New cartoonist: Reza Aghili

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Reza Aghili is an Iranian cartoonist and sculptor, born in 1990, with over eight years of professional experience in the world of caricature and illustration. His works, combining sharp satire and compelling narratives, often focus on topics such as the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, women's rights, freedom of expression, and the internet.


Our January newsletter is out!

Future forecast
Cartoon by Enrico Bertuccioli

Our first newsletter of 20205 is out! This edition takes a look at the future of political cartooning, and the outlook isn't great... But we also share the best cartoons of the last month, showcasing why political cartoons deserve to have a future. You can read our newsletter here.


New cartoonist: Guy Badeaux (Bado)

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We are delighted to welcome Canadian cartoonist Guy Badeaux (Bado) to Cartoon Movement. Born in Montreal in 1949, Bado has been the editorial cartoonist at the French language daily Le Droit in Ottawa since May 1981. Winner of the National Newspaper Award in 1991, he is a member of the group Cartooning for Peace as well as treasurer of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists.


Political cartoons are on the brink of extinction (and how you can help to prevent this)

2025 starts with yet another tremendous blow to political cartooning; on Friday renowned cartoonist Ann Telnaes announced she quit her staff position at the Washington Post. The reason: for the first time since she started at the WaPo in 2008, one of her cartoons was refused because of the opinion in the cartoon.

 

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The rough that was refused by the Washington Post

 

The drawing criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.

Although Ann's decision has garnered a lot of international attention, because she is a high-profile cartoonist working at one of the best-known newspapers in the world, her case is far from unique. For me as editor of Cartoon Movement, 2025 started with several cartoonists emailing me with sad news that they had been let go from publications. These cartoonists join the ranks of artists facing similar difficulties in previous years. Cases range from Canada to Hungary to Slovakia. In some cases, the reason was cutbacks (we all know cartoonists are the first to go if costs need to be reduced), but in a worrying number of cases, it was a change of ownership in the publication which lead to the dismissal of the cartoonist.

In many parts of the world, the prevailing political climate is favorable to populists and (extreme) right-wing politicians. Just like Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, many publication owners (who in many cases also run other businesses) want to curry favor with the politicians in power. And having a pesky cartoonist mocking these politicians just isn't good for business.

We've written before about the rather deplorable state of political cartooning: Less and less possibilities to publish, no (paid) publication spots at all for young cartoonists and timid editors afraid to anger their audience. Add this new challenge to the mix and the situation goes from bad to dire...

And all this at a moment in time when speaking truth to power is more important than ever. Political satire and democracy are closely linked; if democracy comes under threat so does satire. But satire is also an important defender of democracy. It can expose the mechanisms of those who want to undermine democracy. Actually, Ann Telneas has made an excellent comic strip explaining exactly this in 2019, which you can read here.

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Editorial Cartoonists and the Health of Democracy (fragment)

 

So what can you (assuming you're reading this because you like political cartoons) do to support political cartoonists? Here are a few tips. They are pretty self-evident, but it doesn't hurt to mention them again:

-Support your newspaper's cartoonist by writing a letter to the editor from time to time praising their work. Of course you should protest when a cartoonist is fired from a newspaper, but sending letters to the newspaper about the cartoons with some sort of frequency will let the editors know the cartoonists are valued by the readership.

-If your favorite publication doesn't feature political cartoons yet, let them know you'd like to see them there. Preferably not just once, but every chance you get.

-Share cartoons as much as possible. If we want to save to profession for future generations, we must make political cartoons unavoidable. And to do that, we depend on cartoons getting to as many eyeballs as possible. This means sharing cartoons by any means possible,  ranging from social media to cutting them out and hanging them on your fridge. Also consider using them in your newsletters, presentation and or websites (in which case you will have to pay a cartoonist a small fee for the use of their work) or on a protest sign.

-Does your favorite cartoonist have a Patreon or Substack page? Maybe they offer a monthly subscription, which is a great way to support their work.

-Donate to organizations like Cartooning for Peace, Cartoonists Rights or us, who work to promote editorial cartoons and help cartoonists in various ways.

Thanks for your support!

Tjeerd Royaards, editor of Cartoon Movement


Year in review

 

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Cartoon by Emanuele Del Rosso

 

As 2024 draws to a close, we can look back on a troubled year full of conflict, disasters caused by rampant climate change and the continued rise of autocracy around the globe. When it comes to cartooning, the Charles Dickens quote 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times' comes to mind.

The best of times, because we have never had so much inspiration for cartoons and because political satire is urgently needed to point out the absurdities and untruths of populism, to show where the path of warmongers will lead, and to paint the (admittedly) bleak picture of a world than has not managed to control our climate.

The worst of times, because opportunities to publish continue to dwindle for cartoonists. We hear more and more stories of wealthy dictator-buddies buying up newspapers and kicking out cartoonists. There is little to no opportunity for young cartoonist to find a spot to publish to develop their talent, which means there is no next generation of cartoonists standing in the wings to take over.

In the midst of all this, Cartoon Movement is luckily still standing. Fiercely independent, we continue to provide a platform for cartoonists all around the globe, paying them for their work. In this way, we support them financially (albeit modestly) and give a voice to those artists working in countries where they cannot publish their work.

To sustain our platform, we rely on the sales of cartoons (so if you're an editor, consider using our high-quality cartoons in your publication) and on special projects. In the past year, we've been fortunate to do some great projects, including:

A re-issue and update of Cartoons for human rights, a book illustrating all the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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A cartoon competition about media freedom in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia), culminating in a cartoon exhibition in six countries.

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A global advocacy campaign for Education Cannot Wait (part of UNICEF).

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Cartoon by Nahid Zamani

 

We also promoted political cartoons around Europe: we gave a workshop and live-drawing demonstrations at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, and also a workshop for young artists in Albania; we talked at panels at Lector in Fabula and at the World Democracy Forum in Strasbourg.

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If you want to support us, we always welcome donations, but you can also simply subscribe to our daily cartoon newsletter to show us you care about political satire. We've recently hit our 1k subscriber goal for 2024, and we hope to at least double our number of subscribers in 2025. We hope that 2025 will be brighter than 2024; the one thing we can promise for the new year is that we'll be bringing you some of the best cartoons about whatever the new year will bring us.