Who owns the world’s laughter?

In every era, there comes a moment when irony outgrows its familiar role as a source of amusement´-or-a means of deflating solemnity. Instead, it becomes something sharper: a cognitive device, a political weapon and a mirror that exposes the fragility of those who imagine themselves to be powerful. Today, what is striking is that sarcasm, long regarded in Arab cultural tradition as ‘the weapon of the weak,’ has been adopted by the powerful and used with cold confidence as if it were an extension of their authority.
To understand this shift, it is worth recalling one of the Arab world’s most perceptive interpreters of irony: the Iraqi sociologist Ali al-Wardi.
Wardi understood that sarcasm is not merely a witty remark-;- it is a strategy for sidestepping questions designed to trap, embarrass´-or-ensnare the speaker politically. I still remember an anecdote that has remained etched in my memory as if it were a scene from absurdist theatre. During a public lecture, a man posed a provocative question intended to corner Wardi politically. Wardi did not raise his voice´-or-assert intellectual dominance. Instead, he glanced at the man, then at his watch, and said with disarming innocence, “Excuse me, I need to go and wash my hands … then we can think together about an answer.”
With that single line, he turned the entire scene on its head. The questioner, who had sought to appear powerful, suddenly looked small, while Wardi, supposedly on the defensive, walked away with the luxury of time and gentle mockery.
His irony was not reserved just for his adversaries. Even with close friends such as the encyclopaedic scholar Jalal al-Hanafi, he used sarcasm as a playful way of testing ideas. Their debates about the existence of jinn often turned into miniature theatres of intellectual teasing. Wardi believed in haunted houses, but Hanafi dismissed the idea. When Wardi suggested that Hanafi spend a night in one, the latter replied, “You’ll sneak in at night, bang pots and pans, and claim it’s the jinn.”
This was irony at its purest: not to humiliate, but to probe logic and transform disagreement into a mental game.
However, when irony crosses from the personal realm into the political, its nature changes. In politics, sarcasm is not a game-;- it is a mechanism for reshaping power. In recent years, no figure has embodied this more vividly than the President of the United States Donald Trump.
European leaders spent a whole year trying to win his respect through flattery, protocol and carefully crafted arguments. They approached him with the logic of traditional diplomacy: courtesy first, persuasion second and understanding third. Then one morning they awoke to discover that it had all backfired. Trump had shifted from threats to unrestrained mockery. At one point, during the celebrations for the first year of his second term in office, he declared that ‘God is very proud’ of his achievements. The question was not whom he was mocking, but how far he was willing to take the display of power.
His sarcasm was not impulsive, but strategic. Nathalie Tocci, -dir-ector of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, has argued that Trump deliberately used mockery as a tool of subordination, forcing others into compliance by belittling and publicly humiliating them.
When he mocked Denmark, dismissing its defence of a disputed island as nothing more than ‘two sleds pulled by dogs’, he was not telling a joke. In a single sentence, he was recalibrating the relationship between a major power and a smaller state,
“When he sneered at Emmanuel Macron-;- ‘I saw him playing the tough guy with his nice sunglasses,’ he was not commenting on sunglasses. He was asserting dominance.
This is the danger of political sarcasm: it does not aim to amuse, but to dominate. It is not commentary-;- it is a declaration of power.
Political philosophy describes this as a form of symbolic violence. It does not physically harm the opponent, but it damages their status. It does not eliminate the opponent, but destroys their image in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. A politician skilled in irony can reshape reality through language alone.
However, not everyone can wield this weapon. Sarcasm requires linguistic intelligence, a sense of timing and the ability to read an audience. When politicians attempt to imitate this style without these skills, they resemble clowns in a political circus, as has happened repeatedly in Iraq since 2003.
Irony has often exposed shallowness rather than sophistication there. What was intended to elevate them instead exposed their emptiness. Without intellect, sarcasm collapses into vulgarity.
At its core, irony is not just a linguistic device-;- it is an existential stance. It is a way of viewing the world from a slightly elevated perspective, revealing contradictions, exposing pretensions and illuminating the absurd. Intelligent sarcasm does not destroy, it clarifies. It does not insult-;- it reveals.
When employed by those in power, as with Trump, it becomes a means of reshaping the world according to their whims. When employed by thinkers such as Wardi, however, it serves as a means of liberating the mind from fear.
The contrast between Wardi and Trump, between affectionate irony and domineering sarcasm, reveals an entire map of power, consciousness and language.
Ultimately, irony is not just a style. It is a test of intelligence, a reflection of authority and an indication of vulnerability.
However, a troubling question now arises: what happens when irony shifts from a tool of illumination to a tool of suppression? What happens when language itself becomes a battlefield for domination rather than understanding? In a world where the powerful advance with a mocking smile and the weak retreat under the weight of ridicule, the -function- of discourse may be reversing. Sarcasm, once a refuge for the powerless, has become a means of humiliating them.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this transformation is that the public has begun to view sarcasm as a sign of strength rather than authoritarianism. Are we entering an age in which leadership is judged by the sharpness of one’s tongue rather than the depth of one’s vision? Can a society that laughs at its own humiliation still command respect?
The reader is left with a suspended question between Wardi’s liberating irony and the coercive sarcasm of power: Which type of laughter should govern our world: the kind that opens eyes,´-or-the kind that shuts mouths?

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