Offensive Humor as a Tool For Community Building in Times Of Uncertainty: A Russian Militarist Community on Telegram as a Case Study

• In Event: Community-based Responses to Harm

Abstract

The study analyzes disparagement humor produced by a Russian militarist far-right Telegram community “Local Crew,” a part of a broader ecosystem of “Local Crew” communities on- and offline, as a tool for reducing identitarian uncertainty during a sociopolitical crisis. To find out how existential uncertainty, created by the outbreak of a full-scale war, affects the humorous othering among the militarist far-right, a sample of 130 jokes (mostly in visual and textual format) is analyzed. The jokes were published in a community’s channel a month before and a month after two moments of the most acute sociopolitical upheaval, namely, the declaration of mobilization (September 2022) and the attempted coup by the Wagner Group (June 2023). The findings are in line with the assumptions of Hogg’s uncertainty-identity theory. After the war started, the community opted for demonizing the single outgroup (Ukrainians) while attempting to preserve the ingroup’s coherency through building ingroup appreciation (within a pro-military nationalist niche) and framing additional upheavals as irrelevant, compared to the major identity markers and the general war-related crisis. No additional outgroups were demonized in case they had not directly aligned with the “existential enemy.”

Author

• Petr Oskolkov, Ariel University