By Beer Prakken, University of Groningen

It would be safe to assume that around half of US voters don’t find Trump funny. In fact, many would even say that Trump doesn’t have a sense of humour, but whether you personally find him funny or not, humour and play are key to his success.

Trump’s contentious Madison Square Garden rally last Sunday was a perfect example. Alongside Trump threatening to launch “the largest deportation program in American history” and calling Kamala Harris “the antichrist”, a packed out crowd also got to see former WWE star Hulk Hogan tear his shirt off on stage, and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe call Puerto Rico an “island of garbage”.

The rally was held in the heart of New York, a Democrat stronghold, suggesting that Trump’s primary aim was to goad his opponents rather than win votes. Doing this nine days before polls open underscores how central this strategy is to his campaigning.

The campaign trail has offered countless other instances of Trump’s jokes, like Trump working at McDonalds, or Trump joking about being a dictator for only one day. These jokes are all part of a strategy to provoke Democrats and their voter base, and they often follow the same pattern – they play a game with liberals by keeping them in the dark and guessing whether Trump’s latest (often horrifying) joke was indeed just a joke.

However, there is a much darker side to this play, as it can all too easily work the other way around. By playfully adopting extremist stances for shock or entertainment value, humour and play can influence Trump’s own supporters and even his team. What starts as a joke can then take root and morph into more serious ideological beliefs.

Dark play

Professor and theatre director Richard Schechner identifies a form of play which revolves around the deception of others, which he calls dark play. Many of us have engaged in this at some point.

Imagine two friends sitting, bored, on a bus, and a stranger asks how they know each other. In response, they improvise an elaborate, completely false love story. The stranger is being played, and the fun lies in their deception. The “players” derive enjoyment from the reactions of those who are not in on the joke, and the other passenger is not a participant but an unwitting object of the game.

It is not hard to imagine players getting more and more absorbed in this kind of game – our fake couple’s game might extend to holding hands, or even kissing.

‘Dark absorption’ and online trolling

When the line between play and reality is blurred, it moves into what my research has called “dark absorption”. This can be dangerous, especially when politics is involved.

A prime example is online “trolling” – deliberately provoking or offending strangers through inflammatory words or actions. The victim of trolling has no idea whether a person is defending their real beliefs or not, but trolls themselves might not know either.

Dark play is strongly present at Trump rallies, which deliberately aim to amuse the audience and often poke fun at the non-players – common targets are the “fake news media” or liberal “snowflakes”.

However, dark play is present across the entire rightwing spectrum – popular, influential rightwing figures like Elon Musk, Dan Bongino, Milo Yiannopoulos, Nick Fuentes and Rush Limbaugh all share a love of trolling liberals, whether online or through other public appearances.

The more someone engages in dark play, the less clear their original beliefs become. Over time, this ambiguity can lead to extreme, radicalised political beliefs. The players, and their audience, become absorbed in a game with the highest possible stakes.

A typical example occurred last December, when Trump made the aforementioned claim that he would be a dictator for just one day if re-elected in 2024. Trump and his audience found this hilarious because they knew the joke would be taken seriously by those outside their circle. But the problem is that for the in-crowd, the line between joke and reality is not so clear either.

The Trump-incited riot of 6 January 2021 was another especially stark example, when rioters, some dressed in outlandish carnivalesque costumes, violently stormed the Capitol. Some were serious paramilitaries aiming to prevent Congress from formalising Biden’s victory, but others seemed to have no plan beyond sitting at House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk.

The rioters were simultaneously playing and deadly serious, but regardless of their intentions, real, lethal violence occurred on that day.

How can we fight ‘dark absorption’?

Firstly, we have to avoid seeing right-wing humour as invalid just because we don’t find it funny. Even academics make this mistake – there are studies claiming that conservatives have less of a sense of humour than liberals.

Secondly, we also have to acknowledge that humour isn’t always harmless, as it can also communicate or transform into something serious – think about how often blazing arguments are sparked by jokes. Both the left and the right ought not to treat humour as something inherently innocent.

Thirdly, politicians can take direct aim at Trump’s playfulness. Harris did this during the televised debate in September, when she called Trump’s rallies boring. It appeared to get under Trump’s skin, as he then launched into an angry, nonsensical rant about immigrants eating cats and dogs.

Lastly, rather than casting themselves as killjoy anti-populists, the opposing side should offer a “game” of their own, an alternative to a candidate who arrives at rallies in a garbage truck and serves fries in McDonald’s to jab at his opponents.

A series of recent, anonymous satirical sculptures in Washington DC suggest that someone is trying to do this, but it pales in comparison. For Trump, over the top, real life trolling and jokes are his organising principle, and that’s very hard to beat.

Beer Prakken, PhD student, University of Groningen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.