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Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:05 pm
by crosshair
ryefish75 wrote:I hate to be the one to break it to you, but NAZIs were/are socialists.

Um...
Be not smug, when you are wrong.

If you believe this, then I'm afraid you have zero understanding of what either Naziism or Socialism is.
It's a popular RW meme these days, repeated I'm afraid by many who are not necessarily right-wingers but are just in search of a zinger in a political argument.

The Nazis despised Socialists, and did away with them in fairly short order upon gaining power.
"National Socialism" is not a form of socialism, it is something else entirely.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:33 pm
by robertstjohn
Lenin or Stalin is the question.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:40 pm
by iratasan
i think ferris bueller said it best when he said:

Ferris: Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:48 pm
by robertstjohn
I second that.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:56 pm
by ryefish75
Fair enough. But the fact that Socialism itself lacks any concrete doctrine does not mean that Socialism -in whatever bastardized form it was- was not a basic founding tenet of the National Socialist movement that unquestionably became the Fascist state by the start of the war.

I wasn't looking for a political "zinger" per se, as much as I was hoping to nip the inevitable disintegration of any political thread here to defer to Godwin's law in the bud. NAZI- as a term is thrown around far too fast and loose these days by every political breed with any kind of opinion. I think comparing any post-WWII political movement to the Nazis diminishes greatly the atrocities committed under the swastika.

As it relates to this poster, I think this idea of SOCIALISM demonstrates a temporary and unfounded fear that the Obama administration seeks to control the means of production (see:GM, AIG, Citibank, etc.) or some unachievable egalitarian quest through national healthcare. The real problem is how governments become so caught up with special interests that they inevitably run themselves into the ground, which is more likely where were headed than any Socialist state.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:03 pm
by robertstjohn
$14 an hour at GM, said someone in the government.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 9:57 pm
by crosshair
ryefish75 wrote: NAZI- as a term is thrown around far too fast and loose these days by every political breed with any kind of opinion. I think comparing any post-WWII political movement to the Nazis diminishes greatly the atrocities committed under the swastika.

Co-sign on that.
And merely deploying that comparison, is viewed as some sort of nuclear option by those who use it.
...a way to end dialogue, and force the other party into a scramble to confront the comparison, rather than discussing the matter at hand in any meaningful way.
Which is why we have Godwin's law in the first place.

The False Equivalence, among other fallacies, seems to be enjoying a renaissance of late.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 10:36 pm
by ryefish75
crosshair wrote:The False Equivalence, among other fallacies, seems to be enjoying a renaissance of late.
Amen. And thanks for keeping me in check. I love discussing politics and all that comes with it, but most people-especially amongst the online community- are hit-and-run pundits who’d rather drop their philosophy like a dog drops what dogs drop with little expectation to validate those ideals.

Comountain hit on another brilliant analysis that seems to pass the casual observer. Is a nation or political party really following the doctrine it uses for its name? He mentioned a couple, but consider East Germany or the GDR-German Democratic Republic as it was known. Were they really democratic? Was it even remotely a republic? Perhaps to the average hapless East German at the time they were.

Makes you wonder how many Americans believe they live in a Democracy?

Great discussion all around and again, thanks for the humbling observations.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:28 pm
by piemel
kinda like coming with the theories of necons and their takeover of the world and the bush regime attacking your freedoms and civil rights?

or is that a false equivalence?

or does that only work from the left fringe towards the right fringe but not vice versa?

but getting back to my earlier question.... WHY is this to you a bad poster? seems to me its rather effective and clever.... is the 'whiteface' to close to blackface and therefor a no-no?

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:52 pm
by iratasan
i just think that there is no real thought to it.

we got a satire magazine over here called titanic that does much more drastic stuff that goes way way waaaaaaaaay beyond this on a weekly basis. they go a much more drastic way and get lawsuits flying in on a regular basis. also they have a point to what they are doing, which in this case is completely lost to me unless the point of this joker reference would be: obama wants to bring anarchy and burn the world down, which also would not be a very strong and arguable opinion. yaaawn.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:49 pm
by ryefish75
gaurdian.uk wrote:US student comes forward as creator of Obama-Joker image

Firas Alkhateeb, 20, says he made the image this past winter and didn't intend to make a political statement
Daniel Nasaw in Washington
The creator of an iconic anti-Obama image is no angry conservative frustrated at corporate bailouts and healthcare reform, but a student from the president's hometown who favoured an even more liberal presidential candidate.

The work depicting Barack Obama as Batman's archenemy the Joker, which appeared on street posters, T-shirts and bumper stickers across the country this summer, was fashioned on a lark by a bored Palestinian-American on break from university.

Firas Alkhateeb, 20, is far from one of the red-faced protesters who have shouted down Democratic politicians at constituent meetings, nor is he a smug young conservative standing against his Obama-enthralled peers.

Alkhateeb told the Los Angeles Times that he did not vote in November, but had he, he would have cast a ballot for Dennis Kucinich, one of the most liberal politicians in America. He made the image of Obama in black, white, green and red face paint this winter from a cover portrait of an October issue of Time magazine, following a tutorial on how to "Jokerise" images.

Alkhateeb said he intended no political statement. But a still anonymous Obama critic downloaded his image, removed the magazine cover banner, appended the caption "socialism", then hung posters across Los Angeles this summer.

At least since last year, critics have lobbed the long-dormant socialist charge against Obama, and the Obama-as-Joker motif was immediately adopted by conservatives of a certain stripe who neglected the fact that the Joker of the Batman tales was no Marxist-Leninist. (To the extent the hip comic villain portrayed by Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and finally Heath Ledger could be said to hold any political ideology, he was an anarchist.)

Americans debated whether the reference, with its connotation of urban chaos and crime, was racist. Critics from Los Angeles to Washington panned the street art as facile and obvious.

"The great virtue of an anonymous poster campaign is that it anticipates unspoken fears or claims, and leads the debate by insinuating and teasing out ideas that would be too explosive or alienating if simply dumped into the public forum by responsible actors," Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott wrote. "The Obama Joker poster leaves you with the sense that it has said everything it has to say, and waits only for the media to endorse the message."

Alkhateeb, meanwhile, has a different criticism of the president.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," he told the Los Angeles Times. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/au ... ge-creator

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:53 pm
by muffinslinger
he did the image but not the posters. still want to know who did the posters, i want one.

Re: Obama Socialism Joker Poster- Whodunnit?

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:56 pm
by ryefish75
muffinslinger wrote:he did the image but not the posters. still want to know who did the posters, i want one.
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