Analyze That
Earlier this week I wrote about a notorious picture of antisemitic protesters at the Davos Conference in Switzerland. A European reader writes
I think you’re partially wrong here.
I don’t know if it’s the same in the US, but over here in the Netherlands, the golden calf is a symbol of blind greed (the veneration of Mammon and all that) and has nothing whatsoever to do with Jews or Israel (apart from it being a biblical story, of course). As such, it’s an obvious symbol for protests against the World Economic Forum (a group of rich bastards blinded by greed etc.).
It’s the yellow star “Rumsfeld” is wearing that makes it anti-semitic.
I take my reader’s point, though the Golden Calf in conjunction with the yellow star would compound the antisemitism by signifying the canards about money-grubbing, market-manipulating Jewish financiers.
On reviewing the picture, however, it’s at least possible that the masked marchers are a separate group from whoever is carrying the Golden Calf. The angle makes it hard to tell, and the Calf is big. That would tend to make the “Calvers” lesser assholes. (Nothing can exculpate the Yellow Star pair.) Against this possibility must be set some visual evidence: a figure to the rear of the Calf carries a wooden club that looks similar to the club “Sharon” carries. That suggests that it’s all one big group, no?
Finally, there’s an outside chance that “Rumsfeld” is just a moron, and imagines that the yellow star somehow indicts Rumsfeld for antisemitism rather than participating in it. You’d have to be really clueless about symbols and pretty muddleheaded as a thinker, but we are talking about anti-globos. Verdict: Guilty until the guy appears on my door with a plausible account of how I completely misinterpreted his art.
