This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
The sensationalist Austrian rag, Neue Kronenzeitung, accounts for 42 per cent of the country’s daily newspaper readership. On weekends, this increases to 65 per cent. The paper is no friend of the Jewish community, however.
In the past, it has published Holocaust denial articles. Because of these and other attacks against the Jewish Community, its president, Ariel Muzicant, brought a court case against Neue Kronenzeitung in 2000.The case was withdrawn after a conversation between him and the paper’s publisher, Hans Dichand. Vienna’s Social Democrat Mayor, Michael Häupl, had intervened in the meantime, telling the publisher that anti-Semitism harmed Austria internationally. Dichand agreed that he would no longer publish crude anti-Semitic material.
On January 23, 2009 one of the paper’s editors forgot Dichand’s pledge and published the following comment on a cartoon: “This is a good joke! This very precise drawing was sent to us by our reader Peter Christian Vogl.”
I am indebted to an Austrian blogger who is not only monitoring Neue Kronenzeitung but also the blogs of “9/11 truthers.” He recalled having seen the same cartoon a few days previously on the website “Everything is Meaningless” (Alles Schall und Rauch,) a website for conspiracy theories about 9/11.
On January 20, 2009, they published a story about Barack Obama taking the oath under the title “They really believe, something will be changed.”
The picture showed President Obama wearing not the US but the Israeli flag on his lapel, with the text: “Obama giving the oath, surrounded by his accomplices who roar with laughter because one of them is taking over the role of the President. And the good people believe, with him things will improve and change…. Ha,ha,ha! Completely taking the piss out of them!”
It seems that the common denominator of the “9/11 truthers” and the Neue Kronenzeitung is the antisemitic myth of the Jews in direct control of the world, via the United States, a puppet state serving the sole interests of the Jews.
Karl, I am curious how where you would draw a line here. For example, could this “cartoon” not just be interpreted to be commenting that America under Obama will just essentially pursue the same policies as before. And that would include support for Israel, perhaps even prominently figuring among all the other policies that will continue largely unchanged (according to the cartoonist).
How is saying that the same as saying Jews control the world? Could it not just be saying that Obama will continue a policy the cartoonist finds particularly wrong-headed? And it is Obama’s lapel button of the Israel flag and Lieberman’s prominently-featured tie that imply the cartoonist’s special disagreement with this policy, although not exclusively this policy.
I think it’s could be antisemitic, but I think I would be more careful in making this claim without more to go on…
I see 3 Jews out of 12 people in this picture, and I see 2 Israeli flags. I’d say the jury is still out, as close to the line as we may feel this.
The cartoon can be only seen in the actual Austrian context.
The cartoon was copy pasted from a 9/11 truther website and the text suggest
1) That Barack Obama is in the hand of Israel.
This is an old Austrian antisemitic topic. During the election campaign of Kurt Waldheim they even found a code word for American Jews: “East Coast”, as if all the American Jews would be living there. In popular opinion here Jews were shown either as ruling America or as a group without any influence. The truth is as usual in the middle.
2) Antisemitism goes in Austria (and Germany) often together with Antiamericanism. Most Austrian Antiamericans never have been to the USA, they have no idea about America. They believe that Americans are morons without culture. Showing Obama with the badge of another country as a man who is just doing what a group of conspirers order is deeply anti-American. It applies to the antiamerican prejudices by showing the president of the USA as a puppet doing what others wish him to do. This has no basis in reality.
3) The United States do have interests as other states and the existence of Israel is in the interest of the USA. And that view is shared by a majority of Americans.
Yes I consider this cartoon as antisemitic and anti-American.
Karl,
Thanks for your cordial reply. I understand what you are saying, and I am European myself so I am familiar with the ideas many Europeans have about the USA and the way they look down their noses at how “backwards” Americans are (as if any person of color could ever get elected to the highest office in any European country, especially the ones where 15%+ of the electorate still vote for fascists or neo-Nazis, like France and Austria).
If it weren’t for its origins and the text accompanying the original, would you still consider the cartoon anti-Semitic?