Many professional comedians have come to believe the fantasy of the jester who told the King uncomfortable truths. At least they recognise their condition as servants. As for telling uncomfortable truths, they resemble those journalists who, far from doing any such thing, are the mouthpieces of dominant thought — in their case, of the fashionable aesthetic among the young media-consuming public, and of its street-corner humour, which they replicate by appropriating its edgy incorrectness. And if they overstep in their imitation, they do so with the more or less explicit moralistic tagline that those behaviours they laugh at are naughty. To make themselves feel important, they hold their own debates about the limits of humour, as though such a debate had any meaning, or were of any interest to the world. The world does not care about the limits of any kind of freedom of expression, comedic or otherwise. If we are allowed to give our opinions on whatever we please, it is because our opinions are insignificant, like our jokes. They have value only economically — politically, if the currency is votes; in media terms, if the currency is audience share. The limits of humour are the limits of your audience. If it is not enough, you disappear. The other limits, the ones they think they are referring to, are quite simply the limits of the insult. Yes, there are still residues of ideological touchiness embodied in legislation as absurd as “hate crimes.” If I insult Catholics and their faith with crude words, I will be committing one of these offences. But if I say “I hate Catholics, and I dislike their faith, in which I do not believe,” I will not. It is a matter of manners and of not wounding sensibilities. If I publicly insult the King of Spain, I will be committing a crime. I will then exclaim that my freedom of expression is being curtailed — even though, in truth, my expression has amounted to nothing more than an outburst. And yet I can say the very same thing, and go much further, without committing any crime. I can say that I do not like the monarchy, that I am a republican, and that kings belong to a lineage of freeloaders whose privileges are unacceptable in a democracy, and that therefore a process must be set in motion to put an end to that institution. I do not need to exclaim that I hate them, even if I do. What is the problem? That this opinion, expressed in this way, interests no one and has no power to change anything — unless I manage to gather hordes of followers, which is impossible, and put my own comfort on the line to reach that political destination. Faced with this indifference, many feel frustrated, because they understand freedom of expression as freedom to vent, and venting requires that the world listen to you and convulse. And yet, when the celebrity-gossip hyenas speak of “uproar on social media,” nothing is being shaken at all: it is pure marketing. No one is going to pay you any attention, and so you have to draw it to the very edge of insult. But the insult is already a fall into the void: your opinion is erased, and you are reduced to the apelike contortion of an enraged chimpanzee. Not long ago, many people were outraged by the imprisonment of a rapper who made a career of hating in explicit rhymes; his role, well rehearsed, was that of the committed artist, the subversive outsider who does not appear on the mainstream channels and drifts through the rougher neighbourhoods. Up to a point, those margins are real, but the beast capable of convulsing the world no longer lives in them. The beast grazes tame. To rouse it, poetic rhymes and rallies are no longer enough: every barrier must be crossed — but on the other side, as I have said, lies the void of the pure outburst, of hatred without quarter and without hope.