Editing Tactical frivolity (section)

==History of humour in political protest==
[[Image:Waldemar Major Fydrych.JPG|thumb|right|[[Major Waldemar Fydrych]] founder of the [[Orange Alternative]], seen wearing the movement's trademark elf hat at Kraków Book Fair October 2006]]
The study of humour by social historians did not become popular until the early 1980s and the literature on this subject studying periods before the 20th century is relatively sparse.<ref name="HumourandProtest">
{{cite book
|author = Dennis Bos and Marjolein 't Hart
|title=Humour and Social Protest
|year=2008
|pages =  1–12, 141–147
|isbn=978-0-521-72214-8
|publisher= Cambridge University Press
}}</ref> An exception is the frequently cited<ref name="HumourandProtest"/> [[Rabelais and His World]] by [[Mikhail Bakhtin]], a Russian scholar considered by some to be the most important thinker of the 20th century.<ref name="ACBrit">
{{cite book
|author = John Carter and Dave Morland
|title=Anti-capitalist Britain
|year=2004
|pages = 7–12, 84, 85, 90, 91
|isbn=1-873797-43-5
|publisher= New Clarion Press
}}</ref> The work discusses the life and times of the writer and satirist [[François Rabelais]] with emphases on what the author considers to be the powerful role of humour in medieval and early times.  Carnivals, [[Satire]] and the French folk custom of [[Charivari]] were discussed as mediums that allowed the lower classes to use humour to highlight unjust behaviour by the upper classes. These humorous protests were generally tolerated by the ruling authorities.  Examples of the use of humour for political protest even from Classical times, such as the play [[Lysistrata]] by ancient Greek dramatist [[Aristophanes]], have been described as "Rabeleisan protest".{{cn|date=August 2022}}
Studies of hunter gather tribes thought to have systems of social organisation that have changed little since prehistoric times, have found that ridicule or anger is used by many tribes to oppose any individual who tries to assume authority in a way that violates the tribe's egalitarian norms. Tribes observed to show this behaviour include the [[ǃKung people|!Kung]], [[Mbuti]], [[Naskapi]] and Hazda.<ref>
{{cite book
|author = Eleanor Burke Leacock and Richard B. Lee
|title=Politics and history in band societies
|year=1982
|page =10
|isbn=978-0-521-28412-7
|publisher= Cambridge University Press
}}</ref>
An example of a political protest making extensive use of humour in early modern times was the 17th century British movement, the [[Levellers]].<ref>
{{cite journal
|title= "A Little Discourse Pro & Con": Levelling Laughter and Its Puritan Criticism
|author=Sammy Basu
|volume=52
|year=2007
|journal=International Review of Social History
|issue=S15
|page=95
|doi=10.1017/s0020859007003148
|doi-access=free
}}
</ref>
There is much more extensive literature covering the use of humour by the protest movements which emerged in the 20th century.<ref name="HumourandProtest"/>

In the United States, [[Abbie Hoffman]], [[Jerry Rubin]], and the [[Yippies]] were well-known users of frivolous tactics. Active in the 1960s and 1970s, their actions included dropping money onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, [[Pigasus (politics)|running a pig]] as a candidate for president, and [[National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam#1967 March on the Pentagon|"levitating" the Pentagon]]. 

One of the earliest protest groups whose use of humour has been specifically described as "tactical frivolity"<ref>In the 2007 book ''Complexity and Social Movements: Protest at the Edge of Chaos'' by Graeme Chesters and Ian Welsh, but speaking of the methods employed in the 1980s</ref> is the [[Orange Alternative]], a movement that emerged in Poland during the early 1980s as a part of the broader [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity]] campaign.<ref name="HumourandProtest"/>  They made extensive use of visual jokes and theatrical stunts to protest against oppression by the authorities.<ref>
{{cite journal
|title=Between the State and Solidarity
|author= Bronislaw Misztal
|volume=43
|issue= 1
|pages= 55–78
|date=March 1992
|journal=The British Journal of Sociology
|doi=10.2307/591201|jstor= 591201
}}
</ref> A common theme was to dress up as elves (sometimes translated dwarves or gnomes). Orange Alternative have been described as the most "influential of the solidarity factions", central to enabling the overall movement to prevail, due in part to the success their comedic "happenings"  enjoyed in attracting the attention of the world's media.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Romanienko|first=Lisiunia A.|date=2007|title=Antagonism, Absurdity, and the Avant-Garde: Dismantling Soviet Oppression through the Use of Theatrical Devices by Poland's "Orange" Solidarity Movement|journal=International Review of Social History|language=en|volume=52|issue=S15|pages=133–151|doi=10.1017/S0020859007003161|issn=1469-512X|doi-access=free}}</ref> 
A protest movement described as partly responsible for popularising the contemporary use of "Tactical Frivolity" is  [[Reclaim the Streets]]  (''RTS'').<ref name = "Emancipatory">
{{cite book
|last= Lees
|first= Loretta
|title=The Emancipatory City?: Paradoxes and Possibilities
|year=2004
|pages =91–106
|isbn=0-7619-7387-7
|publisher= Sage Publications Ltd
}}</ref>  They formed in 1991 in Great Britain, inspired in part by the anti-road protests of the previous decades and  in part by the [[Situationists]]. As the 1990s advanced, RTS inspired splinter groups in other countries across the world, and was heavily involved in organising the international [[Carnival against Capitalism]]—an anti-capitalism event held in many cities simultaneously on June 18, 1999. ''Carnival against Capitalism'', frequently known as ''J18'', is sometimes credited as being the first of the major international anti-capitalist protests. ''RTS'' have reported that many of their organisers were inspired by independently reading the work of Bakhtin.<ref name="ACBrit"/>