MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: Comedy's free speech crisis

Laughs and limits at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, Russia's shadow war, an older and wiser return to rock

THE GIST: No laughing matter in Riyadh

When they pushed back against Disney following the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s show under pressure from the White House, American comedy fans made it clear — to the tune of 1.7 million subscription cancellations — that they would defend the right of comedians to free-range criticism, no topic off the table, just as the First Amendment guarantees.

But this week, we got a look at a different possible future for comedy under authoritarianism, when American comedian Atsuko Okatsuka publicized the artist contract for the Riyadh Comedy Festival (Saudi Arabia’s first global comedy event), which opened September 26 and runs through October 8. That contract barred criticism of the host country, the Saudi royal family, and jokes about religion:

Among the comedians who accepted the offer were several — including Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle — who have been very vocal about their devotion to free speech. Fellow comedian David Cross wrote in an open letter to the comedy community, calling that out, and wondering what might have happened to those concerns:

Clearly you guys don’t give a shit about what the rest of us think, but how can any of us take any of you seriously ever again? All of your bitching about “cancel culture” and “freedom of speech” and all that shit? Done. You don’t get to talk about it ever again. By now we’ve all seen the contract you had to sign.

But Chappelle didn’t see the contradiction, going so far as to suggest that the festival offered a respite from cancel culture, at least of the American-style kind.

“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled” the comedian Dave Chappelle quipped on Saturday at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, the first event of its kind in Saudi Arabia. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out.”

A headline act, Mr. Chappelle was met with whoops, cheers and applause as he told an audience of 6,000, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”

And Burr, perhaps inadvertently, highlighted just why Americans take their freedoms for granted — and may not be able to recognize their loss — in a podcast episode he posted after returning:

You think everybody’s going to be screaming “death to America” and they’re going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off, right? Because this is what I’ve been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense. And I’m thinking like: “Is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to McDonald’s …? They got a fucking Chili’s over here!”

But it’s no surprise that American comedians performing in Riyadh found the locals were just like them, and that the political conditions on performance seemed very familiar. People may expect authoritarianism to look alien: columns of troops, a world drained of color, tanks in the streets: the kind of imagery Leni Riefenstahl came up with to market the Third Reich. But the way it’s actually experienced is different — and it doesn’t rule out a Starbucks or a Pizza Hut. Or the interests and loves and jokes that most people anywhere share, or want to.

It’s not that Saudi Arabia is free because it has a Chili’s, and the people love comedy. It’s that the things Burr is used to aren’t any barrier to authoritarianism, in Saudi Arabia or in the United States.

BIGGER PICTURE: Is Russia at war with Europe?

In a World Politics Review piece yesterday, journalist and analyst Ulrike Franke asked a challenging question: Is Russia at war with Europe? Not just Ukraine — Europe.

In the span of just the past two weeks, three armed Russian warplanes entered Estonian airspace, 19 Russian military drones violated Polish airspace and another Russian military drone flew over Romania. In addition, drone sightings over several Danish airports led to shutdowns and flight cancellations, while unidentified drones were similarly spotted over Germany.

Since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe has no longer been a continent at peace. It is now obvious that the war will not be limited to Ukraine.

But what is Vladimir Putin up to? It’s not quite war as most might imagine it, according to policy analyst Maksym Beznosiuk:

At this stage, it appears that Russia is looking to assess NATO’s readiness to defend itself and is unlikely to be preparing any large-scale attacks. However, there is no time to waste. European countries cannot wait until Russia goes even further before addressing the urgent security concerns raised by the Kremlin’s drone diplomacy.

It’s an evolution of the shadowy global conflict — large-scale, but not an open war, violence carried out selectively, by proxies or at a distance — that’s become the norm over the past few decades, and that we talked about with journalist Dexter Filkins last year. The war in Ukraine had been a proxy for a wider, undeclared conflict between the West and Putin’s Russia

[We] send a lot of money to Ukraine, which is defending itself against invasion in Europe by Russia, and at the same time, send a lot more money to Israel, which is in the middle of a very intense fight with Hamas…

But that was back in early 2024, before Donald Trump began to withdraw the United States from the international order. And in the vacuum that’s opened, especially since Trump met with Putin in Alaska in August, Putin’s taken the opportunity. But Vladimir Putin, like Trump, is a strongman who is weak. Russia’s ability to exercise military force is so limited that Ukraine has been able to decimate the Russian army. So he’s turned to the is-it-or-isn’t-it approach of low-level drone warfare, threatening flyovers, and near-misses.

The columnist Jamelle Bouie has written that Trump depends on creating a spectacle of authoritarianism: “The White House wants you to see its kitschy displays of the president and its militarization of the nation’s capital and conclude that the game is over and that they have already won.” And with the repeated drone flights over EU countries, Russia is creating the perception of military advantage, the idea that it’s a real threat to the West, that a larger-scale attack is inevitable, even if it’s impossible, for now.

That’s not to minimize the danger — the spectacle is meant to pave the way for the real thing. And even if Putin isn’t ready for that yet, European leaders are preparing. As Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said:

The war in Ukraine is very serious. When I look at Europe today, I think we are in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the Second World War — not the Cold War anymore.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT: A mixtape of emotions

The songwriter, singer, actor, and artist Tunde Adebimpe is best known as the lead vocalist of the hugely influential turn-of-the-millennium Brooklyn band TV on the Radio, and has kept up his polymathic output ever since. He’s been collaborating broadly (and lately, working with a reunited TVoTR), but it was only this year that he released his first solo album, Thee Black Boltz. Here, Adebimpe runs through four of his new tunes, showcasing his chameleonic crooning (it’s no surprise David Bowie was a fan and collaborator) and abstract poetry alongside Wilder Zoby on keyboards and TVotR colleagues Jaleel Bunton on guitar and Jahphet Landis on drums. Not to be missed.

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Photo: winhorse/Getty Images