Hypersonic Quips
Pay close attention to the statements of the resistance, the rhetoric of its leaders, and the discourse of its popular cradle, and one will notice piercing wit, defiant taunts, satirical jibes, and hypersonic quips. Fragmented japes are picked up and relaunched ad infinitum by netizens. Mocking remarks penetrate the Western narrative dome like verbal Fattah missiles. What makes humour a weapon in the throat that refuses the boot placed upon it?
For Fanon, "The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him.”[1] Once the native discovers his own voice and develops the sovereign means to use it, he projects this mockery to his people. “Their ears hear the true voice of the country, […] they finally come to understand that the changeover will not be a reform.”[2] The native can now deal his own psychological blows, through airwaves and optical cables, at his enemy who fears the defiance in his laughter. Indeed, Sayyed Nasrallah’s charismatic oratory was not merely meant for Lebanese ears.
The bloody tragedy visited upon the Arab-Iranian region by the Great and Little Satans, an eloquent epithet coined by Sayyed Ali Khamenei, has produced, dialectically, no finer commander of men and words than Hezbollah’s martyred leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. In January 2020, during a speech commemorating the martyrdom of Hajj Qasem Soleimani, Nasrallah made a threat veiled in black humour.
After Trump had ordered the drone strike that assassinated the top Iranian general near Baghdad, Iran responded with missile strikes on US airbases in Iraq. In the speech, Nasrallah refers to the Iranian actions as a “slap” on Washington, prophetically declaring “the US bases, the US warships, every American solider and officer in our region, our countries, and on our lands,”[3] will pay the price of just retribution. “When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to flow—when they come vertically and leave horizontally”—here, the resistance leader makes the now‑infamous T-shaped hand gesture—and continues, “arriving in the United States, Trump and his administration will understand that they have lost the region and will lose the elections too.”[4]
The quip and accompanying hand gesture have become iconic. So too was his endearing lisp, an aural signature lost in transcripts and to non-Arab listeners. A symbol of defiance and a sharp analysis of regional dynamics, Nasrallah’s taunt has been used to remind the occupiers of their inevitable fate repeatedly since. The now-martyred Iranian politician, military officer, and philosopher, Ali Larijani, recast the barb at the US in March of this year by posting an image of Nasrallah making the hand gesture on X in response to a White House post showing army caskets being unloaded on a runway.[5]
Rhetorical shields must be paired with material swords , piercing wit with piercing weapons. Without the material basis that actualizes defiance, the desired psychological effect is dulled, though not moot. In December of 2023, Abu Obadia's straight-faced jibe—as can only be assumed by the tone of his voice—that "The most extraordinary thing we always discover after every battle: the enemy's army is perhaps the only army in the world that wears diapers—more specifically Pampers" was no less stinging during the carnage inflicted on Gazans or after his own martyrdom.[6] Online supporters used generative AI to amplify the narrative of the cowardly Jewish troops, endlessly depicting them in diapers in a collective information war effort. It has become common anti-Zionist parlance to refer to the Zionist army, formally the IDF, as the "Israeli Diaper Force" following the Hamas spokesman's use of the term.
Satire used to belittle the Empire, however, is only dignified and effective when it speaks for the oppressed in clear and tangible ways. When it muddles the fight against oppression, whimsy becomes complicity. When U.S. liberals stage performative protests against fascist repression, dancing in costumes at the gates of ICE concentration camps behind smiling police cordons, ridicule is stripped of its sting, transformed into entertainment and empty spectacle.[7]
Under the US-led imperialist system, to exist is to resist. To jest is to wrest its narrative rope from its lying jaws, splitting and fraying its threads until they can no longer bear the weight of truth. That truth is what the native sees with his own eyes and what the resistance confirms with its Telegram channels. The people see green helicopters landing in Haifa; an invader has left horizontally. A sheikh visits the White House; is it named so after the milk it squeezes from him?
Ansarallah’s Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has repeatedly used a 'cash cow' metaphor to mock the Saudi crown prince’s vassalage. In 2018, amid the devastating Saudi-led and US-backed war on Yemen, he referred to Mohammed bin Salman as a "milk cow,"[8] deriding his exploitation at the literal hands of Trump. Handing over billions for 'security agreements,' the cash cow became "sore in her udder," a figurative extension of the metaphor implying Salman was feeling the pain of the exorbitant protection money Trump was milking from him. Al-Houthi’s lampooning has been vindicated as the failed Saudi policies were laid bare for the world to see following the Ramadan War.
The Yemeni leader repeated his ridiculing in several of his weekly televised addresses in more recent years. In November 2024, in the context of the escalating genocide on Gaza and shortly before Ansarallah seized the Galaxy Leader cargo ship—an act that announced their control over the Bab al-Mandab strait—al-Houthi scorned the Gulf states’ foreign policy. He teased, "What Trump has achieved is milking some Gulf monarchies for hundreds of billions of dollars, which drained their economies."[9] In 2025, after MBS promised to increase "investments" (read: tribute) to one trillion dollars, al-Houthi again delivered his incisive analysis of Arab regimes’ genuflection, again calling them "cash cows" under the neocolonial arrangement in remarks regarding Trump’s Gaza displacement plan.[10] There is not enough aloe vera on the entire Arabian Peninsula to heal the burns inflicted by such taunts.
In front of an audience that may already be suspicious of one’s intentions, why make jokes at all? Reflecting on this question in his book Perfect Victims, Mohammed El‑Kurd writes, “Because, most importantly, it is funny. It feels good to laugh, to ridicule the ridiculous.”[11] He explains humor lets the audience in on the joke. It makes them sympathize with you, removing them from a position of spectatorship and bringing them into conversation because they are now laughing with you. “Laughter,” argues El‑Kurd, “has historically played a role in influencing people’s attitudes and interpretations toward social and political issues. If we move beyond the reductive idea that the humor of the oppressed is merely a ‘defense mechanism,’ we can reveal its strategic advantage.”[12] Humor thus—like any effective tool of the resistance—humanizes the native, breaks down walls and disarms the enemy of their discursive weapons.
In the aftermath of savage Zionist airstrikes in the southern Lebanese town of Sidon in October 2024, which martyred nine and wounded thirty, a survivor of the bombing is interviewed live by an Al Mayadeen reporter. Referring to the pernicious “Israeli” claim that their strikes target the facilities of the resistance such as missile storage and assembly sites, the reporter asks, “Seeing as you were the last one out of the building, can you tell us what is in this building?” The staunch Lebanese man with a wry smile unflinchingly replies, “There are rockets.” Unable to comprehend the seeming admission, the correspondent remains silent. The resident continues, his smile growing and now facing the camera directly : “Film it! Here I am. I am the rocket.” He then immediately repudiates the premise of the initial question with a straight face, “What is there? There are civilians.”[13]
In a later interview with the broadcaster Al Jadeed, the Sidon resident emphasizes his joke was a dignifying act of refusal, saying, “A claim like this from the enemy always needs an answer like this. That kind of answer means I won't go out and show the enemy that I'm defeated and weak, that you hit and hurt me, so naturally I'll answer him mockingly, at the very least.”[14] Not only does this reveal the popular cradle’s grasp of psychological warfare, but it also demonstrates an understanding of irreverence as an emancipatory act of the mind, a stubborn rejection of mental subjugation while physically under siege.
The artwork also features a logo of the Lebanese Rocket Society, Lebanon’s famed scientific endeavor during the 1960s at the height of the Cold War space race. This apt historical reference adds a double meaning to the defiant bombing survivor referring to himself as a rocket. Referring to oneself as “ṣārūḵ,” the Arabic word for rocket or missile, can also be interpreted as a tongue-in-cheek boast of one’s own attractiveness in colloquial Levantine Arabic.
The remarks these artworks depict are translated from Arabic for an audience who likely never heard them or saw the punctuating gestures from the defiant figures. Such is their impact on Arab audiences that they are endlessly republished online, scrubbed, and republished nonetheless.[15] Hypersonic quips, too nimble for the censor, enter the popular consciousness to galvanize sumud and perforate the narrative veneer of the Empire.
Sami Akkach is an architect, builder, and artist. His practice is multi-disciplined, spanning vernacular construction techniques to anti-imperialist print-making.
Notes
[1] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 43.
[2] Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 126.
[3] “Hizbullah Sec.-Gen. Hassan Nasrallah: Everyone in the Region Should Seek Retribution; Trump will Lose the Elections when U.S. Troops Arrive in Coffins; Soleimani's Shoe is Worth Trump's Head," video of Al-Manar TV (Lebanon) address, posted by MEMRI TV, January 6, 2020, https://www.memri.org/tv/Hizbullah-sec-gen-nasrallah-everyone-region-seek-retribution-trump-lose-elections-us-troops-arrive-coffins-soleimani-shoe-worth-trump-head .
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ali Larijani (@alilarijani_ir), “The White House @WhiteHouse ... President Trump, the First Lady, @VP Vance, and the Second Lady attend the dignified transfer of six fallen American heroes...” X, March 8, 2026, https://x.com/alilarijani_ir/status/2030418722729394646 .
[6] Hindustan Times, “Hamas' Abu Obaida Taunts 'Israeli Diaper Army'; Netizens Join In As Gaza War Rages On | Viral,” YouTube video, 2:35, December 11, 2023, accessed May 26, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhT7eEl_rqw .
[7] New York Post, “Officers Enjoy Dance Party Protest Outside Portland ICE Facility,” YouTube video, 2:06, October 9, 2025, accessed May 26, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju6GJLB_nC8 .
[8] همام شعلان || H. Shaalan (@osSWSso), "أكثر مقطع متداول على منصة إكس تزامنًا مع زيارة ترامب للسعودية: صدقت يا سيد عبد الملك... فعلاً البقرة الحلوب! 😂❤️," X, May 14, 2025, accessed May 15, 2025, https://x.com/osSWSso/status/1922388292013543699.
[9] “Excerpts Leader's Speech on Latest Developments," Yemen News Agency (SABA), November 7, 2024, https://saba.ye/en/news3393517.htm .
[10] Mojtaba Darabi and Seyed Mohammad Kazemi, “Ansarullah Leader Warns Against U.S.-Israeli Plots to Dominate Region,” Iran Press, September 25, 2025, accessed May 27, 2026, https://iranpress.com/content/310572/ansarullah-leader-warns-against-us-israeli-plots-dominate-region .
[11] Mohammed El-Kurd, Perfect Victims (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2023), 149.
[12] El-Kurd, Perfect Victims, 144.
[13] katia (@katia_k9), "نظرات مراسل الميادين😂," X (formerly Twitter), October 28, 2024, video, https://x.com/katia_k9/status/1850900966553317751 .
[14] Al Jadeed, “"انا الصـ ـاروخ" عبارة أشعـ ـلت مواقع التواصل الإجتماعي .. وصاحبها يروي للجديد قصتها,” YouTube video, 9:10, November 2, 2024, accessed May 26, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHDT0R1vq2I&t=67s .
[15] In researching this text, gathering imagery for the artwork, and attempting to trace back the original videos of the speeches and interviews I’d seen, it became clear that much subversive media was being scrubbed from the internet. The links to videos I’ve described, repeatedly led to removed content. I managed to find republished material only through Telegram channels, Iranian and Yemeni sites, or Yandex, the “Russian Google”, demonstrating the need for sovereign digital infrastructure.