Graphic Interlude: Creating the Enemy
Abstracts
This graphic interlude features pictures illustrating this issue’s topic: creating the enemy.
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With Anonymous artist
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Figure 1. George Cruickshank, The Radical’s Arms (1819)

Source: https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/guillotine-knitting-terror
1The Radical’s Arms by English caricaturist George Cruickshank is a good example of British counter-revolutionary propaganda stereotyping the French after 1789, with the guillotine a symbol of terror and anarchy.
2Sir John Tenniel's “A Lesson” (1879), published in Punch, may be subverting the enemy image. While the Zulu warrior appears as primitive and uncivilized as can be expected for the time, that he schools an Englishman, by writing in English no less, suggests “savages” should not be underestimated.
3Children's author Theodor Seuss “Ted” Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss, worked as an editorial cartoonist for the paper PM from 1941 to 1943. His work reflects a fundamental difference in American propaganda during World War II: Hitler and Nazism were the enemy rather than the German people whereas the Japanese as a whole were very much portrayed through racist tropes.
Figure 4. Cover of Time magazine, 26 October 1987, Vol. 130, No. 17.

Source: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601871026,00.html
4In October 1987, Time published a series of photographs collected by journalist Rick Smolan and editor David Cohen. Despite Lenin's portrait being somewhat reminiscent of Big Brother’s in 1984, this cover really subverts the enemy image of the Soviets during the Cold War. Instead of soldiers, the Soviets are represented by three little girls in white dresses, a symbol of innocence and purity. The photograph suggests that the enemy isn’t the Soviet people, but the Soviet system; such a distinction heralds the end of the Cold War.
Figure 5. Sinchon Massacre, Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, North Korea

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinchon_Museum_of_American_War_Atrocities
5The Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities in North Korea presents numerous exhibits seeking to expose the barbarity of American soldiers during the Korean War. This painting is a particularly good example of the male enemy brutalizing a powerless female.
6From the far-right website Breitbart, the section “real threats” uses a stereotypical image of the Muslim terrorist. Breitbart regularly mocks Islam as a fake “religion of peace” to convey the idea that all Muslims are dangerous for Western civilization.
List of illustrations
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Electronic reference
Theodor Seuss Geisel, Rick Smolan and David Cohen, “Graphic Interlude: Creating the Enemy”, Angles [Online], 10 | 2020, Online since 01 April 2020, connection on 22 April 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/422; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.422
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The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
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