Navaho Gunleg

Driving home today I was thinking about those recently published ‘cartoons’ that have been published in a few European newspapers and online as well…

Luckily Wikipedia’s propaganda article was able to give me a fine example of the point I am trying to make here, so I will use that image as an introduction:

Perhaps you already see what I mean? How are the Danish cartoons any different?

Considering the way it is spreading over the internet now, it can most definitely be called propaganda: it is out there, (sub-)consciously changing peoples’ minds by stimulating the generalisation that every Muslim is out to terrorise. Exactly like those big action-packed Hollywood-movies have been doing the passed 40-so years.

And that is exactly what bothers me. I can definitely understand a lot of folk being upset about this — not a really wise move, now is it?

The situation they created over the years is like, making violence illegal and then constantly poking people with a caddle prod.

At some point, militant groups have already formed (the popular word seems to be terrorist cells) and something like this is definitely going to cause a bang.

See, if it was a long passed stereo-type, like women and men for instance, both parties can enjoy jokes about it.

These militant groups, obviously, won’t.

However, they can use these same cartoons to demonise the ‘Western’ society even more: “Look how they make fun of our prophet those Western pigs!”.

Worse case scenario, though highly likely, the act of publishing the cartoons will draw some more angry folk over the line. That’s what you get if you keep on poking.

No, I really don’t think that publishing those cartoons was a good move at all.

Propaganda, Cartoons, Provocative, Terrorism