Humor is a weapon feared by some of the world's cruelest despots. Humor spreads virally by word of mouth. Jokes are concise, easy to remember and resonate with broad cross-sections of the public. Humor can be used to discredit, mock and topple dictators.
- Vaclav Havel used wit to criticize the Czech government.
- The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security organization, is said to have spread jokes about Yasser Arafat to trivialize him.
- “We're a generation that likes to play jokes, to laugh all the time, and that is our secret weapon,” said Sveta Matic in August 2000, a member of Otpor, a youth resistance movement in Yugoslavia that attempted to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic.
- In January 2006, Osama bin Laden said, “I swear not to die but a free man even if I taste the bitterness of death. I fear to be humiliated or betrayed.”
- In 1959, six months after taking power, Fidel Castro placed signs in official buildings saying “Counterrevolutionary jokes forbidden here” and shutdown Zig Zag, a humor magazine.
- Hitler was sufficiently concerned about the potential use of humor that he set up special “Third Reich joke courts” that punished people for many acts of inappropriate humor, including naming their dogs “Adolf.”
- The U.S. military discredited al-Qaida Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with bloopers based on his fumbling a machine gun in May 2006. He was killed on June 7, 2006.
