A comic that educates against Jewish conspiracy theories
The Cleveland Jewish News tells of a self-published comic with the goal of educating against the old propaganda of "Jewish conspiracy theories", though there's also hints this builds on PC approaches:
While Jewish conspiracy theories aren’t funny on their own, two Jewish artists are working to find humor in their absurdity and address and debunk the central talking points of these stories in their soon-to-be-released comic book.Now I think there's plenty of potential in a comic written with the intention of educating why these conspiracy theories are a bad influence. But I was annoyed when I noticed they slipped in the name of a man who'd reprinted some old comics for the deliberate purpose of anti-war propaganda, and the citation of white supremacy is awfully redundant from a modern perspective, when one considers racism comes in many different forms. However, surprisingly enough, the authors acknowledge that:
“Some of the Most Outrageous Jewish Conspiracy Theories from the POV of a 14 Year Old White Supremacist” by Roots Metals and Cleveland artist Shari Ross is an upcoming self-published comic book that does just that, according to Debbie Lechtman, a California-based Jewish, Israeli and Latina author, content creator, educator and artist. Roots Metals is her online persona.
“For the longest time, my friends and I have always joked around (about this) because antisemitic conspiracies are so ridiculous,” Lechtman, 32, said. “I figured it would be funny if someone wrote a satirical book based on an actual white supremacist meeting. But it wasn’t until later that I determined it should be me. To be fair, I don’t have the budget for a whole graphic novel, so I said, ‘Why not a comic book?” [...]
But the comic doesn’t just provide a space to make fun of these conspiracy theories. Each theory touched upon in the narrative is also accompanied by an explainer and sources to disprove them to further educate readers, Lechtman said.
“The educational aspect of the comic book is pretty extensive,” she said. “We don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands and give people ideas, so we’re very conscious of that.”
The educational part was a big draw for Ross, they said, as a fan of other comics like “We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust” by Rafael Medoff, Neal Adams and Craig Yoe, and “Klezmer” by Joann Sfar, which both have an educational aspect to the storytelling.
“One of the main points we wanted to come across for this project is that antisemitism does not just exist on the right,” they said. “It manifests in every corner of the political spectrum, and that’s something people need to understand and be aware of. I’m hoping that this is somewhat of an eye-opener and makes people think a bit. There is so much nuance in speaking about these types of topics.”Thank goodness, this is getting somewhere in making a point that even liberals can be quite willing to engage in such propaganda. Even so, a terrible shame they're giving citation to an anti-war propagandist like Yoe, because how does one expect to fight antisemitism by lending support to people who advocate that kind of distortion? Not to mention that, if the comic in focus doesn't give any attention to Islamic antisemitism, then they're seriously undermining their whole mission. So long as such PC positions dictate how specific issues can be addressed, nothing will be solved.
Labels: Europe and Asia, history, indie publishers, islam and jihad, misogyny and racism, politics
