Opinion

Neo-Nazis in Your Streets? Send in the (Coup Clutz) Clowns

Tina Rosenberg

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Anti-fascist protesters in Wurzen, Germany, last week. Markus Heine/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

In Olympia, Wash., in 2005, a march of about a dozen brown-shirted neo-Nazis was met by protesting clowns, goose-stepping, Nazi-style. Hundreds of counterprotesters turned the occasion into a celebration of diversity and unity.

Two years later in Knoxville, Tenn., residents countered a white supremacist march with a hastily assembled group calling itself the Coup Clutz Clowns. The clowns pretended not to understand the shouts of “White power!”

“White flour?” the clowns cried, throwing some in the air. “White flower? Tight shower? Wife power!” For wife power, some of them put on wedding dresses.

And in 2012 in Charlotte, N.C., clowns protesting a far-right march held up “Dwight Power!” signs, evoking the Charlotte Hornets player Dwight Howard.

Responding to far-right demonstrators with mockery originated in Europe, where one outstanding recent example took place in the German town of Wunsiedel. Unable to dislodge annual marches with ordinary counterprotests, the town took a new tack in 2014. For every meter the neo-Nazis marched, the town donated 10 euros to an organization that helped people leave right-wing extremist groups. Residents hung silly signs along the route and threw confetti at the end, leaving the neo-Nazis responsible for raising $12,000 against their own cause.

Humor has a long and honored place in American politics as well.

And counterintuitive though it may seem, ridicule and mockery have long been an effective way to disarm protesters who espouse bigotry and racial supremacy. If you want to resist those who would stir up violence, using humor is more effective than staying at home when they march, and far better than rewarding their provocations with a melee in the streets.

Here’s what white supremacists want to do when they stage a rally:

• Legitimize their views.

• Strengthen their self-image as part of the downtrodden.

• Unite their squabbling factions.

• Attract new people to the movement.

• Control media coverage.

• Feel powerful and heroic.

They can accomplish all of those goals when the Antifa, or anti-fascists, respond to violence by throwing fists or rocks.

“For the far-right groups, violence is central to their way of looking at the world,” said Peter Simi, associate professor of sociology at Chapman University. “The idea of having violent confrontation and conflicts fuels and energizes them. They feed off it.

“It also helps perpetuate their own narrative about victimization and persecution —‘Look, we can’t even have a free speech rally without being attacked.’ ”

For the same reasons that violence by counter-protesters helps the far right, mockery hurts. “Ridicule makes the far right look less attractive to the type of people they want to attract,” said Cas Mudde, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. “There’s a sizable portion who are there for the thrill. It doesn’t mean they don’t believe in the broader ideology, but they really enjoy the potential violence. They want to feel dangerous and important. They don’t want to feel like part of a sketch.” He thinks that’s true for the Antifa as well.

After all, which plan is more attractive to young macho men? “We’ll face a small group of masked tough guys” or “We’ll face a large number of men, women and children wearing silly hats and big red noses”?

Humor and mockery are also good strategies for classic political protest — whether against politicians who enable white supremacists, or policies like tax cuts for the rich. A good joke creates a memorable, clear message, allowing the protesters to reframe the issue and attract supporters. Humor engages people on an emotional level and — if it is not meanspirited — it can open them to your message. And it can expose absurdity. A social-change strategist, John Jackson, calls it “making the invisible visible.”

Here’s a famous example:

In 1992, Mattel released a Teen Talk Barbie. Her conversation was predictable: “Party dresses are fun!” “Do you have a crush on anyone?” But there was also this gem: “Math class is tough!”

This made some people mad. The American Association of University Women called on Mattel to retire that utterance, and Mattel complied — a small victory. What was really needed, however, was a national conversation on gender stereotyping. Mattel’s critics on this issue wanted people to talk about the damaging messages sent to little girls by Barbie’s entire conversational repertoire (not to mention her waist-to-hip ratio).

Getting Mattel to remove one Barbie phrase couldn’t accomplish that. But the Barbie Liberation Organization could. A small group of pranksters bought Teen Talk Barbies and Talking Duke GI Joes — and switched their voice boxes. Then the toys went back onto the shelves.

“Eat lead, Cobra!” surgically altered Barbie said. “Vengeance is mine!”

“Will we ever have enough clothes?” GI Joe asked.

Although the B.L.O. claimed to have tampered with hundreds of dolls nationwide, in reality it was a few dozen, in only three cities. The members used the media to magnify their effects. When they repackaged each toy, they included a phone number to call “if you experience problems with your doll.” The number was really that of a local television news station. The group mailed news stations TV-ready videos showing drill-wielding Barbies operating on GI Joes.

The prank — and the topic of gender stereotyping — was discussed on countless TV news segments and talk radio shows, and even made “The Simpsons.” GI Joe’s macho aggression and Barbie’s obsessive mall-visiting and dream-wedding-planning had been internalized by society. The gender switch suddenly made them visible and revealed their absurdity. And it was unforgettable.

The Yes Men duo are America’s premier political pranksters. Mike Bonnano (who was behind the B.L.O.) and Andy Bichlbaum started out by posing as representatives of the World Trade Organization. They set up a fake website, which drew a few invitations to conferences. In Sydney in 2002, Bichlbaum impersonated a World Trade Organization official and announced that the organization was shutting its doors and re-establishing itself with the mission of getting corporations to behave responsibly. The audience not only swallowed his story, it also liked the idea, Bichlbaum said.

Since then, the Yes Men have staged dozens of attention-getting actions designed to make some of the world’s absurdities unforgettable. “People remember stories much better than they remember information,” Bichlbaum said.

Bichlbaum often impersonates a representative of corporate interest to announce good behavior — as it did with the W.T.O. The spoofed organization must then, embarrassingly, deny it.

Sometimes the Yes Men take their opponents’ logic to an extreme, as with “Share the Safety.” In a news conference at the Ronald Reagan Library, a fake National Rifle Association executive (Bichlbaum wearing a long beard) pledged that with each gun purchase, the N.R.A. and Smith & Wesson would give a free gun to a poor citizen who couldn’t afford to arm himself.

The Orange Alternative in Communist Poland used a similar strategy in a completely different context. Founded in 1980 as part of the Solidarity movement, it specialized in surrealist protest, often conducted by people in orange garden gnome costumes. At a protest in 1988, 10,000 people marched wearing gnome hats. One of the group’s common tactics was to mock the state through exaggerated obedience.

On Poland’s annual day honoring the secret police (you can’t make this stuff up), the Orange Alternative carried banners and posters proclaiming complete devotion: “Love the People’s Police!” “Long Life to Undercover Agents!” During the annual celebration of the Russian Revolution, the group shouted Bolshevik slogans, and during a state-supported referendum in the city of Wroclaw, Orange Alternative marchers chanted “Vote Yes Twice!” as they called for a “200 percent voter turnout.”

The police found themselves in a conundrum. They couldn’t let the protesters continue. But by making arrests, they acknowledged that no one could possibly believe in the Communist orthodoxy — and anyone who said they did must have been joking. Most Poles already knew that, of course, but the Orange Alternative forced the state authorities to make it visible.

All of these organizations changed people’s thinking by putting familiar ideas into a disorienting new context. The strategy is still relevant — just ask Stephen Colbert, who has made a career of it. His memorable ”celebration” of George W. Bush to his face in 2006 shows how it’s done. (For tips on “laughtivism” and other protest strategies, join a free web training session hosted by Harvard’s Kennedy School on the morning of Sept. 15, featuring actual successful peaceful revolutionaries; it’s called Defending Democracy Through Social Movements.)

Soon Congress will be considering proposals to drastically cut taxes for the rich and services for the poor. What’s the message? “No tax cuts for the rich”? “Protect social services”?

Better to do what Billionaires for Bush did during the George W. years. Put on your (fake) mink stole and pearls, or don your tux — look fabulously wealthy, or just fabulous. Carry a cardboard Rolls-Royce door or a Champagne glass and hold a sign that says “Pools, not schools.” Or “Only little people pay taxes.”

The group adopted a logo that cast the Republican Party’s elephant as a piggy bank and described itself as a “grass-roots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses and Halliburton C.E.O.s.” When President Bush made privatization of Social Security the flagship issue of his second term, the Billionaires, tired of waiting, put Social Security on eBay.

Congress rebuffed Bush. His unpopularity and opposition from AARP and other groups were the likely reasons, not the Billionaires. But the reframing — making the invisible visible — by the Billionaires didn’t hurt.

It seems too basic to even say, but the rule is violated again and again: Successful political activists are strategic. They ask: “What will reach, and motivate or convince, the people we need?”

Very often, the answer is: Make ’em laugh.