Secret police department producing anti-regime jokes
anecdote · Slovenian/Yugoslav ·
retold in 6 talks
A widespread fantasy in all socialist countries held that there was an ultra-secret department within the secret police whose sole function was to produce political jokes against the party leadership, to keep people satisfied with a small opening. Žižek takes the fantasy seriously as revealing a structural truth about jokes as safety valves.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 5
“within the secret police, there was an ultra-secret department. whose function was to produce political jokes, to keep the people satisfied”
“Jokes, political jokes, played a constructive role from the standpoint of those in power.”
“There was no secret secret department fabricating jokes. But there is a truth in this lie.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Chuck Norris2Franco Zeffirelli2Napoleon III1John Malkovich1opera: Parsifal1film: They Live1personal/autobiographical1Slovenian/Yugoslav1
alongside works
Every retelling 5
A widespread fantasy in all socialist countries held that there was an ultra-secret department within the secret police whose sole function was to produce political jokes against the party leadership, to keep people satisfied with a small opening. Žižek takes the fantasy seriously as revealing a structural truth about jokes as safety valves., illustrating political jokes as safety valve,false transgression,communist ideology
Rumor had it that a secret department of communist secret police manufactured the very jokes that mocked their own politicians, allowing people to vent anger without protesting. Though no such department was found, the idea contains a structural truth about jokes' ideological function., illustrating ideology / jokes as safety valve,necessary fiction,communist power
1:23:51 XLII Sigmund Freud Lecture by Slavoj Žižek: Theology, Negativity, and the Death-Drive2015 · 1:49:50
A myth in Socialist Yugoslavia that the secret police invented political jokes to release public frustration. Žižek argues the myth is false but contains a truth about the constructive role of jokes in maintaining the system., illustrating necessary lie,ideology
The myth of the secret police department that fabricated anti-regime jokes to vent public frustration and prevent actual political uprising, a story found across Eastern Bloc countries., illustrating socially constructive role of jokes
Why are policemen always three in a group? One knows how to read, one how to write, and the third controls them if they read or write correctly., illustrating corruption,stupidity,police authority