Consider political cartoons as weapon because they are feared by dictatorships and tyrants across the globe

Joep Bertrams (b. 1946) is a Dutch political cartoonist. After nearly twenty years working for the Amsterdam daily Het Parool he joined De Groene Amsterdammer in 2011. He also produces animated political cartoons for the Dutch TV news show Nieuwsuur.

Can cartoons be weapons of political activism?

From caleidoscope:

The months of Emergency were the darkest times in Indian history, in more ways than one. Human rights were suspended and public liberty was at the mercy of an autocratic government. Censor officers were positioned in the editorial offices of magazines and newspapers to prevent any material, which could be deemed as critical of the government from being published. On June 28 1975, the Delhi edition of the Indian Express carried a blank editorial in protest. The Financial Express printed the poem of Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high’.

The Emergency threw India into a state of chaos and paranoia. It was in this eerie hush that Abu Abraham, one of the most celebrated cartoonists of India, asked with his trademark acerbic wit, “Don’t you think we’ve got a lovely censor of humour?”

These Political Artwork articles reflect the strong relationship between the arts and politics, particularly between various kinds of art and power, occurs across historical epochs and cultures. As they respond to contemporaneous events and politics, the arts take on political as well as social dimensions, becoming themselves a focus of controversy and even a force of political as well as social change. Also see our main section on Political Art or our extensive articles on World Protest.

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