Don't make me laugh: why those on the right hate comedy

_{TetleysTLDR: The Summary}

The attacks on Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel in the US and on comedians like Nish Kumar and Frankie Boyle in the UK are not random outbursts from thin-skinned conservatives. They’re part of a deliberate culture war strategy. The alt-right, Reform UK, and their media attack dogs understand something vital: laughter is kryptonite to authoritarians.  Satire robs tyrants of their terror, exposing them as ridiculous, insecure frauds. That’s why they cheer when Kumar is booed off stage, why Boyle is blacklisted, why the BBC cancels shows like The Mash Report. They want silence, a cultural landscape where the only acceptable jokes punch downwards.  What is worse is that instead of defending satire, Keir Starmer’s Labour plays along, terrified of offending the tabloids.  Without humour, democracy withers.  Without satire, cruelty hardens. The fight to defend comedy isn’t trivial: t’s about keeping one of the last weapons against authoritarianism alive.

_{TetleysTLDR: The article}

The right has always hated comedy. Not comedy in general, they’re fine with the reheated bigotry of 'edgy' comics who punch down, who mug for cheap laughs by mocking immigrants, LGBTQ+, or the working class.  But satire that points its knives upwards? That ridicules the powerful? to them that’s intolerable.  This is why Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have become prime targets in the alt-right’s culture war.  These are not fringe voices on some obscure podcast.  They are mainstream late-night hosts, with massive reach, who gleefully puncture the puffed-up balloon of Trumpism and Republican hypocrisy - and the far right can’t abide it.  They know what they’re up against: ridicule is kryptonite to authoritarians.

_{Why the Right Loathes Satire}

Trump and his fanboys built their empire on grievance, rage, and an ever-present demand for obedience but satire makes them look ridiculous.  Colbert mocking Trump’s incoherence, Kimmel exposing Republican cruelty with tearful monologues about healthcare.  These moments cut deeper than a hundred newspaper op-eds.  They reach people who don’t live and breathe politics, people who might otherwise tune out.  The right understands this. They know that laughter doesn’t just entertain; it disarms.

That’s why they’ve ramped up the pressure.  Think of the relentless attacks on the 'woke' land the smear campaigns about 'liberal elites', the coordinated pile-ons from Murdoch outlets, the astroturfed boycotts targeting advertisers.  The aim is simple: to make satire too expensive, too risky, too much of a liability.  Shut them up, starve them out, strip comedy of its teeth

_{Culture War as Strategy}

This isn’t just a spat with a couple of TV hosts.  It’s a calculated move in the wider culture war. Book bans in Florida.  History whitewashed in Texas classrooms.  Hollywood demonised as a den of 'groomers'.  Drag queens turned into bogeymen.  All of it points in the same direction: a suffocating cultural monoculture where dissent, diversity, and derision are crushed.

The alt-right knows they can’t win a fair fight on ideas.  Their policies are cruel, their economics are a scam, their 'values' are a swamp of bigotry and fear-mongering.  So instead, they attack the spaces where those failures are exposed.  Schools. Libraries. TV screens. Comedy stages. They don’t want people laughing at them, because once you’re laughing at a fascist, you’ve robbed him of his terror.

_{Colbert and Kimmel}

The mainstream late-night slot is one of the last corners of popular culture where progressives have a microphone loud enough to cut through the noise.  It’s no accident the right has made these men targets.  They can sneer all they like about 'Hollywood elites', but the truth is Colbert and Kimmel are thorns in their side precisely because ordinary Americans watch them.

Kimmel’s heartfelt monologues about his son’s illness turned into scathing indictments of Republican healthcare cruelty.  Colbert transformed Trump’s every idiotic statement into a punchline, stripping the emperor of his clothes in real time.  That’s not just entertainment it’s dangerous to the right because it changes the atmosphere.  It makes cruelty laughable and power absurd.

_{The British Chapter: Reform UK’s War on Comedy}

If you think this is just an American phenomenon, think again. The same authoritarian reflex is alive and kicking in Britain. Just look at Reform UK and their cheerleaders in the Tory press. They froth at the mouth over 'woke comedians' like Nish Kumar, Frankie Boyle, Josie Long, or any comic who dares to turn their ire on racism, Brexit, or the monarchy.

At a Lord’s Taverners charity cricket lunch in 2019, Nish Kumar was booed off stage and had bread rolls thrown at him for daring to crack jokes about Brexit and Boris Johnson’s incompetence.  The right-wing press gleefully crowed over it, painting it as proof that 'the people' had rejected 'wokeness'.  In reality, it was an orchestrated humiliation designed to send a message: mock Brexit, and you’ll be silenced.

Frankie Boyle, one of the sharpest satirical voices Britain ever produced, has effectively been blacklisted from BBC panel shows since the mid-2010s.  He’s spoken openly about how producers told him he was 'too political'. Translation: too willing to call Britain’s wars illegal, too eager to call the monarchy parasites, too likely to skewer sacred cows.  His crime wasn’t being offensive, it was being accurate.

Then came The Mash Report. Fronted by Kumar, it offered biting, satirical takes on Brexit, Trump, and British politics.  It wasn’t perfect, but it mattered. And in 2021, the BBC axed it outright, citing 'editorial priorities'.  Right-wing rags like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail openly celebrated its demise as a victory against 'woke comedy'.  The BBC folded under pressure from the Tory culture warriors, handing the far-right and their tabloid bootboys exactly what they wanted.

The irony is breathtaking. The very people who scream that comedians are being 'cancelled' are the ones working hardest to cancel them.  What they want isn’t 'free speech'. It’s a monopoly.  A stage where only reactionary gags about migrants, trans people, and 'snowflakes' are welcome. The Nigel Farage comedy circuit.  And it’s as joyless as it sounds.

_{Labour’s Role in Capitulation}

Labour under Keir Starmer isn’t defending satire either.  Far from it.  Instead of standing up for artistic freedom, they’ve bent the knee to the tabloids and the Reform/Tory narrative about 'woke overreach'.  When the BBC cancelled Mash Report, did Labour say a word? No.  When Frankie Boyle was driven off screens, did a Labour frontbencher call out the silencing?  Not a chance.  When Nish Kumar was pelted with bread for mocking Brexit, did Starmer defend him? Not bloody likely.

Starmer’s Labour has decided that defending satire is too risky.  He’s the kind of public school prick who’d rather cosy up to Rupert Murdoch than stand by a comic with a backbone.  He and his front bench treat satire as an embarrassment: a messy, unpredictable thing that might upset 'Middle England'.  And in doing so, they’ve left the field wide open for Reform UK to weaponise the culture war unchallenged.  The truth us though, that without satire, democracy withers. Without laughter, cruelty hardens and Labour, by failing to defend comedians against right-wing culture warriors, has become complicit in the silencing.  They’re not just cowardly; they’re collaborators.

_{What the Right Wants}

This isn’t about offence.  The right don’t care about offensive comedy, they thrive on it. They lap up racist gags from washed-up hacks because it serves their worldview.  What they hate is comedy that punctures them.  Comedy that points out their emperor is naked.  Comedy that makes cruelty look like the pathetic insecurity it is.

What they want is silence. They want a culture where ridicule of the powerful is unthinkable, where laughter is replaced by fear, where the only permissible humour is cruelty aimed downward. They want to roll back not just political rights but cultural freedoms to lock society into a joyless, joy-killing authoritarian straitjacket and Starmer’s Labour, ever tone deaf, by playing along, is greasing the rails.

_{10 reasons why}

The far right thrives on fear, obedience, and the illusion of strength. Strip away the jackboots, the flags, and the thunderous speeches, and what’s left is usually a puffed-up mediocrity desperate to be taken seriously. That’s where comedy comes in — and why they loathe it. Laughter is their undoing. It punctures pomp, dismantles propaganda, and turns terror into farce. From Hitler banning comedians to Trump throwing tantrums at late-night jokes, authoritarian figures have always been uniquely thin-skinned. Satire doesn’t debate with them on their terms; it ridicules them, reducing their bluster to the level of a schoolyard pratfall. And that’s fatal for a movement built on the illusion of invincibility. Here are ten reasons why the far right fears laughter more than protest, and why satire remains one of the sharpest weapons we have against tyranny.

_{1. Why Authoritarians Fear Laughter}

Laughter is a weapon no dictator can defend against. Tanks can roll over barricades, laws can silence dissent, but a joke travels freely and punctures the balloon of authority. For the far right, whose whole ideology relies on fear, hierarchy, and blind respect, comedy is fatal because it demolishes reverence.  A tyrant can jail a dissenter, but he can’t stop the crowd from laughing at his absurd moustache or his hollow slogans. That’s why authoritarians loathe satire: it doesn’t argue with them, it exposes them as ridiculous.  And once people laugh at them, their spell is broken.

_{2. A Tradition of Mockery: From Aristophanes to Spitting Image}

History is littered with examples of satire humiliating the powerful.  Aristophanes lampooned Athenian generals, Swift shredded British imperial arrogance, and Gillray’s cartoons mocked kings and politicians alike. In the modern age, Spitting Image reduced Thatcher and Reagan to grotesque puppets, stripping away their gravitas.  These examples show satire’s lineage as an equaliser: no one is too mighty to be caricatured.  The far right, desperate to look strong and untouchable, cannot abide this tradition.  They know history records leaders not just by what they did, but how they were mocked. To be immortalised as a punchline is their nightmare.

_{3. Jesters, Swift, and the Safety Valve of Ridicule}

When open criticism was punishable by death, ridicule became the loophole. Court jesters could speak truths hidden in jokes; Jonathan Swift embedded political fury inside satire so sharp it disguised itself as comedy. The laugh gave cover to dangerous truths. That tradition persists: satire lets us say what cannot otherwise be said. The far right, allergic to dissent, fears this safety valve because it can’t be legislated away. They can censor newspapers, sack teachers, or ban books but mockery slips under the door, spreading by word of mouth.  It is the one form of speech they cannot fully control.

_{4. Punching Up vs. Punching Down}

Real satire always punches up.  It skewers power, mocks pomp, and shines a light on the abuses of the mighty.  Far-right humour, on the other hand, nearly always punches down mocking migrants, minorities, or the vulnerable.  That isn’t satire, it’s bullying dressed as comedy and the public can sense the difference.  Punching down exposes weakness in the joker, not the target. This is why the far right despises satire: it shows that comedy, when done properly, doesn’t reinforce their power structures, it demolishes them. And they can’t abide a culture where laughter sides with the oppressed, not the oppressors.

_{5. The Clown in the Uniform}

Fascism thrives on theatre: uniforms, flags, parades, symbols of strength.  But comedy ruins the stagecraft.  The moment someone points out that goose-stepping soldiers look like wind-up toys or that a pompous speech sounds like a ranting drunk, the spell is broken.  The far right hates comedy because it unmasks the costume, showing the tyrant for what he is: a clown desperate for applause.  No authoritarian survives ridicule intact.  A dictator can look menacing on a balcony, but once the audience is laughing at him, he’s reduced to farce.  Comedy strips away the illusion of power and leaves only weakness.

_{6. From Hitler’s Thin Skin to Trump’s Twitter Meltdowns}

History shows the far right’s leaders are uniquely thin-skinned.  Hitler banned comedians, Mussolini jailed satirists, and Franco censored even mild mockery.  In our own time, Trump turned every late-night monologue into a Twitter tantrum, unable to stomach ridicule.  These men thrive on being feared, but crumble when they are laughed at.  It’s why authoritarian movements always target comedians and satirists early on: mockery does more damage to their image than any opposition rally.  The rage of these leaders at jokes tells us everything: they know their authority is built on bluster, and a single punchline can shatter it.

_{7. Why the Far-Right can’t do comedy}

The far right tries, of course, to dabble in comedy.  But their attempts are always bitter, cruel, and joyless. They mock the poor, the marginalised, the powerless and pass it off as edgy humour, but it falls flat, because true comedy requires self-awareness, and authoritarian movements lack it entirely.  They cannot laugh at themselves because their ideology depends on maintaining an illusion of strength and certainty.  That’s why right-wing satirists rarely endure.  Their jokes are spite without wit.  Comedy is fundamentally democratic; it requires an audience that recognises shared humanity.  The far right rejects that and fails.

_{8. The Joke That Terrifies Them}

The far right fears the joke that spreads uncontrollably. A witty remark, a cartoon, a viral meme can do what no manifesto can: make tyranny look ridiculous.  Once people laugh at a demagogue, fear evaporates.  Authoritarian regimes spend billions on propaganda to appear invincible, but one clever joke can undo it all.  That’s why despots rage at cartoons and ban comedians: they know that laughter spreads faster than their lies.  The joke terrifies them because it proves they are not feared, not respected, not taken seriously.  They are the butt of the gag, and nothing scares them more.

_{9. Comedy as Resistance}

In occupied countries, jokes became a form of rebellion. In Nazi-occupied Europe, underground jokes mocked Hitler.  In the Soviet Union, whispered satire about the Party kept sanity alive. Comedy turns despair into resistance.  The far right hates this because it undermines their biggest weapon: fear.  If people can laugh at their oppressors, they can endure them and eventually overthrow them.  Authoritarian movements know this history too well.  They try to stamp out jokes because each one is a small act of defiance, proof that their control isn’t total. Where comedy exists, tyranny is never safe.

_{10. Why We Must Keep Laughing}

Satire is not just entertainment, it’s a political act. It has been our shield and sword against monarchs, dictators, and demagogues for centuries. The far right hates comedy because it reveals their fraudulence, punctures their pomposity, and reminds us that they are not omnipotent.  They can lock people up, censor the press, and silence opponents but they can’t stop us laughing at them.  And as long as we laugh, they will never fully win. Laughter keeps resistance alive. It turns the tyrant into a joke, and once that happens, history shows us, the tyrant’s days are numbered.

_{Why This Matters}

You might ask does late-night TV or a comedy panel show really matter?  Isn’t this all just fluff? But in a media ecosystem dominated by right-wing rage, Murdoch propaganda, and algorithm-fed disinformation, these cultural spaces are vital.  They’re some of the only platforms where progressive critique slips through the noise to a mass audience.

And more than that, humour matters because it keeps us human.  It keeps us sane in the face of cruelty.  It’s a reminder that tyrants can be mocked, that power can be laughed at, that the machinery of repression isn’t invincible.  That’s why the alt-right fears Colbert and Kimmel. That’s why Farage and his Reform cronies foam at the mouth when Nish Kumar or Frankie Boyle lands a punchline.  That’s why Starmer quietly allows the attacks to stand because the last thing they want is a public laughing at them.

The campaign to shut down satire isn’t some petty beef over 'liberal bias'.  It’s a central front in the culture war, a deliberate attempt to destroy one of the last spaces where resistance can be mainstream, where ridicule can still puncture authoritarian pomposity.

Colbert and Kimmel aren’t revolutionaries. Nish Kumar isn’t storming parliament.  Frankie Boyle isn’t leading the barricades.  But the right’s obsession with silencing them reveals just how fragile their empire of grievance really is.  They know the truth: it only takes a laugh to topple a tyrant and that’s why these joyless bastards,  these book-burning, drag-hating, monarchy-worshipping, piece-of-shit snake oil salesmen  are hell-bent on killing laughter itself, because the moment people start laughing at them, the game’s up.

And that’s why the far-right despises comedy. Aristophanes mocked the powerful in Athens, Swift skewered empire, and jesters could tell monarchs truths their courtiers never dared: all proof that ridicule has always been more dangerous to tyrants than reasoned argument.  In days gone by it was often the only way you could attack injustice, the establishment, or the monarchy without getting executed.  This if anything highlights the exact reason the far-right can't abide it.  Satire isn’t always about laughter, but it always punches up.  And that’s the unforgivable sin for the far-right: they demand reverence, not ridicule.  Satire strips off their medals, rips away their myths, folds away the flags and shows them for what they are, clowns in jackboots, terrified not of opposition but of being laughed out of history.

Well the joke is on them. 

A bit of shameless self-plugging here. This is www.TetleysTLDR.com blog. It's not monetised. Please feel free to go and look at the previous blogs on the website and if you like them, please feel free to share them.Better still have a look at teh back catalogue and catch up on previous blogs at https://www.tetleystldr.com/tetleystldr-blog/tetleystldr-back-catalogue