structural:expansion
20th-century satire

Karl Kraus is considered the first major European satirist since Jonathan Swift. In 20th-century literature, satire was used by English authors such as Aldous Huxley (1930s) and George Orwell (1940s), which under the inspiration of Zamyatin 's Russian 1921 novel We, made serious and even frightening commentaries on the dangers of the sweeping social changes taking place throughout Europe. Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote 'Satire attains its greatest significance when a newly evolving class creates an ideology considerably more advanced than that of the ruling class, but has not yet developed to the point where it can conquer it. Herein lies its truly great ability to triumph, its scorn for its adversary and its hidden fear of it. Herein lies its venom, its amazing energy of hate, and quite frequently, its grief, like a black frame around glittering images. Herein lie its contradictions, and its power.' Many social critics of this same time in the United States, such as Dorothy Parker and H. L. Mencken, used satire as their main weapon, and Mencken in particular is noted for having said that "one horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms " in the persuasion of the public to accept a criticism. Novelist Sinclair Lewis was known for his satirical stories such as Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Elmer Gantry (1927; dedicated by Lewis to H. L. Mencken), and It Can't Happen Here (1935), and his books often explored and satirized contemporary American values. The film The Great Dictator (1940) by Charlie Chaplin is itself a parody of Adolf Hitler; Chaplin later declared that he would have not made the film if he had known about the concentration camps.

Modern Soviet satire was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. This form of satire is recognized by its level of sophistication and intelligence used, along with its own level of parody. Since there is no longer the need of survival or revolution to write about, modern Soviet satire focused on the quality of life.

In the United States 1950s, satire was introduced into American stand-up comedy most prominently by Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl. As they challenged the taboos and conventional wisdom of the time, were ostracized by the mass media establishment as sick comedians. In the same period, Paul Krassner 's magazine The Realist began publication, to become immensely popular during the 1960s and early 1970s among people in the counterculture; it had articles and cartoons that were savage, biting satires of politicians such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and the War on Drugs. This baton was also carried by the original National Lampoon magazine, edited by Doug Kenney and Henry Beard and featuring blistering satire written by Michael O'Donoghue, P.J. O'Rourke, and Tony Hendra, among others. Prominent satiric stand-up comedian George Carlin acknowledged the influence The Realist had in his 1970s conversion to a satiric comedian.

A more humorous brand of satire enjoyed a renaissance in the UK in the early 1960s with the satire boom, led by comedians including Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, whose stage show Beyond the Fringe was a hit not only in Britain, but also in the United States. Other significant influences in 1960s British satire include David Frost, Eleanor Bron and the television program That Was The Week That Was.

Joseph Heller 's most famous work, Catch-22 (1961), satirizes bureaucracy and the military, and is frequently cited as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. Departing from traditional Hollywood farce and screwball, director and comedian Jerry Lewis used satire in his self-directed films The Bellboy (1960), The Errand Boy (1961) and The Patsy (1964) to comment on celebrity and the star-making machinery of Hollywood. The film Dr. Strangelove (1964) starring Peter Sellers was a popular satire on the Cold War. Sellers and the British satire boom had a direct influence on the comedy troupe Monty Python. Empire magazine called Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) "an unrivalled satire on religion".