{"id":13480,"date":"2024-11-26T01:47:07","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T06:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=13480"},"modified":"2024-12-04T20:58:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T01:58:37","slug":"no-laughing-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2024\/11\/no-laughing-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"No Laughing Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/span>ne newspaper publisher was tried, convicted, and executed during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II. Julius Streicher, publisher of the virulently anti-Semitic Der St\u00fcrmer<\/em>, was convicted of crimes against humanity. The publisher was led to the gallows on October 16, 1945. Maintaining a defiantly hateful air, Streicher called out \u201cHeil Hitler!\u201d before denigrating the proceedings as \u201cPurimfest,\u201d referring to the Jewish holiday of Purim. After the hanging, his corpse was cremated at Dachau, the same as many victims of Nazism.<\/p>\n

Der St\u00fcrmer<\/em>\u2019s slogan \u201cThe Jews are our misfortune,\u201d was carried on every issue. Stories within lived up to that slogan, accusing Jews of a host of crimes. They were rapacious capitalists. They were subversive communists. They molested German girls. They undermined Christianity. They served Satan and his minions. They schemed to conquer the world. They drank the blood of Gentiles. No stone was left unturned in Streicher\u2019s quest to dehumanize Jews, all the better to prepare their extermination. The tribunal at Nuremberg found that<\/a> Streicher\u2019s words constituted \u201cincitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes…and constitutes a crime against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The messages of these stories were supported by the cartoons of Phillip Rupprecht, alias \u201cFips.\u201d Streicher biographer Randall Bytwerk described Rupprecht as \u201ca cartoonist of outstanding crudity\u201d who \u201cbecame identified with the St\u00fcrmer<\/em> almost as closely as Streicher.\u201d In some ways, the cartoons were worse than the articles. Even a complete illiterate could see the drawings of fat, unshaven Jews leering at young girls or Jews drinking the blood of Christians and get the idea. The cartoons routinely compared Jews to animals, especially snakes\u2014symbols of evil dating back to the story of Adam and Eve.\u00a0 Rupprecht\u2019s drawings also appeared<\/a> in the book Der Giftpilz<\/em> (the Toadstool) a piece of anti-Semitic propaganda aimed at children and occasionally used in German schools.<\/p>\n

Rupprecht\u2019s cartoons constituted, like the articles his boss ran, a clear incitement to genocide. Yet he escaped Streicher\u2019s fate in the hangman\u2019s noose. Instead, he was sentenced to the relatively mild sentence of ten years hard labor, of which he served only five. He worked as a painter and decorator after his prison term, fathered four children, and passed away at 74.<\/p>\n

Could a newspaper run cartoons that serve as incitement to genocide today? Is such a thing possible? Not only is it possible, but the printing of such propaganda has been happening for over a year. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed<\/a> 186,000 per a Lancet<\/em> study, all while Israeli politicians continue to spout genocidal rhetoric<\/a> aimed at Palestinians. Israel\u2019s conduct during the war has been enabled at every step by the United States, via weapons sales<\/a> and billions of dollars<\/a> in military aid. Nevertheless, cartoonists in English language media have continued to dehumanize and attack Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and those in the Palestine solidarity movement.<\/p>\n