A priori, it was a visual idea, simple and direct. One of those cartoons that jump out at you. Except that… [ce n’était] not as I had imagined.
To comment on the landmark US Supreme Court decision to strike down the federal constitutional right to abortion, I represented Taliban in the chair of US Supreme Justices. Published on June 25, 2022 in the newspaper Time, in Geneva, and automatically posted the same day on my social networks, the drawing did well with my audience. Then, after twenty-four or forty-eight hours, Twitter started chopping. For the first time, I experienced a phenomenon on which I had already expressed myself: I was the target of a shitstorm digital.
The criticisms ranged from the very prosaic “How many Muslims are there on the Supreme Court?” to more elaborate variants: “Why go looking for Muslims again to caricature what concerns the United States, an assumed Christian country?” or “It would be nice to give the supreme judges their real faces: they are not Taliban.” Experts in systemic racist biases rushed: “Translation: a Westerner cannot be reactionary and backward, only the Easterner is.” Often, we went to the essential: “This is just racist and Islamophobic”, “You’re racist” or “Fuck you racist bullshit”. The Firmly Benevolent “You should probably delete this” rubbed shoulders with the most conclusive “Dirty shit!” Right up to the guy who wonders how many times French designers should end up in coffins before he understands the lesson… In short, we’re on Twitter.
Explication d’image
Have you ever tried chatting on Twitter? As much to want to parley with a train which arrives in your face. Anyway, on social networks, I have a rule of not commenting. When the drawing is done, it’s posted, I back off, I said what I had to say. The height for a draftsman is to have to explain a drawing. But I’m going to bend the rules a little. Because this incident shows that in the same crowd we no longer see the same things. And it is worth recalling certain keys to satire.
First, I confirm: there are no Muslims on the American Supreme Court. Even less bearded men with turbans, if you watch TV. The process of tackling Taliban instead of judges [américains] is called “metaphor”. A sleight of hand. A comparison of two retrograde attitudes.
But I confess: I didn’t emphasize my reference enough. Not stuck a small label with the mention “Taliban”. As a clue, alongside the Pashtun turban of religious leaders, I have used the mujahideen headdress, the pakol, to make the reader think “Oh yeah, it’s Afghans!” (But as connoisseurs will tell you, the Tajik pakol does not suit the Taliban at all.) And by mixing in the black robes of the American judges, I even covered the issue: we could also see Iranian mullahs there. I do not care ; even so, the drawing works.
So: why seek out the Taliban, or the mullahs, to denounce a decision by Christian fundamentalists? Well, exactly. This drawing is a mirror held up to the United States, to its foreign policy obsessions and its moral crusades: you are ultimately those extremists you claim to be fighting. It is a critique of American hypocrisy, nothing more, and the majority of readers have understood this well. End of picture explanation. But the real challenges begin.
Let’s avoid the term “woke”…
An image that offends Islam? Sorry, that bothers me. When I draw an Iranian mullah or a Taliban leader, I don’t see the Muslim, but above all a conservative theocratic leader. The idea that criticizing the Taliban is tantamount to attacking Muslims baffles me. It is unfortunately a victim reflex that is current today. And also characteristic of a new progressive doxa obsessed with ethnic, religious or gender affiliations to the point of no longer seeing the hierarchy of social classes, power and money – precisely the one that relegates the Afghan woman to the bottom, deprived of education and rights. This unique key to reading socio-economic realities recognizes above all a “victim”, an essentialized Muslim, where I designate the “dominant”, the Taliban leader. Those who reason thus do not look at the same world as me. We are not looking at the same drawing. And the sad reality is that I can never convince them.
In an “intersectionality of struggles” spirit, the Twitter account @lecoindesLGBT joined the multitude. But his followers – certainly from the French-speaking LGBT community – did not follow blindly: on the contrary, it is in their ranks that we find the greatest number of nuanced comments: “I rather read this drawing as a criticism of the hypocrisy of the USA”, “You are completely devastated. Is criticizing the Iranian mullahs racist now? ” or “To point out to Americans that they have become what they have spent twenty-one years fighting is not a bad thing in itself”. This nicely contradicts those who want to divide everything between “you progressed” et “reactionaries”.
This case remained modest, say a level 2 or 3 storm on a scale of 5. Limited to Twitter (my two Facebook accounts and my Instagram remained quiet, the rest of the web did not notice), it heckled above all my account in English, for five or six days – which seemed long. Enough to have the impression that it pulls from all sides. Few were the imprudent to try to qualify, to counter the attacks – it is to risk attracting vengeance on oneself. The target’s heart is a very lonely place. But the sentiment can be misleading: if we take a closer look at Twitter’s statistical tools […]we realize that the cries of the angry are in reality largely deafened by the silence of those who agree.
Humor is a permanent friction
The moral of this story ?
Twitter is a noise amplifier in the face of which most individuals, institutions and companies – including the traditional media – remain paralyzed. The new activists, they understand well the leverage effect of these social networks that they experienced with the bottle. The little Twitter bird deceives a lot, but it is able to scare big elephants.
As for the insults, the slippages, they are part of what the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, calls “a torrent of toxic mud” (see his speech at the invitation of our Foundation in Geneva). Nothing accidental: it is the very economic model of social networks. The culture of clash on Twitter infuses our social relations and civic discourse. It is a poison that is slowly eating away at our societies.
And apart from that, what lesson for the cartoonist? Humor is a permanent friction. Our references must necessarily evolve with the sensitivity of the time. But on this particular drawing, I agree with myself. Should I be more explicit in the future? Hang explanatory labels in my drawings? Maybe. But I hate labels…