It has come to my attention, quite by accident, that a rather off-color and entirely counterproductive joke has been circulating among the community recently. I have taken the time to compile in this pamphlet the general structure of the joke, along with a few common iterations, variations, and elaborations (and their respective implications about the teller), so that going forward we can be sure to eliminate its use from the collective canon. In addition, I have attempted to explore the history of the joke itself, a task which proved virtually impossible due to the dizzying array of supposed origins and methods of memetic transfer.
Some claim to have invented it themselves. When presented with the counterpoint that the listener has heard it already, some tellers will often assert that they are in fact the original creator, and the joke is simply so good it must have simply made its way through natural diffusion to the listener, while those bright enough to realize they’ve been caught will default to the explanation that it is such an obvious concept, they must have independently arrived at the same comedic conclusion. Many tellers are perfectly willing, when pressed, to provide the name, address, and known associates of the individual from which they first heard this joke. Others will concoct a superficially believable lineage linking the joke to some great revolutionary or famous battle, which inevitably disintegrates under light scrutiny. In my studies, however, I encountered three plausible historical origins.
The first, and most eminently provable, places the creation of the joke in the United States, sometime around 1969, in one of the smoky student sit-ins against the Vietnam War, after which it quickly spread across the notoriously open-minded movement through word of mouth. This theory is the safest, since two completely separate and roughly contemporary records of the joke can be found by determined diggers; an unmistakable segment of the setup can be just barely heard in the outro to the short-lived Twelfth Street Band’s psychedelic rock single Peace and Love and Understanding, and all that Jazz, which saw a pitiful run of just 200 vinyls in November of ‘69. The second is a full version of the joke (though plagued by spelling and grammatical errors) found in a short column on page 2, issue 1 of the underground G.I. movement paper Last Harass, published out of Fort Gordon, GA in August of ‘70.
On the other hand, some evidence points to a much earlier date of inception. Oral and written histories of the Russian Revolution occasionally hint at a popular joke that bears remarkable similarities to this one, including its infinite variability, tendency toward embellishment, and the inevitable furious arguments that break out both during the set-up and after the punchline. Reportedly one Denis Ivanovich, a lieutenant in the Red Army who swam across the Elbe to American-occupied Germany shortly before the end of the Second World War, claims in his memoir that his father used to tell him the very same joke as a child. Apparently, a particularly humorless NKVD officer happened to overhear him drunkenly recounting this joke with some unflattering additions regarding his superior officers, which ultimately led to his flight. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate the actual book—it was published in Russian, since after escaping to the West, Ivanovich refused to learn any other language—and I am only convinced of its existence by a smattering of secondhand quotations and references in scholarly articles over the past few decades. Though this happens to be my preferred theory, without the text itself nor any positive identification in the existing literature, I cannot in good conscience endorse it outright.
Finally, there is one account that I feel obligated to include despite its almost fantastical nature, and I certainly would not have mentioned it were it not for the fact that multiple completely unrelated individuals produced nearly identical explanations. According to this theory, the joke can be found chiseled into the wall of a section of the Paris catacombs, dated 22 Prairial, Year III (June 10, 1795 in the Gregorian calendar). The exact identity of the mason is unknown, but it has purportedly brought brief moments of levity successive generations of young French revolutionaries forced into hiding by monarchists, by the police, by Germans and collaborators alike. It would require a massive and completely unjustifiable undertaking to systematically examine the labyrinthine catacombs to prove or disprove this theory and I will say no more about it.
The basic concept of the joke is simple. Two revolutionaries find themselves sharing a prison cell. How they ended up there depends heavily on the personal leanings of the teller and frequently varies based on the audience as well; perhaps they were arrested at a street protest, or sold out by federal informants, or even stolen away in the dead of night by the so-called people’s army. Their identities are equally contextual, typically embodying the two most prevalent and adversarial strains of revolutionary thought in their particular situation. Common combinations include Trotskyist/Stalinist, Anarchist/Communist, Situationist/Orthodox, and specific to the anti-colonial context, Nationalist/Leftist, but of course these categories can become infinitely more specific and dizzyingly personal.
The prisoners initially bond over their shared predicament and their mutual hatred for the powers that be (whoever they are), but as they delve more deeply into their personal beliefs and specific tendencies, their relationship becomes more fraught. Eventually their arguments grow so serious that they come to blows, and are separated by their jailors. Before their anger can subside, the interrogator comes to each prisoner and offers them a deal; if they agree to testify against the other, they will be allowed to go free. If they refuse, they will be executed. All they need to do is explain the other prisoner’s ideology (in some modern tellings, this is done by a bug in the cell). At this point, the quality of the joke hinges on the teller’s sense of self-awareness, as they must be able to put aside their personal commitments and address their own tendency with the same contempt as their opponent’s. Both prisoners agree to testify, but they take the most uncharitable, insulting tack when laying out their counterpart’s real ideology, such that they always end by stating the other is a traitor, a collaborator, a child, bourgeois, naive, cynical, unserious, and any number of other unsavory things, and thus cannot be considered a true revolutionary. They are then sent back to their respective cells to reflect.
The ending, like the rest of the joke, is far from uniform and comes in innumerable shapes and sizes. However, more often than not, it ends like this. After returning to their cells, each prisoner realizes that by failing, completely unintentionally, to condemn the other, they have sentenced themselves to death. They may lament their fate, accept it willingly, or even take solace in the fact that despite their differences, the other might escape to carry on the struggle. Nevertheless, when the day of the execution finally arrives, they face their destiny with a steel will. But just before they are tied to the post, or the rope is slipped over their neck, or their head lodged in the guillotine, what do they see but the corpse of the other prisoner being carried away! Why did you kill him, they despair, I told you he was no revolutionary! And just before their final moments, the executioner always responds: That’s funny. He said the same thing about you.
Irony Poison 