Government by the worst

Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, April 2020

Winn McNamee · Getty

The great historian of international relations Stanley Hoffmann considered that the best explanation of the advent of the second world war was Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros. For him, the play, in which everybody turns into a rhinoceros but for one person resistant to the herd, 'capture[d] the essence of the period — all the absurdities and tragedies of that long descent into degradation — better than any work of history or social science'.

Dario Fo, the playwright, comedian and director, won the 1997 Nobel literature prize for 'emulat[ing] the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden'. His best-known play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, is set in a police station. As authorities debate whether the death was murder, suicide or accident, a madman who has escaped from a psychiatric hospital impersonates a judge and takes control of the investigation.

Ever since Aristophanes, comedy has provided cover for social commentary and criticism of the powerful, and comedians and satirists have been tempted to enter real politics; the French comedian Coluche briefly took part in the 1981 presidential contest. And after the 2008 financial crash and its political aftermath, the discrediting of global elites created an opening for alternative elites, including those who mocked the establishment. In Italy, the actor Giuseppe 'Beppe' Grillo's creation of the Five Star movement in 2009 upended the political scene. In Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, an actor who had played a history teacher in the television series Servant of the People, won the 2019 presidential election on a platform of ending corruption.

Macbeth's pataphysical cousin 

In his play Ubu roi (King Ubu), Alfred Jarry, a precursor of the Surrealist movement, created an archetype of the greedy and bloodthirsty tyrant. Ubu, conceived as a 'pataphysical cousin' of Shakespeare's Macbeth, assassinates King (…)

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(2) Subject of movies such as General Idi Amin Dada: a Self-Portait, directed by Barbet Schroeder (1974), and The Last King of Scotland, directed by Kevin Macdonald (2007).

(4) Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, WW Norton, New York, 2018.

(6) Alexander Nazaryan, The Best People: Trump's Cabinet and the Siege on Washington, Hachette, New York 2019.

(8) Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2008.

Source: mondediplo.com