Cartoon by Ahmad Rahma

In December 2020, we celebrated our 10th anniversary (very modestly, given we were, and still are, in lockdown). We are incredibly proud to have been around for a decade. Building and launching Cartoon Movement would not have been possible without funding, which we were lucky to have in 2010. But our aim was always to become self-sustaining as a platform, and we have been since 2013.

Keeping ourselves afloat without external funding, investors or advertisers has been challenging at times. While our hosting and server costs have only gone up over the years, money earned per cartoon sold has either stayed the same or gone down.

So in 2021, we would like to see if we can leverage additional support from our fans. If you like what we do, and if you want to support political satire, press freedom, and freedom of expression in general, please consider making a (onetime or monthly) donation. You can also become a supporter of our Facebook page. Supporting us will not only ensure we remain ad-free, it will also help us pay our cartoonists for the beautiful, scathing, hilarious and always thought-provoking work they do.

Part of our mission is to promote editorial cartoons and we feel we do that best by trying to reach the widest audience possible. Therefore, we will not put our cartoons behind a paywall. However, we are open to experiment with fan involvement. If you became a support, would you for instance be interested to help in the editorial process? Or would you like access to exclusive content such as interviews and behind-the-scenes to get an idea of the creative process behind the cartoon?

Let us know by leaving a comment or by sending us an email at cartoons@cartoonmovement.com

Cartoon by Gatis Sluka

Tune in today at 6pm CET for a new Satire Talks Live on our Instagram channel! Emanuele del Rosso talks to Filipino cartoonist Zach about his work, censorship and the power editorial cartoons.

Saad Hajo is a Syrian-Swedish cartoonist, based in Sweden since 2005. He has been working as editorial cartoonist for more than two decades and is published on a daily basis, mostly in Arabic or Arab speaking journals.

Cartoon by Emad Hajjaj about being a cartoonist.

Cartooning for Peace reports some good news to start the year: the Criminal Magistrate’s Court of Amman (Jordan) has decided to cease the prosecution of cartoonist Emad Hajjaj.

Emad Hajjaj was charged with 'contempt of a president of a foreign country against the provisions of 122/1 of the Penal Code' following the publication of a cartoon about the leader of the United Arab Emirates.

More on the website of Cartooning for Peace.

United Sketches is raising awareness for Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Sotoudeh, 57, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their headscarf, was arrested in 2018 and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran’s supreme leader.

Here below you can see some of the excellent works by cartoonists that already have drawn in support of Nasrin. If you want to join the campaign, send your cartoon to kianoush@unitedsketches.org

Cartoon by Izabela Kowalska

Cartoon by Phil Umbdenstock

Cartoon by Marco De Angelis

Freedom of humor and satire is an essential component of democratic life; but at the same time, some forms of humor can be a vehicle for hateful or anti-democratic messages. How can we draw a line between free speech and hate speech, when it comes to humor? Answering these questions is particularly difficult in the case of highly condensed (and often ambiguous) forms of visual humor, such as cartoons or memes.

On 21 September 2020, the members of the Constructive Advanced Thinking team Cartoons in Court presented the project they will be working on during the next three years at four European Institutes for Advanced Study. The project focuses on visual humor controversies from an interdisciplinary perspective, with special but not exclusive regard to cartoons. The event featured a general introduction and five short presentations by the team members, followed by an open Q&A.

Speakers: Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen, PI); Vicky Breemen (Utrecht University); Andrew Bricker (Ghent University); Ana Pedrazzini (ECyC IPEHCS CONICET – Comahue National University); Tjeerd Royaards (Cartoon Movement).

Host: Andrey Demidov (scientific coordinator of IAS CEU Budapest)

The project is supported by the Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) program, an initiative by the Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS). IAS CEU is a host institution for the 'Cartoons in Court' team. The online event was co-sponsored by Cartoon Movement.

Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) presents their annual Robert Russell Courage in Cartooning Award to Ahmed Kabir Kishore from Bangladesh.

Ahmed is a cartoonist and activist known to CRNI for over a decade. He campaigned bravely on behalf of the disappeared Sri Lankan cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda (2010) and jailed Bangladeshi cartoonist Arifur Rahman (2007) and identified as a CRNI “affiliate leader” in the country, although doing so inevitably led to accusations of aligning with foreign interests. This speaks to his courage, as do his public demonstrations for the human rights not only of cartoonists but also Hijra people and in defence of health and consumer rights and the Bengali language.

Through April and into May of this year Ahmed posted to Facebook a series of cartoons he entitled Life in the Time of Corona, satirising society’s response and critical of the government’s handling of public health during the pandemic.

On May 5th 2020 Ahmed was among several people arrested under the Digital Security Act, 2018 (DSA) by personnel from the Dhaka division of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB-3), the unit officially deployed against terrorists, drug lords and human traffickers but often accused of being an instrument of government suppression. In the ensuing months of detention Ahmed has been denied a bail hearing on three occasions.

Read more on the website of CRNI.

Gargantua by Honoré Daumier (1831)

CM’s editor Tjeerd Royaards writes about the power of satire for 5. The way cartoons are perceived, feared and responded to by leaders, especially those less inclined towards democracy, hasn't changed in the past 200 years. Dictators try to silence satire only because they know it's effective, because they fear it. That's the best reason to keep laughing at them.

Read the full article here.

Image by Marian Kamensky

Online event - 21 September 2020, 15:00-16:30 (CEST Time)

Freedom of humor and satire is an essential component of democratic life; but at the same time, some forms of humor can be a vehicle for hateful or anti-democratic messages. How can we draw a line between free speech and hate speech, when it comes to humor? Answering these questions is particularly difficult in the case of highly condensed (and often ambiguous) forms of visual humor, such as cartoons or memes.

On September 21^st, the members of the Constructive Advanced Thinking team ‘Cartoons in Court’ will present their project and discuss humor controversies from an interdisciplinary perspective, with special but not exclusive regard to cartoons. The event will start with a presentation by the team members, followed by an open Q&A.

Speakers: Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen, PI); Vicky Breemen (Utrecht University); Andrew Bricker (Ghent University); Ana Pedrazzini (ECyC IPEHCS CONICET – Comahue National University); Tjeerd Royaards (Cartoon Movement).

Host: Andrey Demidov (IAS CEU Budapest)

The ZOOM link to the event: here

The project is supported by the Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) program, an initiative by the Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS). IAS CEU is a host institution for the team 'Cartoons in Court'. The online event is co-sponsored by Cartoon Movement.

Cartoon by OSVAL

We are back with your monthly dose of cartooning news; read our August newsletter here. August is typically our most quiet month of the year, but September is ramping up to be a lot busier. In the meantime, we do have some new cartoonists to introduce and a save-the-date for an online event about cartoons. We also ask your support for Emad Hajjaj, who was arrested (and now released on bail) in Jordan last week over a cartoon.

If you want to receive a monthly update from the world of international editorial cartooning, subscribe!