Editor’s note: This letter in response to the political cartoon published in Friday’s issue of the Daily Lobo.
Editor,
I am a proud Democrat, and I plan on voting for President Obama in November. I have been alternately dismayed and amused by the strange transformations that the Republican Party has undergone in the past four years.
That being said, I thought the editorial cartoon that you ran in last Friday’s edition of the Lobo was absolutely inappropriate. The cartoon depicted “Hurricane Romney,” and listed the components of his candidacy: “Racism,” “Lies,” “Hate” and “War on Women.” That’s not the worst of it, however. “Hurricane Romney” wasn’t depicted as a normal hurricane swirl — it was shaped like a swastika.
This was wrong. Period. It was wrong when right-wing protesters compared the president of the United States to Adolf Hitler during the debate over health care reform. It is wrong now for those on the left to invoke the swastika to attack Romney.
Symbols matter. The swastika stands for the most abhorrent manifestation of evil this world has ever seen: the systematic, calculated murder of 6 to 12 million men, women and children. That symbol stands for a war that extinguished 60 million lives.
Employing that symbol in a partisan debate cheapens the suffering and sacrifice of the dead, and is corrosive to our public life.
Of course, the artist had the First Amendment right to draw the cartoon, and of course you, dear editor, had the right to publish it. But the First Amendment does not absolve one of responsibility or immunize one from social criticism.
Everyone deplores the current state of public discourse in this country. Attacking people we don’t agree with by calling them Nazis feeds the problem. By using these tactics or by giving a platform to such claims, we sink deeper and deeper into the poisonous swamp that politics has become.
There’s plenty of fair ground on which to attack Romney. You could go after his budget proposal for not adding up. You could attack the drastic domestic-spending cuts that vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan has proposed in the past. Please continue to act as a forum in which people can express their political views.
But I ask of you this: do not sink to the level of last Friday’s cartoon.
I will leave you with the words of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. They convey far more eloquently than I ever could the power behind such symbols, and why they must not be trifled with:
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“You spoke of Jewish children, Mr. President; 1 million Jewish children perished. If I spent my entire life reciting their names, I would die before finishing the task. Mr. President, I have seen children — I have seen them being thrown in the flames alive. Words — they die on my lips.”
Van Snow
UNM student
