I recently attended an exhibition on 100 years of political cartoons. Initially, I was not enthusiastic about wasting my Sunday afternoon at an almost certain moral relativist celebration given its theme: ‘When we are for you, you call it satire; when we are against you, it is slander’. But I was thankfully surprised. Rather than push the Leftist line that one man’s intellectual terrorist was another man’s champion of free speech, the exhibit powerfully demonstrated how political cartoons have been used to promote all sorts of agendas from racism to fashion to human rights.
As much as cartoonists may claim to be the messengers of objective truth, they are merely imaginative spin doctors for some or other client. And last week after seeing Zapiro’s despicable cartoon of the Pope, it dawned on me that he has become (consciously or unconsciously) radical Islam’s leading PR guru in South Africa. It is not that he is only virulently anti-Zionist or even anti-Semitic, he actually bats for the counter-Judeo-Christian team.
The right to freedom of speech is the cornerstone of a democratic society. In a free society nothing or no-one (including religion) should be above criticism. But the tenor of criticism is also important. Rights come with responsibilities. I despise Zapiro because he just doesn't get this. He is an intellectual bully who feels he can draw what he likes, no matter how hurtful.
His latest anti-Catholic cartoon clearly exposes this. Portraying Jesus as a hippie and the Pope as a goat is not witty. In fact it actually makes no political point. It is just pure anti-Christian hate. Christian readers of the M & G should not let him get away with it. Turning the other cheek will only embolden him further.
But “Zapiro ridicules everyone” defends his followers. As if being malicious to everyone somehow makes you a better person then just being malicious to certain groups of people. But even this warped justification of Zapiro does not stand up to the evidence. Zapiro has penned some of the most blasphemous caricatures of Moses, Jesus, and the Pope but never Mohammed. Even when the Danish cartoon furore was raging Zapiro refrained from mocking Muslim religious symbols.
As much as Zapiro’s friends on the Left would have us believe that he is the suffering servant of Truth, reality proves otherwise. His refusal to criticise anything Islamic would rather seem to indicate that his ideological masters are the Ayatollahs of Iran.
anti-Jewish |
anti-Christian |
anti-Muslim? |
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Previously at IAS: Open letter to Zapiro by Jack Bloom
IAS Search: Zapiro
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