Happy Merchant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Happy Merchant
Edited caricature illustration of a stereotypical Jewish man by "A. Wyatt Mann".
First appearance Artwork by A. Wyatt Mann

The Happy Merchant is a common name for an image depicting an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish man. The image appears commonly on websites such as 4chan or Reddit , where it is frequently used in hateful or disparaging contexts.

History [ edit ]

The image was first created by cartoonist A. Wyatt Mann (a play on "A white man"), a pseudonym of Nick Bougas . [1] [2] [3] The image was part of a cartoon that also included a racist caricature of a black man and used these images to say: "Let's face it! A world without Jews and Blacks would be like a world without rats and cockroaches." The cartoon was first released in print, but appeared online in February 2001. [1]

The stereotypical image of a Jew from the cartoon began to spread on various internet communities, where users began to make variations of it. [1]

The Happy Merchant meme endorses the idea that Jews secretly conspire to conquer the world . [4]

Description [ edit ]

The image is intended as a derogatory depiction, and employs many stereotypes of Jews . These include:

  • A large, hook-shaped nose (" Jewish nose ");
  • A yarmulke (Jewish head garment);
  • A malevolent smile, with a slightly hunched back and hands being rubbed together, to indicate greed or scheming;
  • Balding, tightly curled black hair and a tightly curled black beard. [5]

Use [ edit ]

This image is a form of antisemitic propaganda, common on alt-right internet communities such as 4chan, other "chan" websites, and on other message boards. [6] In 2017, Al Jazeera tweeted an image that included the Happy Merchant on its official English-language Twitter account. The tweet was promoting a story about climate change , and insinuated that Jewish people were behind climate change . Al Jazeera later deleted the tweet, explaining that it had been used in a segment covering alt-right antisemitic climate change conspiracy theories . [7]

A 2018 study published by Savvas Zannettou et al. focused on online antisemitism recorded that the Happy Merchant and its variations were "among the most popular memes on both 4chan's /pol/ board and Gab , two major outlets for alt-right expression. [8] The study found that usage of the Happy Merchant on /pol/ remained largely consistent (with a peak during the US airstrike on Syria in April 2017), while usage of the meme on Gab increased after the Charlottesville rally in August 2017. [9] It was also determined that /pol/ influences the spread of Happy Merchant to other web platforms such as Twitter and Reddit . [10]

The same study also found that the Happy Merchant has been incorporated into other common memes on the site, including Pepe the Frog . [11]

References [ edit ]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "The Surprisingly Mainstream History Of The Internet's Favorite Anti-Semitic Image" . BuzzFeed News . February 5, 2015. p. 11. Archived from the original on February 28, 2019 . Retrieved July 30, 2021 .
  2. ^ Malice, Michael (May 19, 2019). The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics . St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 40. ISBN   978-1-250-15467-5 . Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor.
  3. ^ Ellis, Emma Grey (June 19, 2017). "The Alt-Right Found Its Favorite Cartoonist?and Almost Ruined His Life" . Wired . Archived from the original on July 2, 2018 . Retrieved May 28, 2019 . But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.
  4. ^ Perry, Marvin., and Frederick M. Schweitzer. Antisemitic Myths: a Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.
  5. ^ Savvas 2019 , p. 2.
  6. ^ "The Happy Merchant" . Anti-Defamation League . Archived from the original on July 10, 2020 . Retrieved July 30, 2021 .
  7. ^ Kestenbaum, Sam (May 31, 2017). "Al Jazeera Tweets, Then Deletes, Anti-Semitic 'Greedy Jew' Meme" . The Forward . Archived from the original on July 30, 2021 . Retrieved July 30, 2021 .
  8. ^ Zannettou, Savvas, Tristan Caulfield, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. "On the Origins of Memes by Fringe Web Communities." arXiv.org, September 22, 2018. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512 .
  9. ^ Savvas 2019 , p. 9.
  10. ^ Savvas 2019 , p. 11.
  11. ^ Savvas 2019 , p. 10.

Bibliography

  • Zannettou, Savvas (November 24, 2019). "A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism". arXiv : 1809.01644 [ cs.CY ].

External links [ edit ]

Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Happy_Merchant&oldid=1222957449 "