Political jokes under Arab regimes turned self-critical where other autocracies targeted leaders

Evidence

I found this kind of rather neurotic self-criticism very frequent. It can be discerned for example in the political joke—that standard expression of dissent in autocracies. But whereas the political joke in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia tended to be directed against the leader or against the re´gime, in Egypt it is as often as not directed against the Egyptian nation itself. It is not uncommon to find the expression of extreme nationalist views coupled with an almost nihilistic rejection of the Egyptian nation as incapable of anything at all. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1252

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the usual autocracy/dissent framework (jokes as anti-leader) — connects to broader work on humor under authoritarianism and Said-adjacent analyses of postcolonial self-critique.