Racist Daily Mail cartoon equates immigrants with animals

Since Daily Mail stories turn up here on DU sometimes, I think this is a good reminder of why Mail stories should always be treated with extreme suspicion - always ask "are they lying to make the Left look bad? Are they lying to make immigrants or Muslims look bad?"

I don't trust the Daily Mail, so let's get that out of the way, and I don't pretend to know all of the political background surrounding Labour, immigration, etc. I do know that the Mail has a history of being offensively anti-immigration. But I'm not sure I buy the premise.

If the animal used was one with a history of being associated with an ethnic group, ok...I'd buy it. But is the sheep just such a animal?

The way I read it is in a Santorum kinda way: Labour is such a socially permissive party that it allows marriage with animals. ANd that THAT is taking a socially liberal agenda too far. It's not JUST immigrants, but also sheep.

The main reason I read it this way is because there IS a long history of sheep being used for sex jokes in the UK (and Australia, and it's other former colonies).

I still find the cartoon offensive (in the same way I find Santorum offensive), but not for reasons of racism. Is there more to the story in the UK than I know?

And, as explanation at the top of this page - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/coffeebreak/cartoons/mac.html (11th Feb, if anyone is looking at this after today):

"It has been revealed that Labour's immigration policy was not to open the flood gates merely to fill jobs but to create a multicultural society and anger right wingers in the country."

Yeah, there are shades of Santorum equating homosexuality with bestiality in it. But just as that's homophobic to say "it'll be sheep next", it's racist to say "it'll be sheep next" when the story to be commented on is Labour immigration policy and its supposed multicultural aim (which wasn't hte aim anyway, but the Mail is pretending it was).

that I'm missing, I still think it's a fail. I still see it as an equation of "multicultural" with "multi-species-cultural," in the same idiotic way Santorum equated homosexuality with bestiality.

The signifiers just do not work otherwise, unless "sheep" signifies something to the UK public other than . So the cartoonist failed to make his point overtly racist, if that was his intent.

Now, clearly, the Mail has been racist in the past, and will continue to be racist in the future, but that in itself is not enough to establish as signifier.

(see, for example, the ways animals were used as signifiers in Maus, or how hogs have long been used as signifiers of robber-barons/the wealthy, etc.)

It may be generally anti-foreigner rather than specific to a particular race: 'mixing of the cultures'. However, it is an extremely nasty and offensive cartoon.

I would also add that, though homophobia is a serious problem in Britain and *is* whipped up in the RW tabloids, it is much less key to politics in Britain than in America. Our most important form of bigotry is against immigrants and their descendants - often hard to separate from plain old racism.

I agree that it is a nasty little cartoon. No question. But I'm not even referring specifically to an anti-gay agenda, just the decades of British and colonial sex humor that uses, specifically, sheep. That in itself is a signifier of "the other," and it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific other. After all, isn't buggery often used in British humor as an ethnic signifier (the Turks, the Greeks, the French, etc.). I can see this being an extension of that process, though I cannot be certain that such things could/would be applied to Muslims, who are likely the immigrants being referenced here (?).

Of course, it was that assumption that made the cartoon's signification problematic for me. does NOT equal in my lexicon of racist iconography. Maybe Turk, maybe Cypriot, probably Greek, definitely Scot/Kiwi/Aussie. But then maybe that's the point. Vague enough to reference something not jolly well British but (hopefully) not specific enough to raise the ire of those its meant to offend.

But I shall close with something I frequently find myself saying to myself. Fucking Daily Mail.

I think I agree with Jackinthegreen here; the cartoon, while crude and not particularly funny, needs closer inspection.

The groom is meant to represent a farmer, maybe a yokel or country bumpkin. Look at the way the face is drawn. Look at the work boots. The image has been cropped. You can look at the entire cartoon here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250059/Mac--multicultural-UK.html

In the background are, in your 'normal' church wedding,the pews with the groom's family. Note the single tooth, the frumpy women. The scenario is a redneck marrying his favourite sheep.

To be honest, I first thought this was an Aussie drawn cartoon making fun of New Zealanders who are the brunt of many southern hemisphere 'irish' type jokes.

On the whole, I don't see this as particularly racist.

It's about Labour, immigration and and multiculturalism. The cartoon explicitly states that. It's saying that a claimed desire to bring in 'other cultures' to Britain is either on a par with, or the 'slippery slope' to, getting your culture from animals.

"a claimed desire to bring in 'other cultures' to Britain is either on a par with...getting your culture from animals."

I think my initial critique still stands, but what it amounts to is only a major FAIL on the part of the cartoonist to use adequate signifiers in an appropriate way.

But you have clarified the underlying racism in a way that now seems so obvious that I feel a tiny bit dumb. No easy feat, so good on you!

Sorry I had misunderstood you a bit.

That paper was a big supporter of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. They cheerleaded Hitler and Mussollini pretty well right up until the invasion of Poland, ad the UK's entry into WWII.

There are still plenty of old people in the UK who refer to the Daily mail as the "Daily Heil."

and Arab immigrants in England.

It's worth reading.