World Forum for Democracy 2024

Poster

On November 7, CM editor Tjeerd Royaards will be on a panel at the World Forum for Democracy 2024 in Strasbourg with Turkish cartoonist Zehra Ömeroğlu (currently facing trial in Turkey for one of her cartoons), Italian cartoonist Emanuele Del Rosso and all-round humor expert Alberto Godioli (Associate Professor at the University Groningen). The panel is organized by Cartooning For Peace and will focus on the question how we can use cartoons to fight populism and protect democracy.


Palestinian cartoonist killed in Israeli air strike

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Tribute cartoon by Mo Qasem

 

Mahasen al-Khateeb was a talented young (31 years) Palestinian digital artist with a big following on social media. She was killed by an Israeli air strike in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Saturday, after posting her final artwork about 19 year old Shaban al-Dalu, who burned to death in a hospital bombed by Israel.

 

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Final art work of Mahasen al-Khateeb

 

She used her art to tell the story of what the Palestinian people are living through. Her art and her voice will be missed.


Lectrr wins the European Cartoon Award 2024

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This year’s European Cartoon Award goes to Belgian cartoonist Lectrr for his cartoon of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny. The award was presented during European Cartoon Day ceremony in The Hague, The Netherlands. The European Cartoon Award, started in 2019, is dedicated to supporting and promoting political cartoons in Europe.

The two runners-up are cartoonists Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands) and Victor Solís (Mexico).

 

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Cartoon by Tjeerd Royaards

 

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Cartoon by Victor Solís

 

Honorable Mentions were awarded to Elena Ospina (Colombia) and Peter Kuper (United States).

 

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Cartoon by Peter Kuper

 

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Cartoon by Elena Ospina

The European Cartoon Award announces 2024 finalists

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The European Cartoon Award (ECA) has announced the 3 finalists of the 2024 edition of the contest. Their names are Tjeerd Royaards (The Netherlands), Steven Lectrr Degryse (Belgium) and Victor Solís (Mexico).

The three finalists were selected among the hundreds of entries received by the European Cartoon Award, from 24 countries.

The decision was made by the panel of judges, composed of five experts in the world of political cartoons and journalism: the winner of the European Cartoon Award 2023 Ben Jennings from the UK, French journalist Catherine André (Chair), Dutch cartoonist Jip van den Toorn, Iranian cartoonist Sanaz Bagheri, and Dutch philosopher Stine Jensen.

The Winner of the ECA 2024 – whose prize is worth 10,000 euros – will be announced during the second edition of the ECA ‘Cartoons Day’, on October 17 at the Central Library in The Hague.

For more information on the event, and to register for it, click here.

Here are the three finalist cartoons:


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Review: Cartoons and Antisemitism

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Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland, by Ewa Stańczyk
University Press of Mississippi

Review by Tjeerd Royaards

We did our latest book review in 2021, so it's about time we did another. Maybe there aren't that many books about cartoons that have been published in the last few years, or maybe we just haven't been paying enough attention. This book did get our attention, not only because the publisher emailed us to see if we'd be interested in reviewing it, but also because of the subject matter.

Like most cartoonists I am fairly familiar with antisemitic tropes: caricatures featuring big noses, big lips and big ears, Jews drawn as puppeteers or fat spiders in the center of a web that is controlling the world, or of course Jews sacrificing babies. But my knowledge did not extend much further than the generic antisemitic cartoons of Der Stürmer, the infamous propaganda magazine in Nazi Germany, and contemporary anti-Israel cartoons that cross the line from legitimate criticism on the Israeli government into the realm of antisemitism.

This book provided me with the opportunity to take a deep dive into antisemitic and anti-antisemitic cartoons as they were published in various magazines in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s. As such, it provided a fascinating read about a period and country in knew little about. Much of the Polish politics of the time revolved around the 'Jewish question'. Nationalistic forces opposed more progressive ones in a political struggle on how to deal with the sizable Jewish minority that lived in Poland at the time. Nationalistic forces would like to see them deported to Palestine or Madagascar (a real option at the time), while also pushing dicriminating policies to limit their economic influence and role in daily life.

The book examines a number of satirical magazines that were published in Poland in the interwar period, including (among others) a pro-government magazine with a moderate antisemitic stand, a very antisemitic anti-government magazine and a progressive anti-antisemitic magazine. The academic hypothesis that drives the book is that the content of the cartoons can largely be attributed to the political affiliation and ideas of the cartoonists who made them and the editors who published them.

To a non-academic reader such as myself, the main attraction of the book is the insight it offers into the cartooning scene in Poland at that time, the kinds of cartoons that were published and, although the book is careful to only provide a historical account, the parallels one can draw to current times.

From a cartoonist's perspective, it's interesting to see how Poland at that time featured a lot of satirical magazines, but a lot of them only published for a short time and had little to no budget to pay their contributors. One could compare this to cartoon websites these days, that rarely pay for cartoons. An element that did strike me as typical for the time was the fact that cartoonists were willing to make cartoons that voiced the opinion of a particular magazine (one that did have a budget), and not their own, in order to be paid. So a cartoonist would be willing to make an antisemitic cartoon to pay the rent. I don't see something like that happening these days. Most cartoonists I know (if not all) are so passionate about their work and how they view the world, they would not consider drawing someone else's opinion.

But the brunt of the book is of course about antisemitic cartoons. And in that sense, I am happy to report, political satire has seemed to have progressed in the last 95 years. I have not seen cartoons that comment on how a particular minority looks, smells, talks (too loudly) or gestures in my 15-year long career as editor of international cartoons. Sometimes a cartoonist will take a stereotype a bit too far for my taste, but in general it's nothing compared to the way some of the Polish cartoonists drew the Jewish minority as hairy, buck-teethed, big-nosed, loud and overbearing.

In another sense, however, its difficult not to see parallels to our current times, making the book a disconcerting read at times. The nationalistic forces that permeated Polish politics at the time speak of Judaization, the fear that the authentic Polish national identity would be lost as the Jewish population would grow and exert more influence. They saw the Jewish culture and values as irreconcilable with the Polish identity. It doesn't take much imagination to replace Judaization with Islamization and see how a similar rhetoric is being employed by populist forces still growing in Europe. Don't get me wrong, we cannot compare the law-enforced discrimination and wanton violence against Jews in Poland in the 1930's with the position of the Muslim minority in Europe today. But the words that are being spoken by nationalistic populist politicians are eerily similar.

I think this book, or other books like this, should be required reading for any cartoonist. We have a responsibility to acquaint ourselves with the dangers of stereotyping, especially since we use stereotypes a lot in our work. In one sense, we cannot do without visual stereotypes and cliches, since they can convey a lot of meaning. Cartoons work so well because we cartoonists rely on cliches, metaphors and stereotype to tell parts of the story without the need of having to explain, adding to the impact of a cartoon. In another sense, when stereotypes are used to portrait minorities or other less powerful groups in society, they punch down instead of up (as is the case when we draw a stereotypical politician or business man), helping to further spread a negative image of a certain group, and thus the way society thinks about them.

In conclusion then, this book is not only a fascinating insight into a specific period in Polish history seen through the eyes of cartoonists, but also one that can teach us some about what constitutes good cartooning and when cartoons cross the line into hate speech.