Comedic Counterspeech

Bigoted speech, including hate speech, challenges the egalitarian norms that underpin liberal democracies. How should we respond? Advocates for counterspeech reply that we should ‘talk back’ and use ‘more speech’. Yet counterspeech often backfires for reasons relating to salience and unintended legitimization. What this means is that if a third party responds so as to negatively rebut a hateful claim (e.g., ‘Xs are not parasites!’), this might inadvertently make the claim more conspicuous. Further, contextual constraints often make more direct rebuttals of bigoted speech untenable. This last point is important, because even if the ‘right’ kind of counterspeech is identified through its potential to effectively challenge a bigoted speaker, group-based dynamics may render some people unable or unwilling to adopt that approach. In response, this paper develops an innovative form of counterspeech – comedic counterspeech – that meaningfully alleviates these problems. After clarifying the harms of bigoted speech, I position comedic counterspeech as a form of counterspeech that uses various intensities of corrective humour to block or mitigate the harm associated with a targeted utterance – e.g., by mocking or ridiculing it. From there, I draw on recent work in humour studies and cognitive science to demonstrate the mechanisms through which comedic counterspeech provides an effective rebuttal to bigoted speech. Ridicule, I contend, is a powerful and versatile social corrective: it not only refutes a hateful claim but subverts it in a way that weakens the speaker’s authority to make similar claims in the future. It makes their utterance look ‘ridiculous’ and thus unworthy of belief. To provide advice for when it should be used, I suggest that comedic counterspeech can come in varying degrees of corrective humour. I make a distinction between comedic counterspeech that relies on ‘strong’ corrective humour, which uses face-threatening ridicule to deplore bigoted speakers through shame and mockery, and ‘gentle’ corrective humour, which deals less with pejorative ridicule and is more empathetic. I offer guidance as to which conversational contexts and bigoted speakers should receive which variant. In competitive social environments (e.g., locker rooms, pubs), strong corrective humour aligns with the attendant conversational norms of playful banter and jest. In formal and intimate contexts (e.g., the workplace, Thanksgiving dinner), gentle corrective humour seems like a prudent approach to block the uptake of bigoted speech while maintaining the peace. Finally, I forestall two objections. The first worries that comedic counterspeech is not a morally appropriate response to bigoted speech. The second claims that humour-based responses are ineffective and might cognitively demand too much of third parties. I respond by showing that (1) humour is uniquely placed to target the underlying absurdities in bigoted speech without trivialising the experience of those targeted by the speech, and (2) verbal humour is less likely to be misinterpreted than written humour, which is often where the efficacy objection arises.