The politics of ridicule

From cartoons and songs to viral memes, ridicule can become a potent political weapon, damaging reputations in ways that carefully crafted campaigns often cannot

Italian cartoonist and writer Giovanni Guareschi (1908-1968) is remembered for his charming stories of confrontations between a village priest, Don Camillo, and Peppone, the Communist mayor of the same village. Guareschi went to prison during World War II for abusing Benito Mussolini, and again later for libelling Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi. 

He branded Communists with a single pen-stroke. He drew them with three nostrils, asserting they needed the third to absorb ideology. This led to Italy’s political shorthand referring to Communists as “Tri-nostrilled”. 

Politicians spend a lot of time and money to create favourable branding. Politicians also expend substantial effort to “inversely brand” opponents as embodiments of evil, or objects of ridicule. Guareschi did the latter for free, and did it to devastating effect.

Positive branding is a marketing tool, with applications far beyond politics. Every corporate with a product or service tries to create brands. When it comes to luxury brands, (haute couture, perfumes, designer swag) the advertising & promotion (A&P) costs of branding can easily amount to half of sales revenues. 

When controversial “edutainment service” providers like Byju’s and IIPM worked on branding, the A&P probably exceeded revenues. This may currently be the case with artificial intelligence (AI) models as well, though the valuation gains will more than offset expenses where AI companies are concerned. 

Inverse or negative branding is a different beast. Unlike positive branding, negative branding is not much use outside the political domain. A soft drink, for example, is hardly likely to score higher sales by bad-mouthing rival soft drinks. The demand for all soft drinks may drop if the campaign catches hold, and there’s retaliation. There may be legal consequences too.   

But negative branding has enormous political applications. Politics is a zero-sum game. “Somebody” has to be in charge of tax revenues, and other state-controlled assets. That somebody gains if he or she can discredit potential rivals. So, even as they pay for happy hoardings and cutouts, and fund positive media blitzes and photo ops, politicians also try to damage the branding of rivals. Funny nicknames, memes, actual dirt, fake news, anything goes. 

While politicians do spend plenty of money on bad-mouthing rivals, some of the most effective negative branding campaigns have been carried out for free. In some cases, the negative branding came about more or less by accident. 

Long before Richard Dawkins coined “meme”, songsters Simon and Garfunkel (S&G) became meme-sters in the Southern African nation of Malawi. Between 1964 and 1994, Hastings Banda served as Prime Minister and then as President for life of that former British colony.  His companion, Cecilia Kadzamira, was officially enshrined as “Mama of the Nation”.  

In 1970, S&G, who were entirely unaware of the existence of Malawi, released a song “Cecilia”, which referenced the Catholic patron saint of music, St Cecilia. It had lyrics such as “Oh Cecilia! You’re breaking my heart!” and explicit references to cuckolding. It was gleefully adopted in Malawi until Banda banned S&G. 

Circa 2017, A A Milne’s character, the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, ended up semi-banned in the People’s Republic of China. Pooh, self-described as a “Bear of Very Little Brain” had long been a beloved character prominently visible in the People’s Republic of China’s amusement parks. Translations of Milne’s works were widely read by kids in China. 

The books were illustrated by E H Shepard. And, there was a physical resemblance between China’s general secretary and Shephard’s depiction of Pooh. Unflattering memes that referred to the general secretary as “Pooh” spread like wildfire before being blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Pooh and Pooh-related references are now diligently scrubbed off Chinese social media, though the books are still apparently available and the statues are visible. 

Memes have been used extensively to target politicians in the GenZ-driven protests that have proliferated across the subcontinent. They have also been used by the satirist Count Binface in a recent UK by-election to target Reform Party politician Nigel Farage. 

One interesting thing is that negative branding campaigns seem to work better when they are spontaneously rolled out or accidental, rather than carefully crafted. While Banda and Xi Jinping didn’t have to worry about any direct impact, they were sensitive to ridicule.   

Politicians who do need to win elections have an even bigger problem. In the age of social media and viral memes, this may be an existential question for career politicians: How do you manage to be taken seriously in future if you have been turned into an object of ridicule?

The writer is a New Delhi-based independent journalist