In times of World War I, German propaganda characterized enemies, that is, English, French, and Americans, as disorganized clowns who would take a breath to beat. Instead, allied propaganda portrayed the Germans as bloodthirsty barbarians who endangered civilization. After the war ended with the defeat of Germany and the central powers, the effects of this disparity in the messages (since the allies arrived at the front lines and found, of course, the monsters they warned of their posters, while the Germans saw nowhere the weak promised enemies) they were noticed by Hitler himself, an obsessive of the power of advertising campaigns, and who attributed part of the blame for the disaster to unfocused propaganda. Therefore, once in power, the dismal Nazi leader soon made sure that those whom he wanted to persecute (Jews, Gypsies, opponents ...) were suitably demonized by the official discourse, and also by the media, the cartons politicians, etc. The power that the Nazi advertising machinery achieved even today is shocking.
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Here I want to delve into the political (and semiotic, of course) error that can mean representing someone with power as a cartoon. Mexicans, for example, are too used to it and we all collaborate to make it so. National humor usually personifies our powerful as funny piñatas, easily restable. Thus, each president has been the victim, during his presidential term, of all kinds of jokes in which he is shown as a picturesque stupid or a naive rascal. Entire anthologies of the jokes that have traveled the country regarding the (alleged or real: in the case of popular ingenuity, it does not matter) stupidities of Luis Echeverría, Vicente Fox, Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the megalomanias of José López Portillo and Carlos Salinas, the rumored languor of Miguel de la Madrid, the supposed alcoholism of Felipe Calderón, etc. All have been turned (and social networks have radicalized the phenomenon in recent years) into carp characters, stripped, by popular imagination, of their fangs and royal claws in favor of simple giggles.
Without a doubt, laughing at power is a great way to counterbalance the solemnity and arrogance of those who exercise it. This is a very old idea, which comes from Greek and Roman satire, from medieval jesters, and is at the very root of critical journalism. But we cannot confuse things and think that caricaturing will somehow influence reality. Nothing of that. A Hitler snorting in a play or movie is not going to revive the millions of victims of the Nazis. A Calderón meme with a free Cuba in his hand is not going to go back in time and avoid the "War on Drugs" either. And a López Obrador meme without knowing what to do in the face of the pandemic is not going to guide him to act, of course. Because that caricature, which we like so much, has more than obvious limits.
But if we forget this and begin to understand reality from the point of view of cartons, memes and jokes, we will attend the daily political fray like those Germans who thought they would face little dolls scared to death and armed with toy rifles. Therefore, the serious analysis of politics, both professional and that each citizen does at home, has to do without caricature. The mockery of the powerful must be a weapon that counterbalances him, not a varnish that makes him up and makes him appear innocuous. The dangers of power are more than real and one of them is making us think that our laughter blurs them.
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