What do four elephants and a camel have to do with Donald Trump?

In October 2019, a session of the Folketing, the Danish parliament, went viral. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who had been in office for four months, was seized by a fit of laughter that spread to the rest of the chamber. During the opening of the parliamentary debate, Frederiksen had to announce a government expenditure: they had purchased four elephants and a camel from a circus to prevent the animals from being exploited. The five animals were retired together because they had lived together for many years, and there was a risk that the sadness of separation would affect their health. When speaking about the four elephants and their inseparable camel, Frederiksen became so carried away that she couldn't stop. When someone has high political aspirations, they imagine that they will have to participate in major international debates, make decisions in geopolitical conflicts, negotiate balances within the European Union, and manage decisions that affect the economy, security, and future of the country. Talking about the friendship between elephants and camels and the logistics of ensuring them a decent retirement broke the usual mold of parliamentary speeches. Frederiksen was perfectly aware that she was announcing a government decision, but it seemed like a joke. She herself realized the disproportion between the state apparatus and the prosaic nature of the matter. They weren't laughing at the poor animals, but at the communicative situation. The formality typical of institutional speeches clashed with the domestic vicissitudes of circus animals. The other members of parliament, sensitive to the exceptional nature of these circumstances, burst into laughter when they saw the prime minister losing control of the situation.

It's not every day you see an entire parliament laughing at once. And that's surely why the scene has become so memorable. So much so that when Denmark found itself at the epicenter of geopolitics following Donald Trump's repeated statements about the possibility of controlling Greenland, the 2019 scene resurfaced on social media, but completely out of context. The laughter of the Danish prime minister and the rest of parliament was presented as a supposed reaction to the United States' conquest ambitions. The scene, with its manipulated context, is useful for constructing a political dimension that it actually lacks. And the humor, instead of being spontaneous and innocent, becomes part of a real battle.

Perhaps what makes the manipulation of these images so seductive is our desire to see power, especially Trump's, ridiculed. Deep down, we'd like to believe it. Collective laughter has always had that ability to temporarily suspend hierarchies, to make the powerful look ridiculous, even if only for a moment. In 2019, when that session of the Danish parliament was brought to a standstill because all its members were laughing at the same time, Mette Frederiksen could wield a different kind of power: that of being human, vulnerable, capable of losing her composure over something absurd and endearing. It was reassuring. As if nothing more significant were happening. Almost seven years later, we're tempted to swallow the fantasy that that laughter can combat the imperialist threat. The real laughter of the prime minister and the entire parliament didn't need an enemy to exist then. But what social media has invented now does. And perhaps this difference tells us the most about the present we are living in.