The mockery trap

NO good comes from going on X as I learned a few days ago when I logged on to see what was new. In short: a new level of hate and mockery. But I did come across a tweet gaining a lot of traction and my first reaction was to laugh. Then I saw who was sharing it, and it wasn’t funny anymore. In the clip, you hear a journalist asking Danish filmmaker Nikolaj Arcel why his new film, The Promised Land, is “entirely Nordic” and lacks diversity. Mads Mik­kelsen, the lead actor, looks confused: “What? Right from the get-go?” The director responds: “Well, first of all, the film takes place in Denmark in the 1750s.”

The question is absurd. Demanding racial diversity in a period drama set in 18th-century rural Denmark isn’t progressive filmmaking critique — it’s simply bad history dressed up as a moral stance. Of course, people laughed. But then I looked at who was celebrating this moment. White supremacists. People whose online presence is dedicated to opposing immigration, crying about ‘cultural replacement’, and treating any conversation about representation as an existential threat to Western civilisation. For them, this clip is ammunition.

One journalist’s absurd question has become proof that all conversations about diversity in the media or academia are stupid. That wanting more representation is absurd. That anyone who brings up race is disconnected from reality. The mockery isn’t about one bad question — it’s about shutting down an entire conversation. We’ve lost the ability to critique something specific without weaponising it.

This happens everywhere. Take PTI supporters. Some of their behaviour is concerning: the cult-like devotion to Imran Khan, the violent rhetoric, the attacks on journalists, opposition leaders and institutions. These aren’t imagined problems. They’re real and deserve criticism. But that criticism gets weaponised. Suddenly, any criticism of the government becomes ‘PTI propaganda’. Any mention of poll irregularities is dismissed as that word we all know but can’t print. Legitimate grievances about governance get lumped with the most extreme supporter behaviour, and the whole thing gets written off as delusion.

The government’s defenders don’t want to engage with the substance — about inflation, about corruption, about press freedom, about missing people. It’s easier to point at the most odious supporter’s tweet and say, ‘See? They’re all crazy’. One person’s absurd behaviour becomes permission to ignore everyone’s legitimate concerns. This is bias parading as clarity.

We’ve forgotten how to criticise with precision.

Being able to hold two thoughts simultaneously isn’t both-sides-ism; it’s basic intellectual honesty. You can think the diversity question about 1750s Denmark was ridiculous and be disturbed by how it’s being used to mock any conversation about representation. You can think some PTI supporters behave badly and still demand accountability for electoral rigging.

The problem isn’t that we’re criticising things. It’s that we’ve forgotten how to criticise with precision. We’ve become so tribal, so desperate to ‘win’ arguments, that we treat any concession as weakness. Why wrestle with complexity when a bumper sticker will do?

But precision in criticism isn’t weakness. It’s the only way we avoid becoming the thing we claim to oppose. When fascists weaponise one journalist’s bad question to dismiss all diversity conversations, they’re being intellectually dishonest. When government supporters weaponise PTI extremism to dismiss all criticism, they’re doing the same thing.

The mockery reveals more about the mockers than the original moment.

I think about this in the context of media narratives I wrote ab­­out a few weeks ago — the gap between perception and reality, the manufactured cons­e­­nt, the ways we’ve been deployed to build narratives for seths. Weaponised mockery is just another form of manufacturing consent. It’s easier to laugh at the absurd thing than to engage with the uncomfortable truth underneath it.

The Danish film clip will fade. Another viral moment will replace it. PTI supporters will do something that makes everyone wonder if they really want Imran Khan out. But unless we learn to separate legitimate criticism from weaponised mockery, we’ll keep falling into the same trap: mistaking the gleeful circulation of someone else’s stupidity for our own wisdom.

Because here’s the thing — when your criticism serves to shut down conversation rather than sharpen it, when your mockery is less about truth and more about playing to your crowd, you’re not being discerning, you’re just picking a side and calling it thinking.

And we simply can’t afford to live in our own versions of reality, far removed from the most glaring one: facts cannot be altered for your comfort, and neither can nuance be abandoned for your convenience.

The writer is a former journalism instructor.

X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2026

if you want to get more information about this news then click on below link

More Detail