Sunday, October 22, 2017

Oh no.. not again





Image result for maus chapter 2 time flies covers


        
        This topic greatly disturbs and confuses the Great and Mighty Presto as he has stated in the previous post to this, so he will try to keep this brief.
BolsheviksWithoutMask.jpg (505404 bytes)

The image on the rights text reads: "Bolshevism without its Mask", and is a piece of anti-semitic propaganda. It's meant to show that the soviets and jews real intentions are to ignite wars and quite literally set the world ablaze for their own good. The star of david encircling the signature hammer and sickle representative of the soviets at the time is meant to convey the idea that the jews are secretly controlling the soviets, just as many members of the nazi party thought about most anything they disliked. This was meant to incite fear in the hearts of the german people( well, the ones they weren't systematically eradicating), and rally them to support the german government. In the image on the right though, the mortal Art Spiegelman shows the truth of the situation: the jews weren't attempting to set the world ablaze, they were being set ablaze themselves. He uses this to connect with the piece of propaganda and mock it, as he is so very fond of doing throughout his work. His work in general actually holds many connections to Nazi Propaganda. Even the idea of showing the jews as mice was actually copied from plenty of Nazi propaganda that showed the jews as rats, or mice. He used this, and instead of how the Nazis used it: to dehumanize the jews, he uses this to mock them even thinking to do so, and gives them empathetic qualities and real human attributes, showing visually that no matter what they were thought of as by others, they were still people.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, it is very ironic to see the Nazis portraying the Jews and the Soviets that way ("setting the world ablaze for their own good") when they themselves are doing the same thing. It's also ironic to see the Nazis blame the Soviets and Jews for igniting the war when they themselves were the first ones to invade Poland.

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