| Carlos Latuff | |
|---|---|
Carlos Latuff |
|
| Birth name | Carlos Latuff |
| Born | November 30, 1968 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Field | Political cartoons, Social commentary |
| Movement | Anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, Marxism, socialism, indigenous rights |
Carlos Latuff (born November 30, 1968) is a Brazilian freelance political cartoonist.[1] His works deal with an array of themes, including anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, and anti-U.S. military intervention. Moreover, the issue that he is best known for, are his images depicting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and, more recently, the Arab Spring events. Latuff himself has described his work as controversial.[2]
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Latuff was born in São Cristóvão (Rio de Janeiro), Brazil, and is of Lebanese ancestry; in his own words he said he has "Arab roots".[3]
Latuff's works have been posted mostly by himself on Indymedia websites and private blogs. However, some of them have been picked up and featured in magazines such as the Brazilian edition of Mad[4] Le Monde Diplomatique[5] and the The Toronto Star.[6] In addition, a few of his works were published on Arab websites and publications such as the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (JAMI) magazine, the Saudi magazine Character, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, among others.[7]
A vast number of Latuff's cartoons are related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which according to his claims : "became important to Latuff after he visited the area in the late 1990s."[8] These cartoons are heavily critical of Israel[8] and have drawn criticism and allegations of uninhibited utilization of "judeophobic stereotypes in the service of the anti-globalisation movement."[9]
In his We are all Palestinians (Arabic: كلنا فلسطينيون) cartoon series, various famous oppressed groups, including Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, Black South Africans during Apartheid, Native Americans, and Tibetans in China, are all shown stating "I am Palestinian".[10]
Latuff has also made a series of cartoons that portray Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,[11][12][13] United States President George W. Bush, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and British PM Tony Blair among other politicians as monsters and as Nazis.[14]
Latuff is also critical of US military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has made promotional cartoons for anti-US militancy[15] as well as cartoons alleging US actions have been motivated by the chance of making profit from oil.[16] Among the cartoons, there are also some that portray US soldiers as severely wounded, dead, or paraplegic or as harming Iraqi civilians.
In his comic series Tales of Iraq War (Arabic: حكايات من حرب العراق) he portrays "Juba, the Baghdad sniper",[17] an Iraqi insurgency character claimed to have shot down several-dozen US soldiers, as a "superhero".[18] He has also made a caricature of US President George W. Bush laughing over US casualties.[19]
Since the end of 2010, he's been consistently engaged in producing cartoons about the Arab Spring in which he openly sided with the revolutionaries. After the victory of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya his cartoons about these countries have focused on the menace of counter-revolution or Western interference. Some of his cartoons have been displayed in mass demonstrations in Arab countries.[20][21][22]
His works were criticized by a writer for the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, part of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (an Israeli NGO), for allegedly containing antisemitism.[23]
In 2002 the Swiss-based Holocaust survivors organization Aktion Kinder des Holocaust sued the Indymedia of Switzerland on the charge of anti-Semitism for publishing Latuff's cartoon titled We are all Palestinians series in their website, which depicted a Jewish boy in Warsaw Ghetto saying: "I am Palestinian."[24][25][26] The criminal proceedings were suspended by Swiss court.[27]
In 2006, Latuff placed second and won $4,000, for his cartoon comparing the Israeli West Bank barrier with the Nazi concentration camps, in the controversial Iranian 'International Holocaust Cartoon Competition'.[28] The contest was created in response to Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper (see Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy), under the notion that those who supported the right to free speech in matters concerning Islam would be placed in a precarious position were they to condemn the antisemitic cartoons aimed to mock and ridicule the Jewish Holocaust. Latuff's entry was described as "Holocaust inversion," a "motif" of antisemitism, by Manfred Gerstenfeld.[29]
In their 2003 Annual Report, the Stephen Roth Institute compared Latuff's cartoons of Sharon to "the antisemitic caricatures of Philipp Rupprecht in Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer."[30] The SRI also complained over a cartoon showing Che Guevara in a Palestinian keffiyeh.[31]
Joel Kotek a professor at Belgium’s Free University of Brussels, in his book “Cartoons and Extremism”[32] calls Latuff “the contemporary Drumont of the internet.”( Edouard Drumont was the founder of the French “Antisemitic League of France” and the publisher of "La Libre Parole",[33] a magazine that printed numerous classically antisemitic cartoons during the years of the Dreyfus Affair).[34]
In an interview with the Jewish-American weekly newspaper The Forward in December 2008, Latuff responded to charges of antisemitism and the comparison to Streicher:
My cartoons have no focus on the Jews or on Judaism. My focus is Israel as a political entity, as a government, their armed forces being a satellite of U.S. interests in the Middle East, and especially Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. It happens to be Israeli Jews that are the oppressors of Palestinians.…My detractors say that the use of the Magen David in my Israel-related cartoons is irrefutable proof of antisemitism; however, it’s not my fault if Israel chose sacred religious motifs as national symbols, such as the Knesset Menorah or the Star of David in killing-machines like F-16 jets.[35]
![[4]](http://www.fractaldesignz.orcon.net.nz/images/latuff/Bush_is_celebrating_911_by_Latuff2.jpg){kind=link}
![[5]](http://pal.or.kr/bbs/data/al_free/The_George_Bush_Barbershop_by_Latuff2.jpg){kind=link}
![[6]](http://brasil.indymedia.org/images/2004/05/279977.gif){kind=link}
![[7]](http://brasil.indymedia.org/images/2003/08/260245.gif){kind=link}
![[8]](http://brasil.indymedia.org/images/2004/09/289838.gif){kind=link}
