naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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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.
Not sarcasm, but definitely not a symbol I'd heard of before.
Perhaps less predictably, however, others focused on the octopus, interpreting it to be a kraken, a mythical, multi-tentacled sea beast that was occasionally used in Nazi iconography.
“What does the Kraken next to you on the couch mean @GretaThunberg?,” one account with more than 1,000 retweets wrote. “The Kraken was, and is, a well-known sign of the Nazis for the anti-semitic term international finance judaism.” The post included an image from a 1938 Nazi propaganda cartoon showing a person as an octopus whose tentacles are encircling the globe, with a Star of David over their head. (The image appears to be depicting Winston Churchill, who was not Jewish — but to be fair, the Mogen David over the octopus’s head doesn’t indicate the artist had warm and generous feelings toward Jews.)
In a follow-up tweet, Thunberg, who is autistic, clarified that the plush octopus on her shoulder was not a reference to a (frankly, somewhat historically obscure) anti-Semitic canard, but to a common toy used by neurodivergent people to express their feelings. “It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of,” she wrote. “The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings. We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable. That is why I deleted the last post.”
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 -
Not sarcasm, but definitely not a symbol I'd heard of before.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greta-thunberg-octopus-palestine-israel-gaza-1234859322/
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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