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Cartoon Regularly Featured On Big Journalism Connected To Nazi-Era Magazine

December 15, 2011 10:02 pm ET by Kevin Zieber

In at least three instances, Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism website has used an image connected to a Nazi-era German magazine noted for anti-Semitic cartoons and pro-Hitler leanings.  

The image appeared in a Big Journalism post Thursday morning written by Logan Churchwell, director of public relations at Accuracy in Media:

cartoon1

That image has since been removed from the post. Big Journalism, which is edited by CNN contributor Dana Loesch, also used the cartoon in a January 8 blog post credited to Warner Todd Huston, and in a July 2 post:

cartoon2

The cartoon appears to have originated in a 1942 edition of the German magazine Kladderadatsch

Heidelberg University in Germany maintains an online archive of Kladderadatsch. From the magazine's March 29, 1942, edition:

cartoon3

In his book The Offensive Art, Leonard Freedman, professor emeritus of political science at UCLA, wrote that the periodical, which "burst into print in 1848," came to "serve the Nazi regime docilely." Calvin College professor Randall Bytwerk, an expert on Nazi and East German propaganda, has noted Kladderadatsch's shift toward using its cartoons to express support for the Nazis:

These cartoons all come from 1934 issues of Kladderadatsch, a leading German satirical weekly that quickly adopted to National Socialism. These cartoons reflect the Nazi propaganda line at the time: Germany wanted peace, whereas the rest of the world was preparing for war.       

Heidelberg University explained that the magazine became increasingly anti-Semitic after Hitler's rise. 

A user on the white nationalist Web forum Stormfront posted the same image in 2009:

cartoon4

UPDATE: The image has been removed from the January 8 and July 2 blog posts. 

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    • Author by Nihilist (December 15, 2011 10:38 pm ET)
      12  
      whats next shylock? isnt not so breitbart and matt drudge jewish? this is Goebbels era stuff...
      Report Abuse
      • Author by phlcstgan (December 16, 2011 12:14 am ET)
        16  
        Breitbart was raised Jewish, but he's an ethnically-Irish adoptee. Of course, even if he weren't, that wouldn't change the fact that his site is literally running Nazi cartoons.
        Report Abuse
        • Author by News Corpse (December 16, 2011 3:12 am ET)
          17  
          Well he was concerned enough about the religious aspect that he erased the Star of David that is on the original cartoon character's tie. So he can't pretend that he didn't know.
          Report Abuse
          • Author by galmud (December 16, 2011 4:11 am ET)
            12  
            Noticed that too. So it's not a simple mistake of "Ooops! Oh we didnt know it was anti-Semitic!"
            Report Abuse
          • Author by Imbecile (December 16, 2011 10:11 am ET)
            9  
            Yeah, but they replaced it with Obama's campaign logo.

            I wonder what message they are trying to convey with that alteration.
            Report Abuse
          • Author by renato (December 16, 2011 12:57 pm ET)
            4  
            they also somewhat subtly reduced the bridge of the nose so it's not quite as exaggerated.

            what a bag of female vaginal cleansing fluid.
            Report Abuse
    • Author by ThomasJH268 (December 15, 2011 11:15 pm ET)
      12  
      You would think the smart people at Dimbart's sites would have caught the "New York Herald" in the picture. a revered newspaper in New York.... that ceased publication in the 1920s
      Report Abuse
      • Author by ThomasJH268 (December 15, 2011 11:19 pm ET)
        7  
        Although, to be fair, they might have meant the "New York Herald Tribune" (the successor to the aforementioned paper)...which ceased publication in the mid 1960s
        Report Abuse
        • Author by ThomasJH268 (December 15, 2011 11:23 pm ET)
          9  
          Even "Life" magazine has been out of print for the past 4 years. These a-holes can't see past their own BS to notice that it is BS
          Report Abuse
          • Author by Egbert Souse (December 16, 2011 8:00 am ET)
            5  
            And note the person reading "The New York Jew". Breibart must have inserted that.
            Report Abuse
        • Author by DennisKQV (December 16, 2011 12:41 pm ET)
            6
          If they did mean "New York Herald" and the "New York Herald" ceased publicatio in the 20's, then the cartoon would predate Nazi Germany.
          Report Abuse
          • Author by ThomasJH268 (December 16, 2011 4:19 pm ET)
            2  
            I did write two amendums to my initial post, apparently you pulled a FOXPAC manouver and only responded to the first post and ignored the other two in a desperate attempt to portray me as a liar.

            You've proven you're a moron, Dennis, good boy. have a cookie
            Report Abuse
          • Author by Conchobhar (December 16, 2011 4:25 pm ET)
               
            If they did mean "New York Herald" and the "New York Herald" ceased publicatio in the 20's, then the cartoon would predate Nazi Germany.
            That's one possibility. Of course, since it was printed in the 3/29/42 edition, they would seem to have thought it an oldie but goodie. There is also the distinct possibility that, like today's reich whingers, they don't feel they need to get their facts right.
            Report Abuse
    • Author by WilliamP (December 15, 2011 11:46 pm ET)
      16  
      And the right scoffs every time that someone accuses them of using Nazi-style propagnanda...
      Report Abuse
      • Author by Andy Kreiss (December 16, 2011 12:39 am ET)
        19  
        In their defense, there aren't a lot of artists on the right, and they're really cheap, so they're not going to shell out to license some clip art.

        They're just going to use what they have lying around, like Daddy's old Nazi stuff.
        Report Abuse
        • Author by phredicles (December 16, 2011 1:37 am ET)
          11  
          Really cheap; the Mallard Fillmore guy probably accepts payment in rubbing alcohol, but even that's too much when there's free stuff lying around that says what they're thinking.
          Report Abuse
          • Author by Andy Kreiss (December 16, 2011 2:25 am ET)
            7  
            I hate to admit it, but I used to get a Sunday paper, and I got kinda bummed when they stopped running Mallard Fillmore in the funnies. It was so nice to get a weeks worth of rambling right wing "thinking" boiled down to a couple of sentences.
            Report Abuse
            • Author by danielsangeo (December 16, 2011 2:27 am ET)
              2  
              There's a right wing comic to replace it. It stars a girl and her pet dog. The girl is your run-of-the-mill "conservative" and the dog is a stereotypical strawman "liberal". The comic is called "Pickles" or something like that. Haven't read it for a while but I doubt anything's changed.
              Report Abuse
              • Author by vgranucci2016 (December 16, 2011 11:22 am ET)
                   
                Prickly City
                Report Abuse
              • Author by Andy Kreiss (December 16, 2011 12:52 pm ET)
                2  
                I remember Prickly City, it was in the LA Times last I saw it. I think that dog was supposed to be a coyote, but he looked like a teddy bear.

                It was never funny, and if I remember right, relied a lot on that imaginary and oppressive "political correctness" theme. Sometimes it would do the fair & balanced thing, making fun of both sides; the actual conservative position and the fictional liberal position.
                Report Abuse
                • Author by bsimpson1972 (December 16, 2011 4:43 pm ET)
                  1  
                  That's because the Right has always sucked at being deliberately funny. Maybe because it takes some smarts...
                  Report Abuse
            • Author by danielsangeo (December 16, 2011 2:33 am ET)
              6  
              Woops, that's not "Pickles". Apologies to the Pickles artist.

              The name of the comic is "Prickly City".
              Report Abuse
              • Author by MickD (December 16, 2011 7:56 am ET)
                6  
                It amazes me that the Heritage/Kocks types EVEN have to be in the comics page, which used to be for talented, off-beat artist/writers, but now has to have a bias to keep brainwashing sheeple. Prickly City is totally unfunny and shoehorns the bias between the plot lines, which further waters it down.
                Report Abuse
              • Author by m.welker (December 16, 2011 8:48 am ET)
                9  
                Don't forget about the ultimate in conservative cartoons, Chick Tracts. These aren't in the newspaper, though. You gotta get these in small midwestern towns or online. A friend of mine spent a weekend in Poplar Bluff, MO, when he discovered these babies.


                My favorite article on the website that isn't a cartoon? This one. The best part is that, as early as the first sentence in an article arguing about time to discredit evolution, there is a factual error about time:

                When Neil Armstrong guided the lunar lander down toward the surface of the moon in 1970 he had many concerns


                Last I heard, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July of 1969.
                Report Abuse
                • Author by epkklk851 (December 16, 2011 10:14 am ET)
                  7  
                  The thing about the Chick Tracts that I find so offensive is the attacks on Catholics and Jews, it's like something out of the 19th Century, and some people actually buy into these things, they form the basis of their understandings of Catholics, Jews, and Mormons, as far as that goes.
                  Report Abuse
                  • Author by PopeRatzo (December 17, 2011 12:31 am ET)
                       
                    You can buy a book on the Chick web site called "The Secrets That Mormons Don't Want You to Know".

                    I used to get quite a kick out of the occasional Chick Tract I found left behind on the bus or at a subway stop. When I got a little older, the massive amounts of pure hatred that are mixed in with the frothy Jesus stories started to bother me. I don't really find them quite as funny any more. Yes, there are some pretty intense artists working on the Chick books, but there were intense artists working for the Third Reich too. I guess I learned that irony can only take you so far before it leaves you stranded in a bad neighborhood.
                    Report Abuse
                • Author by Andy Kreiss (December 16, 2011 12:54 pm ET)
                  3  
                  Big fan of the Chick tracts. I had a good collection of the hard copies years ago, but lost them somewhere along the way.

                  I think the Chick pamphlets are the reason I write "Haw haw!" instead of "LOL". The bad people always said "Haw haw!" in their stories.
                  Report Abuse
                • Author by Conchobhar (December 16, 2011 4:28 pm ET)
                     
                  Last I heard, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July of 1969.
                  He had to walk then. He didn't get his lunar landing license 'till 1970.
                  Report Abuse
              • Author by Imbecile (December 16, 2011 10:23 am ET)
                5  
                Okay, I went and found a few of those and read them. I'm not surprised to find them comprised of that special type of Republican humor that left me scratching my head and saying, "That was funny how?"

                Report Abuse
    • Author by blk-in-alabam (December 16, 2011 9:22 am ET)
      4  
      Glen Beck,and Rush Limbaugh are not the only ones who have used material from Storm Front,and National Alliance acting like it is something new.....When you take a close look at the media suits who sanction,and use this as a business model,you are looking at some real strange oxymoron _hit in the pursuit of the maximum power that a person can express over another person,,,The power to control what people say.
      Report Abuse
    • Author by takemycountryback (December 16, 2011 10:18 am ET)
      4  
      The best is that this guy was posting under "Accuracy in Media". So was he accurate? Hardly. If he were he would not have taken it down and explained the "accuracy" of his decision. So much for his accuracy.
      Report Abuse
    • Author by draftedin68 (December 16, 2011 1:32 pm ET)
      4  

      Whoever altered the original graphic needs to be fired - or have their vision checked.

      The "SAN FRANZISKO" on the top-center paper is pure German.

      Report Abuse
    • Author by gavroche (December 16, 2011 4:56 pm ET)
      1  
      The source for the doctored image (barely readable in blurry letters at the bottom of the image on the BJ site) is personallitmus.blogspot.com. The blog no longer exists, and was never indexed by The Wayback Machine.

      However, some research indicates the blog's title was "My Personal Litmus" and the blogger's first name was Michael. He drew several political cartoons in 2009 - Many of which were republished and can still be found at BobMcCarty.com. He didn't sign his cartoons with his last name, and I can't find any indication of what happened to him after 2009.

      It's possible that Michael LastNameUnknown found the doctored image somewhere else and posted it on his blog...or perhaps he was the first one to doctor it. I'm unsure.
      Report Abuse
    • Author by bsimpson1972 (December 16, 2011 4:57 pm ET)
      1  
      Some more info on "Kladderadatsch":

      http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/helios/digi/kladderadatsch.html

      Notice: University Heidelberg is one of the oldest and most conservative schools in Germany. One of their main focuses is medicine (as seen in the movie "Anatomy"). This school is infamous for only accepting the rich and well connected and also for its fraternities ("Schlagende Burschenschaften") which do their "hazing" by beating their pledges with (now dull) sabers in their "hazing"-rituals...

      BTW: "Kladderadatsch" roughly translates to "stuff" or "shebang" in English...
      Report Abuse
    • Author by archae (December 17, 2011 1:00 am ET)
      1  
      Breitbart, in a callssic case of CYA, has disappeared the Nazi cartoon.

      Now it's an equally stupid cartoon shwing the Press as being wrapped around Obama's finger.
      Report Abuse

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