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The Octopus Now Enfolds Me/ I Know You Too Well*
The
NRA’s already having a pretty bad week,
so how about everyone
pile on and accuse it of anti-Semitism?
After Diane Cardwell of The Times wrote about a National Rifle Association magazine’s broadside aimed at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his gun proposals, a reader raised an issue about the image on the cover (at right), showing the Jewish mayor as an octopus.According to the sites, the image has been used in anti-Semitic propaganda, from the Nazis to the modern Arab world.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has an overview of anti-Jewish motifs and symbols, including a 2002 cartoon from Russia that “shows a Star of David with America throwing coins on it. The star then mutates into an octopus with rockets and planes in its tentacles.”
Ben Smith gets into the ring with the obviously-befuddled NRA spokeswoman.
“Any use of it as any sort of anti-Semitic symbol is inadvertent and unintentional.” She can’t literally mean that any use of it as anti-Semitic was unintentional (the history is pretty intentional); and she probably didn’t mean to concede that the NRA’s use of it was anti-Semitic. But the quote seems to do both.
And according to one source she has cancer and is quitting the NRA. Kidding!
This is all deeply stupid. The Jew/Israel-as-octopus image is used to smear the chosen people as the forces behind a huge conspiracy. Bloomberg isn’t being conspiratorial - he’s openly building a coalition of city mayors to tighten their gun laws. It’s perfectly normal (and subtly hentai) to think “tentacles!” as a way to portray that on a magazine cover.
*I almost hope that no one gets this reference.
|4.20.07 @ 5:20PM|#
Wait, so portraying Bloomberg as an octopus is somehow
antisemitic because the octopus motif has been used by anti-semites
in the past?
Is that what the criticism is?
|4.20.07 @ 5:23PM|#
Is it really that hard to believe that a political article or image in America is more influenced by one of the most famous political novels in American history than by some five year old Russian cartoon?
|4.20.07 @ 5:25PM|#
Wait, so you're telling me HP Lovecraft was anti-Semitic? Next thing you'll be telling me that the cat's name in The Rats in the Walls was intended as a racist slur.
|4.20.07 @ 5:27PM|#
Note to Jews (and others): if you don't want to be drawn as an octopus, don't act like one!
The Wine Commonsewer|4.20.07 @ 5:29PM|#
deeply stupid Aye.
I had no idea Bloomberg was Jewish so the Octo-Jew slur was
completely wasted on me.
Afterall, there are a lot of ----bergs that aren't Jewish,
including Icebergs.
|4.20.07 @ 5:34PM|#
I've also got to say that the Wonkette mis characterization of the attendees of the NRA Convention is woefully bigoted.
barneca|4.20.07 @ 5:36PM|#
tell the truth, sage; you didn't know that, you just googled it
(like i did).
artist: van der graaf generator
album: the aerosol grey machine, 1969
song: octopus
-cab
|4.20.07 @ 5:42PM|#
Van Der Graaf Generator?
Way cool. How is it I never heard of em? More importantly, how is
it Weigle has? At least he has the decency to be embarrassed.
|4.20.07 @ 5:42PM|#
Does no one see the beauty in this? Is this how good we have it
in America that we have to go looking around with a magnifying
glass to find things to be upset about/offended by? Not even a
magnifying glass, we have to now use interpretation of imagery to
find something.
Next, someone will decide that they see anti-feminism in Jackson
Pollack paintings.
|4.20.07 @ 5:44PM|#
I'm a Detroit Red Wings fan, so I immediately thought Bloomberg was in the race for the Stanley Cup. Go figure.
|4.20.07 @ 5:46PM|#
Todd, I simply take it as the left once again grasping at any straw they can in order to irrationally lash out at the NRA and all the millions of members who didn't murder anyone this week.
barneca|4.20.07 @ 5:48PM|#
amazon.com actually has this album, but it will cost you $23 to
find out what the song sounds like; amazon doesn't have samples for
this album. if the music is anything like the lyrics, that's
probably just as well...
-cab
|4.20.07 @ 5:57PM|#
The dead things will choke just like they did last year, and the year before that and the year before that.
|4.20.07 @ 6:00PM|#
amazon.com actually has this album, but it will cost you $23
to find out what the song sounds like; amazon doesn't have samples
for this album. if the music is anything like the lyrics, that's
probably just as well...
Here's a
review.
|4.20.07 @ 6:03PM|#
I hate to admit this, but I do get the hentai
reference.
(And no, I don't have a hard drive full of hentai on my
computer...)
|4.20.07 @ 6:22PM|#
"Any use of it as any sort of anti-Semitic symbol is inadvertent and unintentional."
In other words, "Geeze, we didn't mean it that way - if it's been
used an anti-semitic image, we didn't mean to reference that!" to
anyone but a hostile pedant.
It's a rather different thing from editorial cartoons that recreate
Nazi posters with unsettling closeness.
|4.20.07 @ 6:24PM|#
mediageek,
I assume you mean the Wonkette commenters, eh? I agree that so far,
not a single one of them has posted a damn thing intelligent on the
subject.
Laudanum Milkshake|4.20.07 @ 6:32PM|#
Well, I _DO_ have a HD full of hentai, and I am also a member of the NRA! I am incredibly offended by this heartless portrayal of an overfiend as a heartless gun grabber!
Wild Pegasus|4.20.07 @ 6:37PM|#
Octopus isn't kosher. If it comes from the sea, it better have
scales and fins.
- Josh
|4.20.07 @ 6:44PM|#
So I looked up "hentai" on Wikipedia. Sounds pretty tame. I
mean, it's no bukkake.*
*New word of the day
|4.20.07 @ 7:08PM|#
Well, I _DO_ have a HD full of hentai, and I am also a
member of the NRA! I am incredibly offended by this heartless
portrayal of an overfiend as a heartless gun grabber!
WTF?!?
I don't know about heartless but I have as yet seen a tentical rape
porn in which some guy does not pull out a gun and get it taken
away by a tentacled menace. Hell even the ones set in feudal japan
guys are pulling out guns!!! Its like WTH its feudal japan they
didn't have guns?? oh...tentacle rape porn...ok that makes sense
now.
|4.20.07 @ 7:16PM|#
(And no, I don't have a hard drive full of hentai on my
computer...)
You keep it on a DVD-R, then?
|4.20.07 @ 8:24PM|#
The Anti-Defamation League doesn't even mention this incident on its Web site (http://www.adl.org/). Either they haven't caught up to it yet, or they've examined it and found it to be a non-starter. And if the ADL, which sees anti-Jewish bigots under every bed, can't get riled up over the Octopus, why should anyone else?
|4.20.07 @ 8:32PM|#
In *hentai,* the octopus isn't a Jewish symbol, because the tentacles are clearly meant to represent gentiles.
edna|4.20.07 @ 8:41PM|#
If it comes from the sea, it better have scales and
fins.
and it cannot be a bottom dweller nor a carnivore.
jeez, you'd think my people would be too busy with their world
domination to have time to worry about nra magazine covers.
|4.20.07 @ 8:43PM|#
In the EU, the NRA would be in jail...
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119778.html#comments
CB
|4.20.07 @ 8:55PM|#
The thing is the NRA does see Bloomberg's moves as
conspiratorial because they believe each small gun move is a chess
move towards the complete elimination of gun ownership. I worked as
a consultant on an NRA project and saw this kind of thinking very
much.
The people who work on things like the magazine are mostly typical
ad agency/publishing types not anyone trying to send nazi
messages.
And one of the things they wanted was a way to block a couple of
cranks who were IMing their online radio show with nonstop "crazy
jews-taking-over-the-world theories". No sign they saw them as
allies.
|4.20.07 @ 10:24PM|#
Off topic, but after looking up hentai I find it completely understandable why Japan has such a low birthrate. I wouldn't have sex with men who think about cephalopod porn either.
|4.20.07 @ 11:33PM|#
Much as I love a good bash-of-the-NRA, this could only have been dreamed up by someone who has way too much time on his hands and is abolutely clewless about American literature.
|4.21.07 @ 7:41AM|#
Bloomberg is Jewish?
No, really, I had no idea.
So was Frank Norris an anti-semite, too?
LarryA|4.21.07 @ 10:30AM|#
So if out of 100 things the octopus has portrayed in political
cartoons, one is Jewish, the octopus in cartoons is
anti-Semitic?
Three quick finds:
Christmas as an octopus
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/26511/
Russia as an octopus
http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/soldier/bp.asia.html
Standard Oil as an octopus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States
(Scroll about halfway down.)
In this case? You have Mayor Bloomberg sending
private investigators into other states, conducting unauthorized
sting operations that jeopardize ongoing Federal investigations,
and suing gun shops to force them to accept oversight by a Chicago
"Special Master," to such an extent that Virginia is now passing a
law to prohibit such incursions.
Sounds like an octopus to me.
And, by the way, several mayors have already withdrawn from the
coalition after finding out it's simply another anti-gun front.
|4.22.07 @ 11:50AM|#
Dave,
You can explain how the use of a symbol that a lot of people
recognize as anti-semitic was done ignorantly, without anti-semitic
intent. And that's fine, as far as it goes.
But it certainly doesn't speak well of the NRA that they fell into
this ditch. A more wordly organization wouldn't have made such a
mistake.
The NRA made a major strategic error when they chose to sign on as
a member in good standing of the right-wing culture war in the
1990s, instead of working to position themselves as above partisan
concerns and working to straddle the red-blue divide. If they were
a different sort of organization, they would have had a different
sort of staff, and someone in the office would have noticed that
portraying Mayor Bloomberg as a octopus carried certain undesired
connotations.
Holly Maddux|4.22.07 @ 1:36PM|#
joe, as a jew of long standing (and sometimes bowing), i'm
having a hard time working up a sense of outrage here. if i were in
that staff room, it wouldn't have occurred to me.
thanks for looking out for us, though! when our plans for world
domination are complete, you'll be a shabbos goy of highest honors
and we might even leave your wee-wee alone.
LarryA|4.22.07 @ 2:37PM|#
You can explain how the use of a symbol that a lot of people
recognize as anti-Semitic was done ignorantly, without anti-Semitic
intent.
"A lot of people?" Who? The octopus has been used in all kinds of
cartoons depicting a wide variety of organizations and individuals
virtually since both octopi and cartoons have existed. The vast
majority had nothing to do with Jews or any other Semites. I found
three with hardly any effort. (In fact I found a fourth, but the
URL was several lines long.)
But it certainly doesn't speak well of the NRA that they fell
into this ditch. A more worldly organization wouldn't have made
such a mistake.
Now tell me that, had the Brady gun control organization penned a
cartoon showing the NRA sticking tentacles everywhere, they would
have been charged with anti-Semitism.
|4.22.07 @ 3:20PM|#
A Disney propaganda cartoon from WWII showed Germany and Japan as two octopi with their tentacles encircling the globe.
|4.22.07 @ 4:03PM|#
Joe says: You can explain how the use of a symbol that a lot
of people recognize as anti-semitic was done ignorantly, without
anti-semitic intent. And that's fine, as far as it goes.
Well, that's one way to frame it. The problem is that if you frame
it that way it gets hard to come up with a way of saying something
clearly true about Bloomberg (that he is, in fact, running things
in NYC) without looking like you subscribe to the paranoid fantasy
that the Jews run everything.
I don't want Bloomberg to be the target of criticism that stems
from the fact that he is Jewish, but I also don't want him to be
immune to criticisms that a, say, Anglo, mayor would be subjected
to.
In the end this goes to intent and... I have no way of knowing what
the artist or the NRA was thinking but this seems pretty weak tea
to me.
It should also be noted that Bloomberg is not a 20 year old
basketball player- he is a billionaire, and mayor of what is
arguably the most significant city in the world. That's a profile
to which a few slings and arrows are bound to attach.
|4.22.07 @ 6:54PM|#
Holly Maddux,
No outrage here. Just a sense of "duh!"
Larry A,
You didn't get it. Other people did. So?
"Now tell me that, had the Brady gun control organization penned a
cartoon showing the NRA sticking tentacles everywhere, they would
have been charged with anti-Semitism."
"The NRA?" Almost certainly not. A prominent Jewish gun rights
activist? Maybe. Like I said, the NRA's strategy of positioning
itself, and its issue, as part of the anti-liberal side in the
Culture Wars makes certain associations come to mind more easily. A
better analogy might have been if the Brady Center had depicted the
head of a firearms corporation as a plutocrat in a high silk
tophat. I doubt Reason Magazine would have missed the chance to
liken such a picture to communist propaganda.
Tagore Smith,
"The problem is that if you frame it that way it gets hard to come
up with a way of saying something clearly true about Bloomberg
(that he is, in fact, running things in NYC) without looking like
you subscribe to the paranoid fantasy that the Jews run
everything."
Exactly - if you are going to accuse the Jewish mayor of New York
of being involved in a conspiratorial brand of politics, you're
walking through a mine field. You need to navigate it
carefully.
|4.22.07 @ 10:32PM|#
"You can explain how the use of a symbol that a lot of people
recognize as anti-semitic was done ignorantly, without anti-semitic
intent. And that's fine, as far as it goes. But it certainly
doesn't speak well of the NRA that they fell into this ditch. A
more wordly organization wouldn't have made such a mistake." -
joe
So if it clearly wasn't intended as such and isn't a common
reference - as other people have pointed out on this thread - you
think speech can still be classified as racist? The claims that
this cartoon is anti-Semitic are clearly bunk of the highest
order.
Geez, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes comparing an
over-reaching, power-mad mayor as an octopus is just a comparison
of the mayor to an octopus.
This is ironic coming from you joe, since you're a guy who
proclaims his innocence when comments he has made are considered to
be racist, sexist, homophobic, or misogynistic by other commenters
and you clearly seem to think you're right in THAT subject.
Haven't checked yet, since I've been VERY far away from internet
connections lately, but I'm sure you had some real pearls of wisdom
to spread around on the Imus controversy.
|4.22.07 @ 10:36PM|#
joe sez: A more wordly organization wouldn't have made such
a mistake.
Sly, joe, very sly; pitching yourself as a PC-consultant to the
corporate world. Sadly you will probably have a very profitable
practice.
|4.23.07 @ 10:06AM|#
rob,
"can be classified as racist" is a pretty broad statement.
I think my earlier comment is perfectly clear: they fell into a
ditch. I seriously doubt there was any racist intent, and probably
not even any subconscious association between an octopus and hoary
old anti-semitic ideas.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes black people do eat
fried chicken. Still, not the best imagery to lead off with. Even
if your intentions and message are perfectly innocent, people can
get the wrong idea.
|4.23.07 @ 10:11AM|#
The NRA is the corporate world, j.i.?
Funny, I keep being told that they're the grassroots.
edna|4.23.07 @ 10:16AM|#
sorry, joe, i forgot to change my name back after a snarky comment in the "earth day" thread. that was me, not holly.
Andrew Ian Dodge|4.23.07 @ 10:52AM|#
It does rather amuse me to see Bloomberg portrayed as Cthulhu. Its anti-semitic, its anti-Cthulhu.
LarryA|4.23.07 @ 12:17PM|#
"The NRA?" Almost certainly not. A prominent Jewish gun
rights activist? Maybe. Like I said, the NRA's strategy of
positioning itself, and its issue, as part of the anti-liberal side
in the Culture Wars makes certain associations come to mind more
easily.
So the NRA gets nailed but the Brady folks don't, because liberals
don't nail liberals. That was my point.
For example, when the Brady Center was campaigning for legislation
against "Saturday Night Specials," a term that directly refers to
"N***rtown Saturday Night" and the cheap handguns supposedly used
there, the liberal media didn't call them racist.
PS. The NRA, and the Second Amendment it supports, are actually far
more liberal in the classic meaning of the word than present-day
anti-gun "liberals."
|4.23.07 @ 12:56PM|#
A Disney propaganda cartoon from WWII showed Germany and
Japan as two octopi with their tentacles encircling the
globe.
Of course. That anti-Semite Disney was just trying to claim that
the Jooooz were so powerful that they even controlled the Axis.
|4.23.07 @ 1:18PM|#
"So the NRA gets nailed but the Brady folks don't..."
The NRA gets nailed for transgressions that fit people's
perceptions of the right, while the Brady Center is subject to
transgressions that fit people's perceptions of the left. My point,
exactly.
"For example, when the Brady Center was campaigning for legislation
against "Saturday Night Specials," a term that directly refers to
"N***rtown Saturday Night" and the cheap handguns supposedly used
there, the liberal media didn't call them racist."
No, but the libertarian media do. "Racist gun control" is a very
popular argument here on Reason. Not so much with the NRA, though.
They seem to enjoy leaving that argument laying on the table, even
though there are numerous episodes of deliberately racist gun
control, such as during Reconstruction. Of course, the voters the
NRA is working to reach aren't likely to find that particular
argument compelling.
Yet another example of the NRA acting more like a right-wing,
partisan organization than the issue-advocacy organization it used
to be.
PS - the meaning of words change over time. I hope you're having a
gay old time.
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