(Jewish Group) Richard Sharp is a public figure and fair game for satire; antisemitism is not

[Behind the Aegis]

Richard Sharp is a public figure and fair game for satire. The use of antisemitic tropes is not

Other than his closest friends, it is unlikely that anybody would complain if a Guardian cartoonist drew Boris Johnson as a gorilla. All’s fair in political satire, cartoonists are expected to be scurrilous, and the former prime minister is fair game. But if that same cartoonist drew a black politician in simian form, it would be obviously racist.

This is the principle to hold in mind when decoding Martin Rowson’s cartoon of outgoing BBC chair Richard Sharp, who is Jewish, in Saturday’s Guardian. Centuries of anti-Jewish caricaturists (and to be clear, I do not accuse Rowson or the Guardian of falling into this category) have generated an extensive library of visual tropes to convey their hatred of, and disgust for, Jews. This is partly because antisemites face a challenge: how do you incite hatred against a group of people who are not always readily identifiable? Not every Jew wears religious clothing or “looks Jewish” to every beholder.

Rather than drawing a yellow star on each Jewish target, Nazi-style, artists down the ages have instead given their subjects stereotypically “Jewish” features. The outsized nose and lips, grotesque features and sinister grin have been part of antisemitic imagery for centuries, a way of portraying Jews as repulsive and sinister. You can find them in medieval woodcuts of the fictitious allegation that Jews crucified Christian children and drained their blood (the ritual murder or “blood libel” charge), in Victorian cartoons in Punch and in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

All of which makes it unfathomable that anyone would be so unfamiliar with this anti-Jewish visual lexicon that they would draw and publish a cartoon that depicted Sharp, or any other Jew in public life, in this way: but here we are. All the component parts were there: the large nose, the lips, the Fagin-like sneer, and, of course, what appears to be money. It’s a racialised depiction of a Jew, and incidentally is another reminder, if Diane Abbott is still wondering, that antisemitism can indeed be a form of racism.

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