The depiction of Richard Sharp in today's @guardian cartoon falls squarely into an antisemitic tradition of depicting Jews with outsized, grotesque features, often in conjunction with money and power. It's appalling. Here's why 🧵
First, the face. Here's how the Nazis did it. And how the Soviet Union did it. And modern-day Jew-haters. Antisemites have often imagined Jews as ugly and physically repulsive, focusing specifically on these features.
Then the squid. Yes, Sharp worked for Goldman Sachs, which was famously described in @RollingStone as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
This description stuck.
The problem is that a squid or octopus is also a common antisemitic motif, used to depict a supposed Jewish conspiracy with its tentacles wrapped around whatever parts of society the Jews supposedly control. Especially money. Are those gold coins in the box with Sharp's squid?
You might argue that outsized facial features and tentacles are common to other topics too, so it's just a cartoon thing. Except where something has a long and familiar antisemitic history, it takes on a different meaning when you apply it to Jews.
Or to put it another way: you might draw Boris Johnson as a gorilla and nobody would mind. But if you drew a black politician that way, it would be racist. Same principle applies here.
Is it possible that a cartoonist as experienced as @MartinRowson is unaware of these common antisemitic traditions (plus whoever else the Guardian saw it)? Or perhaps this just another case of assumptions about Jews, money and power that are so familiar, people don't notice them.
These assumptions have been built into our world for centuries. They are so familiar that they pass many people by (although Jews and antisemites always notice). It's the central theme of my book Everyday Hate - but the Guardian really should know better amazon.co.uk/Everyday-Hate-…
Incidentally, several of the images in this thread are taken from this excellent @antisempolicy briefing on antisemitic imagery. Perhaps Martin Rowson should read it. antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
One more thought: the physical characteristics given to Sharp in the cartoon - the nose, lips etc - are racial characteristics. Antisemitism can be racism. Just in case anyone was still unsure about that.
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