Bassem Youssef: Why we should laugh at leaders

Bassem Youssef has been called “the Jon Stewart of the Middle East”. On the seventh anniversary of Egypt’s Arab Spring he talks to The Economist’s award-winning cartoonist, KAL, about political satire and what it means for democracy.
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Dr Bassem Yousef is a television comedian. He used satirical comedy to hold the authorities to account during the Egyptian revolution. Dr Bassem Yousef was a symbol of the promise of the Arab spring and of its ultimate failure. When demonstrations became in 2011, Dr Yousef quit his job as a heart surgeon to start a comedy show on TH-cam.
Bassem Youssef's wit and satire poked fun at the hypocrisy of the state run media which tried to discredit the protests. And it quickly became a smash hit. Bassem Youssef was one man standing against the regime with no weapons but his jokes and it soon made him an enemy of the state.
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