A free world needs satire

We need humor like we need the air we breathe, says editorial cartoonist Patrick Chappatte. In a talk illustrated with highlights from a career spent skewering everything from dictators and ideologues to selfies and social media mobs, Chappatte makes a resounding, often hilarious case for the necessity of satire. "Political cartoons were born with democracy, and they are challenged when freedom is," he says.

I've been a political cartoonist
on the global stage for the last 20 years.

Hey, we have seen a lot of things
happen in those 20 years.

We saw three different Catholic popes,

and we witnessed that unique moment:

the election of a pope
on St. Peter's Square --

you know, the little white smoke

and the official announcement.

[It's a boy!]

(Laughter)

(Applause)

We saw four American presidents.

Obama, of course.

Oh, Europeans liked him a lot.

He was a multilateralist.

He favored diplomacy.

He wanted to be friends with Iran.

(Laughter)

And then ...

reality imitated caricature

the day Donald Trump became the President
of the United States of America.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

You know, people come to us and they say,

"It's too easy for you cartoonists.
I mean -- with people like Trump?"

Well, no, it's not easy

to caricature a man
who is himself a caricature.

(Laughter)

No.

(Applause)

Populists are no easy target for satire

because you try to nail them down one day,

and the next day, they outdo you.

For example, as soon as he was elected,

I tried to imagine the tweet
that Trump would send on Christmas Eve.

So I did this, OK?

[Merry Christmas to all!
Except all those pathetic losers. So sad.]

(Laughter)

And basically, the next day,
Trump tweeted this:

[Happy New Year to all,
including to my many enemies

and those who have fought me
and lost so badly

they just don't know what to do. Love!]

(Laughter)

It's the same!

(Applause)

This is the era of strongmen.

And soon, Donald Trump was able to meet
his personal hero, Vladimir Putin,

and this is how the first meeting went:

[I'll help you find the hackers.
Give me your password.]

(Laughter)

And I'm not inventing anything.

He came out of that first meeting
saying that the two of them had agreed

on a joint task force on cybersecurity.

This is true, if you do remember.

Oh, who would have imagined
the things we saw over these 20 years.

We saw Great Britain run towards
a European Union exit.

[Hard Brexit?]

(Laughter)

In the Middle East,
we believed for a while

in the democratic miracle
of the Arab Spring.

We saw dictators fall,
we saw others hang on.

(Laughter)

And then there is the timeless
Kim dynasty of North Korea.

These guys seem to be coming
straight out of Cartoon Network.

I was blessed to be able
to draw two of them.

Kim Jong-il, the father,

when he died a few years ago,
that was a very dangerous moment.

[That was close!]

(Laughter)

That was --

(Applause)

And then the son, Kim Jong-un,

proved himself a worthy
successor to the throne.

He's now friends with the US president.

They meet each other all the time,
and they talk like friends.

[What kind of hair gel?]

(Laughter)

Should we be surprised

to be living in a world

ruled by egomaniacs?

What if they were just
a reflection of ourselves?

I mean, look at us, each of us.

(Laughter)

Yeah, we love our smartphones;

we love our selfies;

we love ourselves.

And thanks to Facebook,
we have a lot of friends

all over the world.

Mark Zuckerberg is our friend.

(Laughter)

You know, he and his peers
in Silicon Valley

are the kings and the emperors

of our time.

Showing that the emperors have no clothes,

that's the task of satire, right?

Speaking truth to power.

This has always been the historical role
of political cartooning.

In the 1830s, postrevolutionary France
under King Louis Philippe,

journalists and caricaturists fought hard
for the freedom of the press.

They were jailed, they were fined,
but they prevailed.

And this caricature of the king by Daumier

came to define the monarch.

It marked history.

It became the timeless symbol
of satire triumphing over autocracy.

Today, 200 years after Daumier,

are political cartoons
at risk of disappearing?

Take this blank space on the front page of
Turkish opposition newspaper "Cumhuriyet."

This is where Musa Kart's
cartoon used to appear.

In 2018, Musa Kart was sentenced
to three years in jail.

For doing what?

For doing political cartoons
in Erdoğan's Turkey.

Cartoonists from Venezuela, Russia, Syria
have been forced into exile.

Look at this image.

It seems so innocent, right?

Yet it is so provocative.

When he posted this image,

Hani Abbas knew it would change his life.

It was in 2012, and the Syrians
were taking to the streets.

Of course, the little red flower
is the symbol of the Syrian revolution.

So pretty soon, the regime was after him,

and he had to flee the country.

A good friend of his,
cartoonist Akram Raslan,

didn't make it out of Syria.

He died under torture.

In the United States of America recently,

some of the very top cartoonists,
like Nick Anderson and Rob Rogers --

this is a cartoon by Rob --

[Memorial Day 2018.
(on tombstone) Truth. Honor. Rule of Law.]

they lost their positions

because their publishers
found their work too critical of Trump.

And the same happened
to Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder.

Hey, maybe we should start worrying.

Political cartoons
were born with democracy,

and they are challenged when freedom is.

You know, over the years,

with the Cartooning for Peace Foundation
and other initiatives,

Kofi Annan -- this is not well
known -- he was the honorary chair

of our foundation,

the late Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Laureate.

He was a great defender of cartoons.

Or, on the board of the Association
of American Editorial Cartoonists,

we have advocated on behalf of jailed,
threatened, fired, exiled cartoonists.

But I never saw a case
of someone losing his job

over a cartoon he didn't do.

Well, that happened to me.

For the last 20 years, I have been
with the "International Herald Tribune"

and the "New York Times."

Then something happened.

In April 2019,

a cartoon by a famous
Portuguese cartoonist,

which was first published
in a newspaper "El Expresso" in Lisbon,

was picked by an editor
at the "New York Times"

and reprinted in
the international editions.

This thing blew up.

It was denounced as anti-Semitic,

triggered widespread outrage,

apologies

and a lot of damage control by the Times.

A month after, my editor told me

they were ending
political cartoons altogether.

So we could, and we should,
have a discussion about that cartoon.

Some people say it reminds them
of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda.

Others, including in Israel,

say no, it's just
a harsh criticism of Trump,

who is shown as blindly following
the Prime Minister of Israel.

I have some issues with this cartoon,

but that discussion did not happen
at the "New York Times."

Under attack, they took the easiest path:

in order to not have problems
with political cartoons in the future,

let's not have any at all.

Hey, this is new.

Did we just invent
preventive self-censorship?

I think this is bigger than cartoons.

This is about opinion and journalism.

This, in the end, is about democracy.

We now live in a world

where moralistic mobs
gather on social media

and rise like a storm.

The most outraged voices
tend to define the conversation,

and the angry crowd follows in.

These social media mobs,

sometimes fueled by interest groups,

fall upon newsrooms
in an overwhelming blow.

They send publishers and editors
scrambling for countermeasures.

This leaves no room
for meaningful discussions.

Twitter is a place for fury,
not for debate.

And you know what?

Someone described pretty well
our human condition in this noisy age.

You know who?

Shakespeare, 400 years ago.

["(Life is) a tale told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury, signifying nothing."]

This speaks to me.
Shakespeare is still very relevant, no?

But the world has changed a bit.

[Too long!]

(Laughter)

It's true.

(Applause)

You know, social media is both
a blessing and a curse for cartoons.

This is the era of the image,
so they get shared, they get viral,

but that also makes them a prime target.

More than often, the real target
behind the cartoon

is the media that published it.

[Covering Iraq?
No, Trump!]

That relationship between
traditional media and social media

is a funny one.

On one hand, you have
the time-consuming process

of information, verification, curation.

On the other hand,
it's an open buffet, frankly,

for rumors, opinions, emotions,

amplified by algorithms.

Even quality newspapers mimic the codes
of social networks on their websites.

They highlight the 10 most read,
the 10 most shared stories.

They should put forward
the 10 most important stories.

(Applause)

The media must not be
intimidated by social media,

and editors should stop
being afraid of the angry mob.

(Applause)

We're not going to put up warnings
the way we do on cigarette packs, are we?

[Satire can hurt your feelings]

(Laughter)

Come on.

[Under your burkini
you could be hiding a sex bomb]

Political cartoons are meant
to provoke, just like opinions.

But before all, they are meant
to be thought-provoking.

You feel hurt?

Just let it go.

You don't like it?

Look the other way.

Freedom of expression
is not incompatible with dialogue

and listening to each other.

But it is incompatible with intolerance.

(Applause)

Let us not become our own censors
in the name of political correctness.

We need to stand up, we need to push back,

because if we don't,
we will wake up tomorrow

in a sanitized world,

where any form of satire and political
cartooning becomes impossible.

Because, when political pressure
meets political correctness,

freedom of speech perishes.

(Applause)

Do you remember January 2015?

With the massacre
of journalists and cartoonists

at "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris,

we discovered the most
extreme form of censorship:

murder.

Remember how it felt.

[Without humor we are all dead]

Whatever one thought
of that satirical magazine,

however one felt about
those particular cartoons,

we all sensed that something
fundamental was at stake,

that citizens of free societies --
actually, citizens of any society --

need humor as much as the air we breathe.

This is why the extremists,

the dictators, the autocrats and, frankly,
all the ideologues of the world

cannot stand humor.

In the insane world we live in right now,

we need political cartoons more than ever.

And we need humor.

Thank you.

(Applause)