Rowson calls this “the standard accessory of the just sacked” (although that begs the question why it is a Goldman Sachs box and not a BBC one, when he has just lost his job at the latter). Then there are the contents of the box that Sharp is carrying. The fact that his pen veered, however unthinkingly, towards these antisemitic motifs shows how easily, and unthinkingly, they can rise to the surface. For centuries our world has taught us that this is how to imagine wealthy, powerful Jews, especially those accused of wrongdoing. ![]() Rowson says that Sharp’s Jewishness was not in his mind, but in a way that is beside the point. There is a responsibility on newspapers and cartoonists to ensure that they do not feed this by deploying antisemitic motifs in their critiques of Jews in the public eye. But he is also Jewish, and antisemitism remains a live and at times lethal problem. Sharp is a public figure of national interest and should not be exempt from scrutiny and satire. It’s a racialised depiction of a Jew, and incidentally is another reminder, if Diane Abbott is still wondering, that antisemitism can indeed be a form of racism. ![]() All the component parts were there: the large nose, the lips, the Fagin-like sneer, and, of course, what appears to be money. You can find them in medieval woodcuts of the fictitious allegation that Jews crucified Christian children and drained their blood (the ritual murder or “blood libel” charge), in Victorian cartoons in Punch and in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.Īll of which makes it unfathomable that anyone would be so unfamiliar with this anti-Jewish visual lexicon that they would draw and publish a cartoon that depicted Sharp, or any other Jew in public life, in this way: but here we are. The outsized nose and lips, grotesque features and sinister grin have been part of antisemitic imagery for centuries, a way of portraying Jews as repulsive and sinister. Rather than drawing a yellow star on each Jewish target, Nazi-style, artists down the ages have instead given their subjects stereotypically “Jewish” features.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |