special class of Americans, comedians, and preserve what they do for us, which is of indescribable value: they make us laugh when we really want to cry.

So much for our First Amendment protections when corporations hell bent on pleasing Donald Trump rule the airwaves. When I wrote this nine years ago I never, ever, ever thought that I would see Kimmel and Colbert bite the dust and on the flimsiest of excuses.

I’m going to make a prediction: I predict that America will not stand for this. CBS and ABC are not the only platforms available for Kimmel’s and Colbert’s talents. Trump and his FCC lackey may think they’ve shut down the voices they seek to quash; they may have instead have amplified them. I’m going to paraphrase my fellow Coloradan, Molly Brown: “We ain’t down yet.”  Indeed we ain’t.