There’s a new punchline in Riyadh this week, and it isn’t coming from the mouths of Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, or Pete Davidson. It’s the sound of cash registers ringing, echoing louder than any laugh track, in a hall where more than fifty Western comics are performing for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under contracts that stipulate what can and cannot be funny.
Yes, contracts. Ironclad agreements barring jokes about the royal family, Islam, or the regime. In other words, the Saudi Comedy Festival (October 1 through October 9) has taken the most universal weapon of satire—speaking truth to power—and replaced it with a nondisclosure agreement. In Riyadh, you can riff on airlines, relationships, and the quirks of American politics, but if you even glance in the direction of the man who had Jamal Khashoggi killed in 2018, your set ends faster than Louis C.K.’s last apology tour.
And this is the moment where the irony hits with the subtlety of a camel train crashing into a Tesla: the very same comedians who’ve built their brands railing against “cancel culture” have signed up for the most literal cancellation clause on Earth. These men (and a sprinkling of women) have spent years complaining about woke college kids and Twitter mobs “silencing” them in Brooklyn comedy clubs—only to gleefully perform in a venue where actual silence is state-enforced, and the penalty isn’t a bad Yelp review but decapitation.
The Official Joke-Free Zones
The Washington Post Editorial Board laid it out on October 7: the festival is pure image-laundering for MBS, whose government executed at least 241 people this year by August 5. While the seventh anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder passed on October 2, Riyadh’s stages lit up with Western comedians hired to deliver punchlines that bend carefully around the one subject that matters.
The irony is that Dave Chappelle, the man who’s built an entire late-career persona on fighting for “the right to say whatever I want,” was quoted saying: “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.” Easier to talk, yes—so long as you’re not talking about the Crown Prince, the surveillance state, imprisoned women’s-rights activists, or the bones of a journalist dissolved in acid. In Riyadh, free speech means you can complain about airline food, but not the fact that your host government locks dissidents in solitary for tweets.
Comics love to say “nothing is sacred.” In Saudi Arabia, everything is sacred except the things that matter. And our brave warriors against cancel culture are fine with that, as long as the check clears.
The Sportswashing and Laughwashing Olympics
This festival doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s part of MBS’s Vision 2030 strategy, which involves throwing oceans of money at Western celebrities and institutions until they forget they’re helping rebrand a petro-dictatorship as a tourist destination. We’ve already had LIV Golf, Formula 1 grand prix, esports tournaments, and even a successful bid to host the 2034 World Cup. Now comedy joins the lineup, because nothing says “open society” like importing Kevin Hart to joke about his kids while journalists rot in prison.
It’s “artwashing,” it’s “laughwashing,” it’s the laundering of reputation through spectacle. The kingdom wants the world to see stages and fireworks, not execution statistics. They want headlines about Pete Davidson’s self-deprecating charm, not Amnesty International’s documentation of mass beheadings. And they got exactly what they wanted: fifty comedians who once branded themselves as provocateurs now standing as unpaid (well, actually, very paid) interns in a repressive regime’s PR department.
Cancel Culture, But Make It Dictatorial
The hypocrisy here is so rich it should be taxed at a higher bracket. These are the very comics who’ve spent years lecturing us about free expression, mocking college campuses for disinviting them, railing against online mobs for daring to critique their jokes. To them, “cancel culture” is a First Amendment crisis.
But in Riyadh, they’re happy to obey the ultimate cancel culture: a literal list of forbidden topics enforced by the state. When Chappelle grins and says it’s easier to talk here, what he really means is that in Saudi Arabia, he won’t be called transphobic on Twitter. Instead, he’ll just be contractually barred from mentioning that the host government dismembers critics with bone saws. And that’s apparently fine with him.
These comedians, the ones who sneer at “snowflakes” for being too sensitive, are now following rules written by an authoritarian monarchy. They complain about hecklers in Portland, but they’ll gladly submit their set lists for pre-approval in Riyadh.
The Ghost of Jamal Khashoggi
It is impossible to ignore the timing. The festival overlapped directly with the anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder on October 2, 2018. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that MBS ordered the killing. For the rest of us, that date is a reminder of just how brutal this regime is, how casually it snuffed out a journalist who dared to criticize. For the comedians on stage, October 2 was just another night to collect applause in a gilded theater paid for with oil money.
Imagine traveling halfway across the globe to crack jokes in a country that literally murdered a man for writing op-eds—and then praising how “free” it feels. That’s not comedy. That’s complicity with a punchline.
Laughter on Cue, Silence Off Stage
The Washington Post notes that while Saudi audiences were given glitzy performances, the country continues to imprison women’s-rights activists, dissidents, and journalists. The festival was built on a deal: comedians supply laughter, Saudi Arabia supplies silence about its repression.
And this is the essence of authoritarian “free speech”: you can say anything you want, so long as it’s irrelevant. You can laugh about relationships, about cultural quirks, about the absurdities of American politics—but you cannot question the power structures that determine life and death in your host nation. It’s the illusion of freedom, staged for export.
The Biden Fist Bump, Part II
Of course, the larger geopolitical context matters. The U.S. continues to rely on Saudi Arabia for oil and diplomacy. President Biden himself fist-bumped MBS in 2022, after vowing to treat the Crown Prince as a pariah. That moment was a diplomatic cave-in; the Comedy Festival is a cultural one. In both cases, the message is the same: principles are negotiable when the price is right.
This isn’t to say that Saudi Arabia is the only regime playing this game. But the optics of a country with one of the highest execution rates in the world importing comedians to prove its openness are grotesque. The punchline isn’t liberation. It’s Western entertainers performing self-censorship while cashing oversized checks.
The Price of Looking Away
The Washington Post editorial ends bluntly: celebrity laughter cannot launder state violence. You can’t laugh away repression, you can’t giggle past the graveyard. Every joke told under contract in Riyadh is a reminder that principles were traded for paychecks.
And it’s worth emphasizing: by August 5, Saudi Arabia had already executed at least 241 people this year. That’s not a statistic—it’s a stadium’s worth of lives extinguished. Against that backdrop, the sight of Western comedians praising “free speech” in Riyadh isn’t just tone-deaf. It’s obscene.
The Final Act: Hypocrisy as Performance
So here’s the real comedy:
- The same comics who rail against being “canceled” in the U.S. are performing under stricter speech codes than any college campus could dream of.
- The same performers who claim satire must “speak truth to power” are cashing checks to avoid speaking it at all.
- The same men who mocked America’s “woke scolds” are following rules drafted by a monarchy where free speech is punishable by death.
If there’s a laugh to be had here, it’s a bitter one. The Riyadh Comedy Festival is a stage play in which Western comedians prove, once again, that everyone has a price—and that authoritarian regimes are more than willing to pay it.
Curtain Drop: The Joke’s On Us
The Washington Post is right: doing business with Saudi Arabia doesn’t mean sanitizing its repression. Americans who perform in Riyadh aren’t just entertainers. They are accomplices in the project of making tyranny look palatable.
Comedy is supposed to challenge, to provoke, to reveal the absurdity of power. In Riyadh, comedy is a muzzle wrapped in a paycheck. The audience laughs, the regime smiles, and somewhere outside the theater, a dissident counts the days of his imprisonment.
The comics will fly home, congratulate themselves on “opening minds,” and deposit their checks. Saudi Arabia will have its headlines: look how free we are, we even host comedians! And the rest of us will be left with the bitter aftertaste of irony.
Because the punchline isn’t liberation. The punchline is the price of looking away. And the joke, as always, is on us.
Final Scene: Hypocrisy in Lights
Dave Chappelle stands on stage, marveling at how easy it is to talk in Riyadh. Kevin Hart tells a joke about parenting. Bill Burr yells about cancel culture. Pete Davidson makes fun of himself.
The audience roars. The Crown Prince smiles. The executions continue.
Welcome to the comedy festival where the joke is freedom—and freedom isn’t allowed in the script.
Rotating Closing Section Title:
Laugh Track Over the Silence
The Riyadh Comedy Festival proves once again that “cancel culture” isn’t college kids booing you off stage. It’s a government telling you what you can say, under penalty of death. And the very people who built careers screaming about their right to offend have gladly complied. The spotlight is bright, the checks are fat, the audiences are cheering. But the silence off stage is louder than any laugh.