Comedy, free speech and warnings from the past

Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Nazi Germany. Eventually she had to flee to France and, after its fall, across the Atlantic to the United States.

Soon after the war she wrote a remarkable reflection on the events that led up to Adolf Hitler’s domination. In her work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, she observed: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” Control ideas and you control people.

One of the first steps of a totalitarian regime is to censor media and destroy freedom of expression. Soon after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the new government established their General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets which began the programme of destroying dissent. Mussolini established his dictatorship in Italy by first creating his Ministry of Press and Propaganda which, within five years, banned all alternative political parties and took control of the press. China, Cambodia and North Korea have all seen similar patterns of oppression.

The example of the rise of the Third Reich is almost too obvious to state. But it is worth reminding ourselves that within one month of Hitler coming to power in 1933 he passed the Reichstag Fire Decree that took emergency powers to suspend freedom of speech. Later that year, book burning became commonplace and anything considered “un-German” was destroyed.

While the Western world today is not comparable to 1930s Germany, there has been a chilling of free and open debate. The rise of cancel culture over the past decade has given a myriad of examples where voices that dissent from a presupposed mainstream set of values have been silenced. Christians have a long history of bearing the brunt of this. Attempts to suppress evangelism and exclude or marginalise a Christian voice by labelling them “fundamentalist” or “bigoted” are commonplace.

But the suppression of free speech has increasingly been felt by what had otherwise been mainstream, largely secular voices. The vilification of J. K. Rowling, Richard Dawkins and John Cleese, particularly over issues of feminism and the sexuality debate, have made them exiles in much popular culture.

The connection of free speech and comedy has always been an intriguing one. Matt Lucas and David Walliams are rapidly rewriting or erasing their back catalogue to produce comedy in keeping with the modern age. Fawlty Towers is now screened with a warning notice by the BBC.

Most remarkable was the arrest of Graham IT Crowd Linehan, scriptwriter for The and Father Ted, on his arrival at Heathrow Airport. Five armed police officers made the arrest as a result of three tweets he had made on the X social media platform, expressing his views on trans issues. He pointed out that while police only respond to one in five reports of shoplifting, five armed officers had been involved in his arrest for three tweets.

I have seen very little defence of the police actions, though there is probably a lot we don’t know. From my social media feeds, the arrest has made the UK itself a subject of ridicule from overseas. The police only act on higher authorities, which raises the question of who is making these decisions: what counts as crimes and what level of response is appropriate?

Hannah Arendt observed that the Third Reich’s attempt to preserve power required respect – Nazis could not tolerate ridicule. She wrote: “The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.” Totalitarian regimes hate dissent, but they also hate comedy. When Adolf Hitler watched Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 parody, The Great Dictator, at his private Eagle’s Nest cinema, he was clearly rattled. He banned the film in Germany, but watched it twice himself. Chaplin showed how laughable the Nazi regime was.

As Christians there is a lot of what passes for comedy that we may not like. We have the option to switch off the crude or cruel themes that some find funny. But we should be wary of those who wish to shut it down or claim to be offended. Our ability to critique, probe, think and disagree benefits from the perspective of the comic. The freedom we need in order to share our faith shares the space with those who wish to poke fun. Apologetics, preaching and evangelism benefit from living in a land that permits rival views and the voice of comedy.