Sometimes, the only thing you can do is laugh.
Around the world, brutes have risen – and continue to rise – to power. Far from challenging these despotic tyrants, our supposedly liberal western democracies have cow-towed to them, flattering them, and inflating their egos. In the UK, the weak and decrepit conservative party hangs on to power with long vicious fingernails and asks the taxpayer to foot the bill of hosting one of these new brutish demagogues so that they can shower him in pageantry and golf. 100 years ago, America and Europe were united in trying to create and preserve a new world peace where liberty and human rights would flourish, and the horrors of imperial wargames would cease. Now these same powers squabble like school children, trading insults and threats, seemingly unaware that theirs in an order that requires radical change – not more of the same.
This is all such madness it would be funny, if it weren’t so easy to feel terrified by it all.
Donald Trump is clearly the most obvious fault-line in the current alignment of our stars. The charge list against him is impossible to tolerate: there is the racism of his immigration policies that bans people from Muslim countries entering the USA, and which separates young children forcibly from their parents; then there is the threats posed to the rights of women, people of colour, and LGBT people. He ignores the catastrophic effects of man-made climate change or the fact that our rampant over consumption is threatening our planet’s survival. He sucks up to tyrants, launches trade wars, insults allies, praises fools and dictators, and campaigns against the free press. He is also a coward and a fraud who has tiny hands and evidence suggests he regularly pays prostitutes to urinate on him.
Our response to Trump, as writers, artists, creatives and – ultimately – human beings, is crucial. It must be appropriate, balanced, and precisely reactionary. If only to support Newton’s third law, our reaction to Trump’s hatred, fear and bigotry, must be equal in its opposition to these traits. In other words, it must be one of love, bravery, and inclusivity.
To our minds, there is nothing that brings people together more so than laughter. There is nothing braver than laughing at those who would beat you (or worse) for doing so. And there is nothing that can invoke feelings of love more than the euphoria of hysterical humour.
It is for this reason that we call for all creatives to unite in mocking Trump as the thin-skinned charlatan he really is.
Join the resistance
To an extent, the mockery of Trump through satirical art has already begun in earnest. There has been a huge influx of resistance-themed art, whether it’s commentary on world leaders with the graffiti styling’s of Mr. Dheo or Bambi (pictured below), or more simply the crowd-funded Trump baby balloon, which has been flying above London during the President’s visit to the UK.
The proliferation of this kind of art perhaps recognises the fact that to continue making art as before is an insufficient response to the state of the world. The dark reality is that intensity, beauty, and devotion to making beautiful creative things are insufficient to halt violence. Indeed, one need only to look to history – to see and hear the march of Nazism accompanied by the tunes of Wagner – in order to realise how these aspects of art can become the accompanying soundtrack to evil.
We do not use terms such as evil lightly. To label everyone and everything one disagrees with as fascism is surely to dissolve the meaning of a term that threatens the fabric of democracy and liberal decency. And it is for this reason that aggressive art – art that seeks to create representations of darkness, evil, violence and hatred – are equally ill-equipped as positive, beautiful art, for confronting the realities of our times and challenging them. Holding a mirror to violence and anger reflects, but does not shatter, the illusion of power that they hold. Only by making fun of and satirising those who trumpet hate and division can we truly expose the intrinsic lack of power that they have.
Exposing Trump
Trump is in many ways the epitome of the weakness of hate and anger. His inflated ego and thin skin make the giant Trump baby currently floating in the skies above London a perfect symbol of a man who is nothing more than hot air: a thin-skinned charlatan who uses racism, homophobia and misogyny to stoke fear among people struggling to get by in a country riven by divisions caused by incessant neoliberal capitalism – that has left the vast majority poorer whilst an extreme minority of billionaires collect ever more wealth. The fragility of Trump’s ego is easily exposed; one need only witness how he rushes to defend the size of his hands, the size of his penis, or that he doesn’t need to use Viagra, to see how afraid the man is of being exposed.
Indeed, in every encounter with Trump he appears like all those bullies at school who tried to pull the chairs from beneath girls they liked, or boys they were not as smart as, or kids who were more athletic and better looking than them. He exhibits all the behaviours of someone trying desperately hard to scare people into not mentioning his countless failures; his ugliness; his stupidity. If he were your grumpy, rude co-worker who made uncomfortable comments in team meetings, you might think him a sad case of a person who has never known love.
But Trump is not your grumpy, rude co-worker. He is the President of the United States; a great country that has irrefutably shaped the world (not always for good; but certainly not always for ill); and he is a representative of how the USA is in a moment of deep political crisis – as is all Western Democracy.
Challenging him and his ethos would usually fall to journalism or traditional media. Yet his clever use of ‘fake news’ and the inability of his opponents to mount an effective alternative to his reign has proven that traditional approaches will not suffice in this instance. Into the breach in its stead must step art – specifically, satirical art, and writing, which can put political pressure on misinformation, folly, and the abuse of power.
The power of satire
Satire is so subversive – and often politically fatal for those who rule – because it exposes the absurdities of power. Authority attempts to assert itself partly through a veneer of respectability and seriousness. When that is stripped away, its legitimacy can be lost, along with our subservience.
Historically, one can trace the power of Satire through such notable pieces as Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, which brought public attention to the plight of the Irish people and attacked those British politicians who had ignored the famines ravaging the country. You can also look to the satirical art that accompanied the French Revolutions which, as Will Self notes “were each accompanied by a satiric outburst”. Prior to and during the American revolutionary war of independence, satirical cartoons mocking King George “the buffoon” flourished in towns across America. In all these instances, it was the power of artistic satire that united people together to challenge the status quo and demand change; more so than the anger or shock of individuals could ever hope to achieve.
This point is crucial: our own individual convictions are worthless if all we do with them is try to shout more loudly or aggressively than ever other angry voice.
Anger at our political elite seldom fuels action to do anything about it, engendering instead an enraged passivity: people WRITE POLITICAL RANTS ALL IN CAPS on Twitter and Facebook, but this serves no purpose. No one reading these ravings who does not already agree with them will find anything of value to them. At best, it will confirm their belief that the world around them is full of anger and best avoided if possible. They will not engage with anger and hate unless it is an anger and hatred they already feel.
Burst the balloon
Here is where quality satirical art plays such a crucial role; because it helps engage those who otherwise find politics tedious. Laughter, it is famously said, is the best medicine. It’s true. You only need to have ever told a joke and made others laugh to see how they immediately warm to you. If you make people laugh with you, you can more easily direct their attention to the failures that exist in society. You can help them, gently and warmly, recognise the faults of those in power. And from there, they are far more likely to choose to fight against people like Trump who seek to sow fear and anger rather than laughter and love. And even if they don’t fight, their laughter at the cowardly bully trying to look tough may just be enough to burst his ballooning ego.
A call to arts
There is of course an argument that we need art that lifts up other, dispossessed voices. That keeps their ideas and creativity alive at a time when their existence is threatened by the policies of Trump and his right-wing cronies.
This too, we need. Of course this too. There is too much hate and anger in the world and we need diversity of thought more than ever. We need to support emerging artists and voices; but we also need to fight back. But it is not the pen that is mightier than the sword; but rather the laughter of millions that is more powerful than the fearful rage and angry Twitter ramblings of an infantile, cowardly egoist.
So, join in the good fight, comrades – before we can defeat Trump, we must deflate him. All power to your satirical typewriters and easels!
Get involved and submit your satirical pieces of art or writing to us directly through our contact us page. To get the ball rolling, read our collection of ‘Donald Trump poetry‘ – lines and verses taken straight from the rambling mouth of the fat dotard himself.
nothing in the rulebook 