Long before he became ensnared in Trump’s infamous quid pro quo, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a joke. The famous comedian and TV president’s ascent to Ukraine’s top job last April stunned the political establishment and rival Petro Poroshenko, who had previously dismissed Zelensky’s candidacy as nothing more than a “bright candy wrapper.” Zelensky’s presidency could be compared to a hypothetical Julia Louis-Dreyfus presidency in the United States: Worthy of fantasy? Sure. Capable of effective governance? Not so much.
Zelensky, however, is not the only candy wrapper dotting the normally drab halls of government. In fact, satirical parties and candidates can be found all over the world. And behind all the self-deprecating memes and hyperbolic commentary, comedians have proved to be remarkably capable and innovative legislators, particularly in times of crisis and upheaval.
While it may seem, well, silly to advocate for the proliferation of satire in politics, satirical parties and politicians with comedy backgrounds offer powerful new vantage points and can productively disrupt mainstream politics. Satire forces people to identify bizarreries within the status quo and then work to amend them. Particularly in parliamentary systems, where coalitions inherently require compromise and moderation, satirical parties challenge existing discourse without threatening political expediency.
Take Iceland as an example. In 2010, Icelanders hurting from the Great Recession and dealing with a massive inflation crisis unexpectedly elected Jón Gnarr mayor of Reykjavik. A comedian, friend of singer Björk, and founder of the satirical “Best Party,” Gnarr had launched his candidacy for little more than laughs, claiming that his was a “surprise party, not a political party.” Yet after winning the election, Gnarr demonstrated surprisingly effective leadership, working to advance the Icelandic LGBTQ+ movement and opening Iceland’s first mosque. Perhaps most critically, he saved the Icelandic banking sector from total collapse.
No stranger to media skepticism, Gnarr is quick to clarify that humor does not equal ineptitude: “Just because I’m funny doesn’t mean I can’t be serious,” he chided in an interview with Britain’s Independent, adding that he fashions himself as far less of a clown—and a far more diligent leader—than the likes of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Stateside, it was not long ago that former Minnesota Senator Al Franken (since resigned due to allegations of sexual misconduct) legislated with a similar buoyant gravitas. Franken, who began his career as a writer on NBC’s Saturday Night Live before entering Congress in 2008, was a particularly astute questioner, famously walloping Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during her 2017 confirmation hearing.
Celebrated for blessing Mitch McConnell with the occasional eye roll, Franken has somewhat ironically reflected that the most difficult skill to learn in his transition to politics was acting. Franken’s comedic instincts had primed him to be blunt and uncensored in responses to his constituents and Republican colleagues. Mainstream politics, on the other hand, demanded that he shroud government’s inner workings in crafty jargon and become adept at “pivoting”—avoiding questions and masking his true intentions—despite the trend being the source of much popular disaffection with the political establishment.
Across the Atlantic in the European Parliament (EP), an entire party, rather than a single candidate, has capitalized on this dichotomy and voters’ accompanying frustration. Between factions of the established European People’s Party and Free Alliance sits Die PARTEI, a German satirical party. Die PARTEI, literally “the party,” is an acronym for an impossibly far-ranging and all-encompassing platform of “labor, rule of law, animal protection, promotion of elites, and grassroots democracy.” Its name also pokes fun at the Orwellian East German politburo, a system in which “the party” was a deified, all-knowing black box. Die PARTEI’s campaign website is headed by the following curt slogan: “If politicians are going to keep doing satire, we satirists are just going to have to do politics.”
Although Die PARTEI has as many card-carrying members as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), you’ve likely never heard of them. That’s because Die PARTEI doesn’t stand a chance in domestic German politics, where parties must earn at least five percent of the vote to enter parliament. The EP, however, is a different story: Without electoral thresholds, the body enables a wide and unlimited range of parties from across the European Union to be represented. Here, Die PARTEI, which earned 0.6 percent and 2.4 percent of the German vote in the 2014 and 2019 European Parliamentary Elections, respectively, is able to flourish.
Sure, Die PARTEI’s presence in Strasbourg is miniscule: As two out of 751 Members of the European Parliament, they will never be able to usher in the outlandish policy proposals espoused on their website, ranging from outlawing online chatbots to instituting “MILF Money,” a financial incentive for women of childbearing age.Yet these schemes’ sheer infeasibility might just shine light upon the idiosyncrasies of our existing political system by, for example, turning conversation towards under-discussed issues such as childcare policies. Indeed, Business Insider has named Die PARTEI’s MEPs “the most famous MEPs in Germany,” an accolade that captures the significance of their influence while simultaneously serving as a condemnation of more established parties’ failure to resonate with the European electorate.
Moreover, Die PARTEI has been able to master the supple duality of comedic ridicule and moral imperative: While advocating for a cap on the number of “xenophobic scaredy-cats” allowed in Germany (as opposed to refugees), the party utilized the bulk of its advertising budget to draw attention to the epidemic of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean—a tragedy in which most established European politicians are complicit, and thus one they shy away from addressing.
Despite its undisputed success and constructive dialogue after only half a decade in Strasbourg, the future of Die PARTEI in European politics appears murky. Regretfully, satirical parties’ entrance into most parliamentary systems is nearly always stifled by electoral thresholds, which privilege established parties and curtail productive debate. While Germany and many other EU states do not currently apply thresholds to their European Parliamentary elections, the European Council has mandated that all of the bloc’s countries must impose a minimum threshold between two and five percent prior to the next elections in 2024.
Advocates of electoral thresholds claim they prevent the emergence of fringe groups in government. Yet fringe groups are a necessary countervailing force against meek, uninspired governing coalitions. They don’t have the power to rupture the stability of governing parties, but they can problematize and provoke them. By propositioning the preposterous, fringe groups shift the Overton Window of palatable politics, acting as crucial push-pull forces on a malleable centrism.
Productive parliamentary debate is based on the representation of a democracy’s full range of opinion. Satire is no less a mode of political expression than rote stump speeches and false promises made in business-casual attire. In fact, satirical political parties might actually be more genuine than many traditional ones—and they are just as deserving of a seat at the table. Preemptive exclusion may ultimately backfire: If governments are afraid of being laughed at, maybe they shouldn’t be governing at all.
Illustration: Nadia Kossman ’22