Why Triumph’s “Trump Focus Group” makes you so uncomfortable
It took me several hours to figure out why Triumph the Insult Comic Dog’s recent “Trump Focus Group” left me feeling so ashamed of my laughter. It was a laughter accompanied by “oh my god”-type exclamations. Really? Racist white folk would actually be on board with making Mexicans wear shock collars, and deporting them through clandestine port-a-potties placed outside Home Depots? You might have felt while watching this a similar discomfort that was hard to put your finger on. Here, I submit, are some reasons why.
First of all, the premise is a cheap one that plays with a dangerous precedent: “laugh at these uneducated white folk as we goad them into saying absurdly racist things.” "Goading” is the key term: these people wouldn't have come up with all this on their own. They may have a lot of unexamined racist beliefs, which are their own form of violence, but those unexamined beliefs were not yet at such a shocking fever pitch. During the video, Triumph and his actors created a social dynamic—in part appealing to the authority of a white male actor—where they made such racist things not just acceptable but encouraged by a group leader. I’m no sociologist, but it seems to me that kind of manipulation is what makes for genocides, genocides that might start with making someone wear a special accessory, for example. Triumph is basically using genocidal rallying language and tactics to make jokes.
Second, satire generally should “punch up.” As a genre of humor, satire is at its best when pointing out the follies of the powerful. Good satire points out how elites abuse their power, and hopefully contributes to a chorus of voices that incite positive change. Perhaps the worst recent example of bad satire “punching down” is Charlie Hebdo’s racist depictions of Muslims in its so-called satirical cartoons. Encouraging people—even educated, anti-racist folk—to laugh at other disempowered groups just reinforces class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and entrenches radical beliefs further. This is exactly what Triumph’s bizarre form of satire (or, maybe more accurately satire used for the purposes of insult—I’m not a humor expert) is doing here. And I’m supposed to laugh.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. At some level we have to acknowledge the reasons these people are so racist in the first place—it’s been learned from powerful people who have sought to manipulate them into thinking people of color are responsible for their own lack of opportunities. I don’t think the solution is further manipulation.
What is to come of these people in this video? Yes, racists deserve to be called out and even shamed in many cases. But are these people learning anything from this incident? Will it incite their own come-to-Jesus moment, or make them become more entrenched in their beliefs? I don’t like the risk of the latter.
And the truly young people in this video—that to me seems really tragic. When I was that age I was only beginning to think for myself beyond the privilege of my white-middle-class-Christian family values. The two young women in the video will hopefully have plenty of opportunities to figure out just how messed up their racial beliefs are, but this would straight up put me into therapy if I were them. And that one younger woman whose face looked truly terrified—what if she had been encouraged to speak her thoughts behind that look? Or maybe she did, and it didn’t make it to the video we see.
I know, this is an *Insult* Comedy Dog. Why have I got myself so worked up over something that is arguably meant to make you uncomfortable? Because I’m upset at being manipulated into laughing at people who are themselves being manipulated, I guess. No matter how reprehensible I might find them as humans.