I upvoted you because you’re making an interesting argument, but I’m definitely more in the Charlie Chaplin camp on political satire, and that ridiculing fascism is a productive thing to do - The Great Dictator was released before the US entered WW 2. Although Chaplin put a lot of work at the end of that movie to make sure everyone knew it was satire and Colbert was a bit less diligent.
Hm. A bunch of media illiterate conservative dingdongs watched the Colbert report and politics now visually looks like that… but nationalism to it’s extreme tends to look like that and Colbert’s team knew that. Fascism and nationalism look like that and I’m not sure satirizing it normalizes it (in general) but neoliberalism and that ‘working across the aisle’ politics (and journalism) that was also trendy at the time did actively normalize it.
I upvoted you because you’re making an interesting argument, but I’m definitely more in the Charlie Chaplin camp on political satire, and that ridiculing fascism is a productive thing to do - The Great Dictator was released before the US entered WW 2. Although Chaplin put a lot of work at the end of that movie to make sure everyone knew it was satire and Colbert was a bit less diligent.
Hm. A bunch of media illiterate conservative dingdongs watched the Colbert report and politics now visually looks like that… but nationalism to it’s extreme tends to look like that and Colbert’s team knew that. Fascism and nationalism look like that and I’m not sure satirizing it normalizes it (in general) but neoliberalism and that ‘working across the aisle’ politics (and journalism) that was also trendy at the time did actively normalize it.