Howling With Laughter

Unmasking Bigotry's Laugh Track

When millions are encouraged to laugh at you on Netflix, every punchline feels like it's painting a fresh target on your back.

Content Warning: This article addresses transphobia, hateful rhetoric, and historical examples of state-sanctioned violence, including references to the Holocaust.

Comedy has long exposed hypocrisy and unsettled the powerful. But lately, some of the biggest names in stand-up have reversed that tradition. They don't challenge power - they uphold it. They don’t punch up; they punch down - mocking the already marginalized under the guise of being "edgy."

Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, and Bill Maher walk onto a stage.

The cycle is all too familiar: The comedian strikes at a vulnerable group, receives justified backlash, then pivots to claim they’re the victim. Instead of discussing the harm done, the conversation shifts to ‘free speech.

But this isn’t just about a few comedians or a handful of jokes. Humour has always shaped social norms. Laughter doesn’t stay in the room. It seeps into laws, policies, and violence. And history has made it clear: when we ignore that pattern, we repeat it.

The Comedian as Pack Leader: How Laughter Signals Permission to Attack

In my previous article, I explored how ‘wolf pack’ harassment operates online: how a single ‘howl’ can set an entire mob into action. Now let’s examine how that same dynamic emerges when a spotlight hits the mic and a crowd leans in, waiting for something - or someone - to laugh at.

A comedian’s jokes are the initiating ‘howl’. Just as a troll general doesn’t need to order their followers to attack, a comedian doesn’t need to tell their audience what to do. The jokes themselves are the signal: this target is safe to dehumanize - someone the audience is invited to mock, dismiss, and exclude in their everyday lives.

Laughter and howling have more in common than we like to admit. In comedy, the same dynamic just plays out on a much larger scale. A joke doesn’t stay on stage. It filters into conversations, spreads through social media, seeps into attitudes. It trains the audience in who they are allowed to mock, exclude, and attack. And once that dehumanization takes hold, history tells us what comes next.

Humour, like propaganda, has always been a means of social control. It isn’t just about entertainment - it’s also about power. A joke can challenge the status quo or cement it. And the difference is always in who is doing the laughing and who is being laughed at.

We've seen this dynamic in politics as well. Public figures know that when they target a group with ridicule or fear-mongering, their audience doesn't need direct instructions to act. The rhetoric alone primes them to see those targeted as dangerous, ridiculous, or less than human - and to respond accordingly. Trump’s recent executive order banning trans healthcare didn’t emerge in isolation. It followed years of public figures - and comedians - turning trans people into punchlines, making cruelty feel like common sense.

Transphobic comedy follows the same structure as a wolf pack attack:

• The Howl: The comedian’s joke signals who is fair game.

• The Pack Response: The audience takes that permission into the world, emboldened to mock, exclude, and harass trans people - now with cultural reinforcement behind them.

• Plausible Deniability: If called out, the comedian claims, "It’s just a joke," the same way a troll general insists, "I never told anyone to harass them."

Just as wolf packs inflict harm through collective attack rather than individual blows, transphobic comedy operates as distributed harassment: crowdsourced, scalable, and impossible to trace back to a single instigator. The audience is already primed to play along. And the people laughing don’t always realize what they’re building.

The Fall of the Jester: From Punching Up to Punching Down

Comedy has always been political but the difference is who the jokes serve.
Historically, satire targeted the powerful: Oscar Wilde mocked Victorian hypocrisy, Voltaire skewered religious dogma, Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity after criticizing social norms, and George Carlin took on war, greed, and censorship. They didn’t just entertain, they threatened the status quo. And they paid the price: arrests, blacklisting, censorship.

Today, comedy is corporate. Edginess has been repackaged as cruelty, with marginalized groups as the easiest targets. Mocking trans people isn’t rebellious; it’s profitable. Streaming giants like Netflix and HBO benefit from the outrage cycles that boost engagement - whether or not they anticipate the bigotry that fuels them.

When these comedians claim victimhood over “cancel culture,” they aren’t defending free speech, they’re issuing a secondary howl, directing their audience toward their critics. Just like online troll generals, they use plausible deniability to unleash harassment without giving direct orders.

The cycle is predictable:

1. The Joke – The comedian mocks trans people, often using gender essentialist tropes.

2. The Backlash – Trans people push back, naming the harm.

3. The Reversal – The comedian reframes themselves as the victim of censorship, spurring their audience to retaliate.

The result? Harassment, intimidation, and escalated violence. And every time the cycle repeats, the message grows louder: trans people are fair game.

Case Study: Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, and Bill Maher

Each of these comedians contributes to the normalization of transphobia, but they do so in distinct ways. Their humour follows recognizable patterns of social cruelty, each serving a specific function in shaping audience attitudes toward trans people.

Ricky Gervais: Contempt as Social Enforcement

Gervais doesn’t just mock trans people. He teaches his audience that trans identities are inherently absurd. His humour is not just ridicule, but correction, reinforcing the idea that trans women don’t deserve to be taken seriously. In SuperNature, he jokes:

“Oh, women! Not all women - I mean, the old-fashioned ones. The ones with wombs. Those f**ing dinosaurs!”

This is not just a punchline - it’s an instruction. His audience isn’t laughing at wordplay; they’re laughing at the idea that trans women don’t count as women at all. He continues:

“And now the old-fashioned women are saying, ‘Oh, they want to use our toilets!’ Why shouldn’t they use your toilets? ‘For ladies!’ They are ladies - look at their pronouns!”

The exaggerated mock sincerity serves a dual function: ridiculing trans women while reinforcing the idea that opposing their inclusion is just common sense.

When criticized, he follows the predictable backlash cycle - shifting the conversation away from harm and onto his own supposed victimhood, agreeing with the statement that ‘Woke culture is ruining comedy!’

By positioning himself as a defender of free speech, Gervais doesn’t just deflect accountability - he deepens his audience’s investment in the idea that trans people are hypersensitive, authoritarian, and worthy of mockery.

Gervais’ humour is not just about who gets laughed at - it’s about reinforcing social hierarchies through humiliation.

Dave Chappelle: Grievance as Justification for Cruelty

Where Gervais teaches contempt, Chappelle stokes hostility. His trans jokes are not framed as detached commentary - they are personal. He presents himself as a man under siege, betrayed by a changing world, fighting back against a culture that refuses to respect him. In The Closer, he declares:

"I’m team TERF! I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact."

Unlike Gervais, who portrays transphobia as common sense, Chappelle’s jokes are acts of retribution. He doesn’t just mock trans people - he positions them as a political enemy. His routine escalates into outright hostility:

"You know who hates me the most? The transgender community."

This isn’t just a joke - it’s a reversal of power. By casting himself as the victim, Chappelle primes his audience to see trans activism as an attack, rather than a defence against oppression.

His jokes don’t just reinforce stereotypes - they condition his audience to see trans advocacy as something that must be fought against.

Bill Maher: Smug Dismissal as Social Gatekeeping

Where Gervais sneers and Chappelle lashes out, Maher is smugly dismissive. His transphobia is more subtle, but no less effective - it erodes empathy rather than attacking directly. On Real Time, he dismisses trans identities as a passing fad:

"part of the rise in LGBT numbers is from people feeling free enough to tell it to a pollster and that’s all to the good, but some of it is - it’s trendy"

This is a softer form of dehumanization - not the outright mockery of Gervais or the rage of Chappelle, but a casual denial of legitimacy. His humour positions him as a reasonable skeptic while still reinforcing transphobic tropes. Then, like Gervais and Chappelle, he escalates:

"We’re literally experimenting on children… That’s where we are now"

Maher’s jokes don’t frame trans people as a direct threat - instead, they frame the defence of trans rights as irrational, excessive, and harmful.

This is what makes him more palatable to centrist and liberal audiences who might reject overt bigotry but are still susceptible to narratives about ‘reasonable concerns.’ His humour doesn’t inspire rage. It inspires detachment, dismissal, and cultivated indifference. And indifference is just as deadly as hatred.

The Cultural Conditioning of Violence

Each of these comedians plays a strategic role in main-streaming transphobia, providing the cultural permission needed for increasingly aggressive attacks on trans rights. Their 'jokes' lay the groundwork for policies that systematically erase trans people from public life - from bathroom bills to sports bans to outright criminalization of gender-affirming care. When Trump signed an executive order banning gender-affirming care at the federal level, he was building on foundations that these comedians helped normalize through sadistic laughter.

This isn't just comedy. It's social conditioning for oppression. And psychologist Gordon Allport mapped this progression decades ago.

From Punchlines to Pogroms

Every hate movement starts with words. Before the first brick is thrown or the first oppressive law is passed, there’s a joke. The first step in Gordon Allport’s Scale of Prejudice isn’t violence - it’s mockery. It’s "just jokes."

In the years leading up to the Holocaust, Nazi propaganda weaponized satire - cartoons, caricatures, and mocking portrayals of Jewish people flooded newspapers and film reels. The goal wasn’t just to entertain. It was to make Jewish people look laughable, untrustworthy, and less than human. By the time open persecution escalated into extermination, much of the public was already primed to look away.

The pattern isn’t unique to Nazi Germany. It repeats itself again and again:

• Mockery → Exclusion: When jokes target a group relentlessly, social exclusion starts to feel natural. Marginalized people become fair game for mockery, and audiences feel justified in othering them.

• Exclusion → Discrimination: The more people are ridiculed as absurd, dangerous, or deceptive, the easier it is to justify denying them rights, restricting their access to jobs, spaces, or legal protections.

• Discrimination → Physical Attack: Dehumanizing humour fosters contempt. Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people often spike after public figures ridicule them, reinforcing the idea that they are disposable.

• Physical Attack → Elimination: Every genocide has relied on cultural priming before it begins. From Nazi Germany to the Rwandan genocide, satirical depictions of marginalized groups helped create the conditions for mass violence.

This escalation isn’t accidental. Each step feels reasonable because the last one was tolerated. What starts as a joke ends as policy. And when high-profile comedians normalize dehumanization through humour, they aren’t just telling jokes. They’re laying the groundwork.

History shows us that dehumanizing humour often precedes or accompanies legal measures against targeted communities. So Trump’s executive order banning trans healthcare underscores that what begins with a jeering laugh can end with real, state-sanctioned harm.

This is eliminationism in action. It may not mirror the genocidal regimes of the past in scale or tactics, but the underlying logic remains the same: portray a marginalized group as absurd, dangerous, or broken enough to justify erasing them from public life. Denying trans people the medical care they need and suppressing their very identities isn't an isolated policy choice. It’s part of a broader pattern of social erasure rooted in the same dehumanizing mechanisms that have historically laid the groundwork for violence.

The Free Speech Myth: What These Comedians Leave Out

Furthermore, the claim that comedians are being silenced falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny.

• Ricky Gervais signed multiple Netflix deals while complaining that "woke culture" is ruining comedy.

• Dave Chappelle signed a $60 million for his specials while declaring himself “cancelled”.

• Bill Maher has hosted Real Time for 20 years on HBO while lecturing about being "silenced."

They are not being silenced. They are being criticized. And they cannot handle that.

Here’s the reality: Free speech has never meant freedom from social consequences.

• No one is owed a Netflix deal or a stadium audience.

• No one is entitled to applause for punching down.

• Criticism is not censorship - it’s accountability.

But the "cancel culture" narrative serves a function: it makes these comedians more profitable. The more they frame themselves as victims, the more their reactionary audience flocks to support them.

The “free speech” defence is not about speech - it’s about maintaining control over who gets to be mocked, who gets to speak, and who gets to be heard.

If they really cared about challenging power, they wouldn’t be repeating prejudiced talking points. They’d be taking aim at the people actually making the laws that harm marginalized groups. But confronting real power means risking genuine backlash. Ridiculing a marginalized community requires no such courage. After all, there’s nothing brave about punching down - it’s just bullying with a laugh track.

James Acaster: A Modern Satirist’s Response

James Acaster offers one of the most pointed takedowns of this pretence of persecution and faux edginess. In his 2019 special Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, Acaster directly mocked comedians who spend their time mocking transgender people while insisting they are brave truth-tellers:

"They say whatever they like, edgy comedians. No one tells them what they can and can’t say. They walk straight on stage, top of their specials sometimes, and do 10 solid minutes just slagging off transgender people. People on the internet get upset about it… the comedian’s always like, ‘Bad luck, that’s my job, I’m a stand-up comedian, I’m there to challenge people. If you don’t like being challenged, don’t watch my show. What’s the matter guys, too challenging for you?’

Yeah, cause you know who’s been long overdue a challenge? The trans community. They’ve had their guard down for too long, if you ask me. They’ll all be checking their privilege on the way home, thanks to you, you brave little cis boy."

Acaster’s satire cuts through the claim that these comedians are speaking uncomfortable truths. His point is simple: they aren't challenging anyone with power - they're targeting a small group that’s already under attack.

He highlights the double-standard at the heart of these performances. When these comedians ridicule trans people, they frame their jokes as brave cultural resistance. But when those jokes are criticized, the same comedians insist that they should be immune from critique. Acaster’s set doesn't just mock this contradiction, it exposes it as a marketing strategy.

Conclusion

Comedy shapes how we see the world, who we empathize with, and who we exclude. Laughter can disrupt power or reinforce it. The difference isn’t in the joke. It’s in who it serves.

Some comedians wield humour to challenge oppression. James Acaster, Hannah Gadsby, and DeAnne Smith do this without dehumanizing anyone. But Gervais, Chappelle, and Maher? They call themselves rebels while punching down, relying on existing prejudices to keep the crowd laughing.

When people say, "It’s just a joke," they’re missing the point. Jokes are social cues. They teach us who to exclude. They normalize discrimination and, eventually, violence. History shows that pattern again and again.

So when someone says comedians should "challenge people," ask: Who are they suggesting they challenge? The powerful? Or the already marginalized?

Comedy can still challenge power. We’ve seen it shift culture before, and it can again - if audiences demand more.

The next time someone insists comedians "should be allowed to say anything," remind them: They already can.

The real question is: Why do some comedians keep choosing this?

And the short answer? Because we let them.

It’s time we stopped.