Humour and polarization: How the clown style in 21st century drives people apart, in politics and beyond

In this essay, I analyse how humour drives people apart, in politics and in society at large. Since the early 2000s, many politicians across the world have embraced humour to position themselves politically and chastise and provoke the establishment. This "clown style" in politics is mostly used by politicians on the populist right, occasionally on the left. In this essay, I analyze over 100 cases of political utterances from the years 2015-2020 from the Dutch, English and Italian-speaking world, that are 1. signalled as non-serious by verbal or non-verbal cues; 2. recognized as humorous by amused responses; 3. explicitly mark ‘symbolic boundaries’ (Lamont, 1992; Kuipers, 2009) or we-them divisions. I identify five strategies by which humour fuels polarization: wilful ambiguity, humorous attack, provocation, community-building and the cultivation of negative affect. This new political humour is both a symptom and a catalyst of increasing polarization. In a polarized political arena, joking politicians believe they stand to gain more from stylistic opposition to conventional politics than from adaptation to it. Previously, politicians with an outrageous style were usually encapsulated by the system. Once elected or appointed to office, they adopted a serious persona more compatible with their new station in life. But today, many politicians remain rowdy, funny and inconsistent even in the highest elected office. Through humour they bond with their substantial following in liberating, carnivalesque, sometimes downright hateful humor.