Adorno sees shared laughter as a counterfeit of true solidarity.

Evidence

In the false society, laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness and is drawing it into its worthless totality. To laugh at something is always to deride it … Such a laughing audience is a parody of humanity. Its members are monads, dedicated to the pleasure of being ready for anything at the expense of everyone else. Their harmony is a caricature of solidarity. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 667

Categorization

• XREF: Directly inverts the reader’s core research question — this is solidarity as engineered falsehood rather than positive mutual project. — connects to: Laughter disarms ideology because it dissolves fear and enables thought — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice: How to Communicate…, 413
• DEEPTHINKING: Adorno’s claim that the laughing audience’s harmony is a ‘caricature of solidarity’ is a dense thesis about how group feeling can be manufactured against genuine human connection.

Broader Connections

• Laughter disarms ideology because it dissolves fear and enables thought #contradicts (0.85) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 413