What do you think?
Rate this book
Weaponizing Ridicule
This text includes footnotes, sources, and pictures.
Al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lost his aura of invincibility in 2006 when the U.S. military released raw outtakes of a captured video showing the terrorist chief to be a befuddled, pudgy bumbler in a black ninja costume who didn’t know how to operate a machine gun. But some in the U.S. military didn’t get the value of ripping down al-Zarqawi in this way, arguing that the machine gun, an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, is “complicated to master” and requires extensive training. Plus, the M249 in question was an “older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising.” Arab journalists, on the other hand, saw the value immediately. Iraqi television broadcast the video over and over for days.
Dictators, terrorists, and totalitarian ideologues, almost by definition, cannot tolerate being laughed at. Nor can anyone with an inflated ego and thin skin. Ridicule is their Achilles’ heel. And, humor is a robust underground phenomenon in any society. The Soviet leadership was so fearful of humor that the KGB had what Russian comedian Yakov Smirnov called a “Department of Jokes.” That was not the real name of the department, which had a more anodyne designation as a subunit of the KGB’s political enforcement section, the Fifth Chief Directorate, but Smirnov’s nickname for it made the KGB look all the more weak and bizarre (although all jokes still had to be KGB approved).
From Army University Press. The Military Review provides an established and well regarded Army forum to stimulate original thought and debate on topics related to the art and science of land warfare. As such, it promotes communities of interest on a wide variety of issues of vital importance to the Army by providing a venue for publishing topical articles with new insights and fresh perspectives informed by original research, critical thinking, original thought, and persuasive analysis. By J. Michael Waller, PhD. of the NATO Defence Strategic Communications Journal and the Center for Security Policy.
Al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lost his aura of invincibility in 2006 when the U.S. military released raw outtakes of a captured video showing the terrorist chief to be a befuddled, pudgy bumbler in a black ninja costume who didn’t know how to operate a machine gun. But some in the U.S. military didn’t get the value of ripping down al-Zarqawi in this way, arguing that the machine gun, an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, is “complicated to master” and requires extensive training. Plus, the M249 in question was an “older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising.” Arab journalists, on the other hand, saw the value immediately. Iraqi television broadcast the video over and over for days.
Dictators, terrorists, and totalitarian ideologues, almost by definition, cannot tolerate being laughed at. Nor can anyone with an inflated ego and thin skin. Ridicule is their Achilles’ heel. And, humor is a robust underground phenomenon in any society. The Soviet leadership was so fearful of humor that the KGB had what Russian comedian Yakov Smirnov called a “Department of Jokes.” That was not the real name of the department, which had a more anodyne designation as a subunit of the KGB’s political enforcement section, the Fifth Chief Directorate, but Smirnov’s nickname for it made the KGB look all the more weak and bizarre (although all jokes still had to be KGB approved).
From Army University Press. The Military Review provides an established and well regarded Army forum to stimulate original thought and debate on topics related to the art and science of land warfare. As such, it promotes communities of interest on a wide variety of issues of vital importance to the Army by providing a venue for publishing topical articles with new insights and fresh perspectives informed by original research, critical thinking, original thought, and persuasive analysis. By J. Michael Waller, PhD. of the NATO Defence Strategic Communications Journal and the Center for Security Policy.
32 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 29, 2017
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.