Facebook's $19 billion acquisition of Whatsapp seems to have disturbed many Internet users in Germany. I guess coming on the heels of the NSA spy revalations Mark Zuckerberg's move was too much to bear. Too much even for the respected, left-leaning liberal daily newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which published a cartoon depicting Zuckerberg as a grasping Jewish octopus intent on capturing every computer:
Anyone familiar with Nazi propaganda will immediately recognize the image.
Spiegel columnist Georg Diez commented:
Der ganze Vorgang zeigt vor allem eins: Rassismus, Ressentiment, Antisemitismus existieren nicht am Rand der Gesellschaft, nicht in fernen Ländern, sondern genau hier, genau in der Mitte.
(Above all the whole incident shows that racisim, resentiment, antisemitism don't exist on the extreme edge of society, nor in far-away countries. Rather, it is exactly here, exactly in the center.)
The cartoonist has since issued an apology for the "misunderstanding."
0 comment
🙂
The cartoonist seems to value our traditions 😀
I guess some more time will have to pass until something like this can be published without the authors being forced to “apologize” afterwards.
I am respecting all Internet traditions.
Seriously, that is one ugly cartoon.