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Throughout history, satire has been used to hold the powerful and pretentious to account through irony, exaggeration and often-brutal ridicule. During the Middle Ages, jesters were allowed to talk and mock freely without fear of recrimination or punishment. In medieval courts jesters used this privilege to tell monarchs things they didnt want to hear, or to present information others dared not. Tyranny usually begins with the suppression of civil liberties. For one thing, they recognised the power of humour to undermine their establishment. According to historian Roy Medvedev, 200,000 people in Soviet Russia were sent to the Gulag for joking about Stalin. As Hannah Arendt once said, authoritys greatest enemy is contempt, and the surest means of undermining it is laughter.

Satire can often blur the line between fantasy and reality. Obviously, satirical websites are often mistaken for fake news because people accept them as legitimate news sources. For example, when the Onion claimed in 2012 that Kim Jong Un was the sexiest man alive, it was enough to fool Chinese newspaper the Peoples Daily. The online edition of the official Chinese Communist party newspaper has published 55 pages of enthusiastic photos filled with patriotic pictures of the North Korean leader saluting troops and riding horses. It even contains a quote from the satirical site, telling readers, This Pyongyang-born heartthrob is every womans dream come true.

If the modern satirists greatest weapon is the internet, its ammunition is certainly memes. Memes, usually accompanied by text and audio, are images that people use to represent themselves online. Part of the power of memes is their ability to convey complex ideas in a simple, digestible format. Often featuring cute and cuddly pets imprinted with hallmark style inspirational quotes, they are a ubiquitous source of amusement for millions of tech-savvy people idling away the day.

For an idea to become a meme, it has to be shared. The most successful internet memes follow a few simple rules: first and foremost, the meme has to be funny. A psychological phenomenon known as the humor effect means its easier for people to remember information when it is presented as humorous. In other words, jokes are easier to remember than arguments. And those in power have never been so afraid of jokes.

In other words, its easier to remember a joke than an argument. And those in power have never been so scared of jokes.

The case of Douglas Mackey is a prime example. A few days ago, a federal court in Brooklyn convicted the 33-year-old known online as Ricky Vaughn for sharing a series of misleading memes during the 2016 US election. The images tricked Hillary Clinton supporters into thinking they could vote by text. Federal officials claimed Mackey attempted to violate US citizens constitutional rights. When sentenced later this year, he faces the possibility of ten years in prison.

Due to the keen observations of some adherents, satire has a great influence. It was recently revealed that over ninety articles on the satirical website Babylon Bee have turned into true stories. Last week, CNN published an article warning its readers of a new and horrific form of modern-day racism that is spreading across the globe. Apparently, white people are no longer content with simply being good old-fashioned racists in the real world. We are now projecting our unconscious bias and bigotry into cyberspace. According to the author, if you happen to be white and you post a reaction meme featuring black people, then you are guilty of digital blackface. Unsurprisingly, this progressive version of racism only works one way. The piece informs us that if African Americans do the same thing, they get a free pass. Equity in action, folks!

Although humour is an effective tool for transmitting memes, other emotions also help them circulate around the internet. Their ability to provoke anger, shock, and outrage gives them extreme cultural power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the hyper-partisan world of modern politics.

In the 2016 US election, just two websites, The Donald and 4Chan, were responsible for almost all the memes that helped propel Donald Trump into the White House. Nearly $100 million was spent on Mr Trumps campaign, but much of his success is thanks to an obscure and occasionally incontinent cartoon amphibian. Pepe the Frog is an internet meme so old that it first appeared on MySpace in 2005.

But when Hillary Clinton made the now infamous basket of deplorables comment about her opponents, internet pranksters reclaimed the meme. All of a sudden, thousands of images of Pepe wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap started to appear on the 4chan website. Trolling had become a national sport. And it catapulted memes into the mainstream.

Like their cousin the emoji, memes serve as a universal language and are part of a new digital culture that transcends traditional racial and class boundaries. By connecting different groups, memes promote a shared sense of identity and support the formation of group affiliation.This new online collective consciousness is challenging the hegemony of our so-called enlightened Western governments. As we saw with the election of Donald Trump, memes gave white working-class voters often overlooked and ridiculed by politicians an even field to play on. It enraged the political class. Yet the angrier they got culminating in Clinton denouncing Pepe as an image of white supremacy the more powerful the deplorables became.

The establishment hates memes because they are often a more accurate and powerful response to political power than confronting that power any other way. The EU claims memes are a threat to society, while social media platforms have been trying for years to ban memes using sophisticated artificial intelligence software. Yet every attempt they have made to censor them has ended in failure. This is because memes can easily circumvent censorship algorithms. In an attempt to fight back, Instagram tried fact-checking a Greta Thunberg meme, which resulted in them looking hideously unfunny. Grist to the meme-makers mill. You cant control memes. The only way you can defeat them is with another meme.

Satire may thrive on the internet, but in the real world it is dying a painful death. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, and more recently Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais have challenged the status quo with this powerful comedic apparatus, but contemporary satirists rarely challenge the establishment. It is fashionable for todays satirists to punch down. Just watch one of the many comedy panel shows that dominate the television networks. In the UK, Mock the Week and The Mash Report have been a regular feature on the BBC for years. In recent years, they have become a chilling showcase of equality and diversity for those who believe they are entitled to appear on television because of the immutable traits that transpose talent to race. Regular guests fostered divisive ideas about race and portrayed Britain as a racist hellhole. Jokes became political lectures. This is reflected in the transition from applause, the sign of comic approval, to clapter, the sign of ideological approval. The same is true in Australia as well. A Hannah Gadsby comedy special is little more than a 60 minute talk on gender ideology.

Ever since its invention, satire has been used as a means of exposing both the absurdity and hypocrisy of those in power. If it wants to survive in the age of identity politics, we need memes more than ever.

Read more:
Seen the one about the? - The Spectator Australia