Terrible Cartoons: Egyptian Bloodbath Edition

The crackdown by Egypt’s military junta against members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were protesting the coup that deposed Mohammed Morsi, has led America’s editorial cartoons to release a spate of particularly stupid cartoons this weekend. Let’s take a look:

Clay Bennett

Clay Bennett joins a familiar refrain that we’ve seen by other artists, the implication that Egyptians are too stupid/confused to figure out a way out of the current political crisis. Which, aside from being offensive, is also ridiculous considering that the same cartoon could be labeled “United States.”

 

Steve Benson

Steve Benson kicks off early for the late August holidays by turning in this…what? As far as I can gather, it’s that Egypt is just falling apart. Because the pyramid, in the lexicon of American editorial cartoonists, is Egypt. (Which would be as though foreign cartoonists depicted America as a cowboy, or some other hoary historical relic.) It’s just an illustration — no opinion expressed — and anyway, it reminds me that the opposite is true. Those pyramids, and Egypt, have survived thousands of years of war and turmoil, much of which was worse than what we’re seeing now.

 

Walt Handelsman

Walt Handelsman is saying…what? That’s bloody crackdowns are bloody? Thanks. We knew that.

 

Matt Davies

I like this one by Matt Davies, who here is not afraid to take an anti-coup, anti-junta stand.

And finally, the worst of the bunch. Glenn McCoy blames the victim:

Glenn McCoy

 

10 Comments.

  • I don’t have much to say–you grilled them better than I could. The pyramid one seems beyond lazy and hackneyed. When I saw the Davies one, I thought, “wait, this looks good–Oh.” ha

    I enjoyed the return of your picks for worst cartoons!

  • I disagree about the Clay Bennett cartoon. Seems like he’s saying (accurately) that every time Egyptians think they’ve escaped the oppressive military regime, they find a slightly different version of it waiting just ahead. I don’t really see any evidence of the guy being stupid or confused so much as dismayed–he’s broken out of jail two or three times and there keep being more fucking walls!

  • Okay, I’m actually going to agree with Glenn McCoy here. The Muslim Brotherhood are a bunch of Islamist scum who have burned down Christian churches within the past days and slaughtered Christians. They are NOT victims, not by a long shot. And speaking of “shooting”, they’ve been caught using weapons at their so-called “peaceful protests”. Sorry, but no sympathy for Islamists from me.

    • I always sympathize with victims. The fact that Islamosts have retrograde opinions about, for example, women, does not justify their massacre by US-backed military junta goons.

  • These aren’t nearly as shitty as what you usually throw up. The Matt Davies one threw me for a loop — I saw that and thought, “That’s totally right and morbidly amusing, wtf is Ted’s problem?!” — then saw your caption.

    The first one is offensive, but its bigotry could be put down to stupidity, which still makes it a million times better than the usual pap that fills the bad cartoon round-up. And, that said, anschelsc’s interpretation isn’t unsound — in which case the cartoon is fine. Though not polished, since it can be so easily misinterpreted.

    Siding with victims is the ONLY moral option in a world of empires, not because of any fluffy side-with-the-less-powerful ethical rule, but because any group that is made a victim of an empire will empower that empire with their suffering. So the wrong people are growing strong with the slaughter of both innocents and not-so-innocent.

    The MB has sentiments that would lead many of its members to commit out-and-out crimes. It could be take apart through civic and political means, some of them legitimately violent, without a bloody purge. The former would serve the populist majority, the latter serves a quick-power-grabbing minority.

  • My gosh! We’ve turned on each other so easily. There seems to be so much misdirected anger that the only way to avoid it is to lay down low and hide? I have tried for years and years to say that we need to stay away from these people (the Middle East) because they don’t even think like us and are more like angry bees than we think. We should stop throwing money that we need at home towards them, and allow them to go through the same changes we did ourselves – Civil War, law reforms, etc. When will we learn that trying to control everything just kills more people?

  • I’m not judging the beliefs of the Muslim Brotherhood, I’m judging them by their actions. The MB has been a tool of Western imperialism since their inception 80 years ago, and when they finally got into power (after promising they wouldn’t seek power), they then proceeded to sell Egypt down the river. And that’s why Egypt got rid of them.

    Also, people point out that the Egyptian military is receiving US funding. Well, yes. But they are receiving that money in exchange for NOT attacking Israel; their actions against MB have nothing to do with those funds. And for some reason, Leftists are not aware of this, and assume that the military is acting under Western orders when they are attacking the MB, thus making them “victims of US imperalism”.

    But the MB are not victims. They remain tools of the West, and now that they are out of power again, they are attacking Shiites and Christians. Frankly, Gamal Abdel Nasser should have nailed their asses to the wall when he had the chance, and we wouldn’t be dealing with these people today.

  • Susan, you have twisted the definition of “victim.” It is entirely possible to be not-innocent, culpable for the worst wrongs imaginable, and still be a victim of an attack, even if the attacker is righteous and justified. (In the latter hypothetical, the status of victimhood is deserved.)

    The enemy of one’s enemy is not one’s friend; that old adage is fucking stupid. Neither the MB nor the army are good guys, though one party may have done less evil (recently) than the other.

  • Sekhmet,

    It’s never okay to gun down peaceful protestors, and I never claimed the Egyptian military was innocent.

    That said, the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t innocent either, to say the least, if they kill innocents themselves. And then whine when it happens to them. Pot, meet kettle.

Comments are closed.

css.php