“I Signed the House over to a Cat”: Humor of the Belarusian 2020–2021 Protests

Abstract

Post-electoral protests in 2020 were unprecedented in Belarus: not only in terms of their massive size and long duration, but also because of the abundant use of humor by the protesters. As a phenomenon that has both cognitive and emotional sides, humor plays an important role in political protests. It can help as a way to cope with anger and fear, but it can also mark people’s belonging to certain social groups. Using Belarusian 2020 protest posters as data sources, we explore what topics of protest humor were popular, how protest posters functioned as a prominent instrument of political activism, and why humor played such a pivotal role in 2020 Belarusian political protests. We argue that one of the most significant and appealing aspects of the use of protest humor was how it allowed individuals to express their political views in creative ways as opposed to the more simplified and straightforward rhetorical tools of authoritarian systems. With the rise of police brutality and repression against protestors, humor became a way to demarcate clear boundaries between a violent “them” and a creative, intelligent, and peaceful “us.”