naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
If someone had asked me before I'd read these posts about what I associated with the political cartoon meme of an octopus or kraken with its tentacles outstretched around some geographic area that represents unchecked, sprawling power and influence, I might've thought about depictions of a Jewish World Order somewhere down the line, sure, but I also strongly associate it with similar depictions of World Communism/Russia, British colonialism, even oil companies and other international business monopolies.
"Octopus political cartoon" as an image search returns a wide variety of illustrations, many much older than WWII, many much more recent that have to do with more recent issues. This article [ https://neverwasmag.com/2017/08/the-octopus-in-political-cartoons/ ] catalogues a few, many of them going back to the late 1800s. A couple are related to negative assertions about Jews or Jewish conspiracies, most aren't. It's just ... been a common visual trope for when you want to portray some entity as sprawling and overreaching for over a century. I think the first one I thought of personally was the Standard Oil cartoon from apparently 1904.
I could see it if the octopus plush was white-and-blue striped and had sprawling tentacles like the political cartoons. I can definitely imagine a theoretical, unambiguously antisemitic octopus plush. It's just interesting to slide all the way from "the sprawling octopus trope has been used in antisemitic propaganda" to "the sprawling octopus trope is antisemitic" and then to "any imagery featuring an octopus may be an antisemitic dogwhistle in the right context."
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Notes -
If someone had asked me before I'd read these posts about what I associated with the political cartoon meme of an octopus or kraken with its tentacles outstretched around some geographic area that represents unchecked, sprawling power and influence, I might've thought about depictions of a Jewish World Order somewhere down the line, sure, but I also strongly associate it with similar depictions of World Communism/Russia, British colonialism, even oil companies and other international business monopolies.
"Octopus political cartoon" as an image search returns a wide variety of illustrations, many much older than WWII, many much more recent that have to do with more recent issues. This article [ https://neverwasmag.com/2017/08/the-octopus-in-political-cartoons/ ] catalogues a few, many of them going back to the late 1800s. A couple are related to negative assertions about Jews or Jewish conspiracies, most aren't. It's just ... been a common visual trope for when you want to portray some entity as sprawling and overreaching for over a century. I think the first one I thought of personally was the Standard Oil cartoon from apparently 1904.
I could see it if the octopus plush was white-and-blue striped and had sprawling tentacles like the political cartoons. I can definitely imagine a theoretical, unambiguously antisemitic octopus plush. It's just interesting to slide all the way from "the sprawling octopus trope has been used in antisemitic propaganda" to "the sprawling octopus trope is antisemitic" and then to "any imagery featuring an octopus may be an antisemitic dogwhistle in the right context."
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