Racist cover art 2016
The Journal.ie draws our attention to a Der Stürmer-level magazine cover from Poland:
A right-wing Polish magazine cover emblazoned with the headline “The Islamic rape of Europe” triggered a storm of criticism on social media, with some comments comparing it to World War II fascist propaganda.
The cover of the news weekly “w Sieci” (In the net) showed a posed photo of a blue-eyed blonde woman, wrapped in an EU flag, looking terrified as she is groped by hairy-armed men.
Hairy-armed men whose skin is a lot browner than hers.
Bad, bad stuff. Don’t do that.
Yes, of course I saw it. Here is a selection of headlines from our (Polish) press – from every side of the political spectrum:
• The British shocked by the cover of a Polish magazine.
• The British criticize the cover of “In the net”.
• The cover of “In the net” offends some British journalists.
• The cover of “In the net” shocks international media.
• The international press discusses the cover of “In the net”.
• The international career of the cover of “In the net”.
Do you notice a pattern? I was trying hard to find something essentially different, but without much success (so far). Alright, I bet you do notice, but just in case you don’t (implausible as it is), here is the moral, spelled out for you:
We do not give a rat’s ass about the cover as such. However, we are thrilled by the international reaction!
I think it’s one of the cultural differences which still exist between East and West. A cover like that? No one’s eyebrows will be raised here, no, not really.
Admittedly, some time ago there was a scandal (with a lawsuit) caused by this cover of the same magazine (the text reads: “Ewa Kopacz will create us hell on Berlin’s orders”). Ah, but you see, it depicted Ewa Kopacz – our former prime minister – as an ISIS terrorist. That’s obviously different.
Perhaps statements by the Foreign Minister of the Polish government for domestic consumption (e.g. “the Muslim community living in Europe … hates this continent and wishes to destroy it.” https://www.rt.com/news/322289-poland-refugee-army-syria/) help create an atmosphere in which a cover like this is permitted. Statements for public consumption in the U.S. are more diplomatic (http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/02/252573.htm).
John Wasson, no, I’m afraid it’s the other way round. Such statements didn’t “create an atmosphere”. If anything, they helped those politicians to win the last election. The atmosphere was already there. They are saying what our people want to hear.
Explaining why the Polish want to hear it would be loooong and tedious. Count on me to provide it in ten years or so, then I’ll have a lot of time and my own blog, read by nobody.
Good night.
Try Donald Tump on the lessons to be learned about treating Muslims from a probably apocryphal US war crime perpetrated during the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines – there were of course plenty of real war crimes perpetrated by the US in the Philippines, about which Mark Twain wrote eloquently, but this, it seems, was not one of them. But pigs’ blood on bullets and a nice massacre of Muslims! Now that’s something to be Trumpeted abroad, whether true or not! And the audience roared!
In case you haven’t seen this one, behold the less obvious version:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/05/01/article-2618288-1D80455300000578-566_634x435.jpg
This magazine cover is right over the top, but the problem it’s referring to is quite real.
When people talk about atmospherics, no mention is ever made of the gap between reporting on what is going on and actual events.
Shit happens involving recent migrants, people witness it, but the press doesn’t report on it. This reluctance to call things what they are, these limp, tepid descriptions of some very serious events, arising from fear of being labelled racist xenophobe or whatever, creates an atmosphere in which all sorts of exaggerations can then occur. Things can get blown completely out of proportion because journalistic standards and media accuracy are compromised in order to conform to certain ideological demands.
They can be no doubt that European women are paying the highest price for the current influx of mostly male migrants, a significant number of whom view females as having little value.
So accurate, rigorous reporting on what’s going on can be dicey and can risk stoking xenophobia. However, failing to do so in an effort to diminish or downplay or gloss over some very grievous incidents leads to something even worse…the magazine cover above.
And it’s so easily refutable. In Islam, if you have died in jihad, your body exists in a state of grace and needs no ritual purification. This is dogma going back to the days of Muhammad and has two practical upshots: it convinces believers to fight with that much fervor and also permits them to leave their fallen comrades in the field or in territory controlled by the enemy without a pang, since they don’t have to be buried according to prescribed Islamic rules. So pig’s blood on bullets would be meaningless to a believer in Islam. If he knew his religion well enough to know that pork is haram, he’d also know the promise that his body would be pure simply by virtue of dying in a jihad no matter what the Yanks did to it. This kind of thing only impresses idiots who know nothing about Islam.
Besides, the majority of Filipinos are Christian and have been for the last +500 years.
Maybe the mobs in Cologne and Hamburg should have worried about ‘reinforcing stereotypes?’
Of course, its a distasteful and deliberately provoking image. But having hairless, or blond, groping hands would not be an improvement.
Thank you, Nullifidian – I know that very well, but very clearly Trump & his fans don’t.
@ John I think I mentioned in a comment on another post here that I have a friend who’s an EU interpreter, and she has some horrific stories to tell about the most recent set of immigrants she and her colleagues are dealing with; she says this situation is qualitatively different from anything she’s experienced before. I don’t know what to think of it all, because my principles are at odds with what I understand are facts on the ground; I wrote her a long email concluding ‘I’m glad no one cares what I think about this, and that I don’t have to make any decisions that affect people.’
@Nullifidian I didn’t know that; thanks for posting the info.
Just to put Nullifidian’s information, particularly the suggestion that virtually all Filipinos are Xtian, into perspective, there is even now a Moro Islamist Front: (from Wikipedia) The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF; Arabic: جبهة تحرير مورو الإسلامية Jabhat Tahrīr Moro al-ʿIslāmiyyah) is a Filipino secessionist group based in Mindanao, Philippines seeking autonomy of the Moro people from the central government. The group has a presence in the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, Palawan, Basilan, and other neighbouring islands…