Cartoon reactions to the Brussels bombings

March 24, 2016 • 7:45 am

There have been various cartoons and tw**ted artwork about the Brussels bombings, and Grania and I have collected a few below:

From artist Plantu, President of  

Many of the cartoons feature the famous “Mannekin Pis” (“little dude pees”) statue erected in Brussels in 1618/1619:

Screen Shot 2016-03-23 at 10.13.41 PM

And of course many feature Tintin, the beloved reporter/detective who combed the world for malfeasance with his dog Snowy. Characteristically, Salon has objected that these cartoons are inappropriate because Tintin’s creator, Hergé, had a “reactionary and racist history,” and, indeed, I’ve seen blacks depicted as invidious stereotypes in the comic. Still . . .  is this a time to carp about that? It took only a day for the Authoritarian Lefists who populate Salon to tell us who we could and could not use to memorialize the murder victims. This is virtue signalling, but of course Salon is the model for that.

https://twitter.com/VLADDO/status/712241491280838657

 

Banksy, too, has weighed in:

https://twitter.com/thereaIbanksy/status/712331586008526849

And what is a memorial to Beligum without frites?

Finally, our own Pliny the in Between contributes a cartoon on his/her site Evolving Perspectives:

Untitled.001

48 thoughts on “Cartoon reactions to the Brussels bombings”

  1. The first cartoon with the piss boy is lame and morally disingenuous. He should be urinating on a pile of sacred books. Guns are inanimate objects and thus morally neutral. Firepower is a great neutralizer and can be used for good or bad and is the weapon of choice to ending jihad terrorism.

    1. Firepower is a great unequalizer you mean – the most weaponized person/group/nation can rule.

      If it can end this terrorism, and it may well be one of the means same as it started it by the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan before that), it is simply because they started it.

      People don’t make wars, guns makes wars.

    2. I think that cartoon is a reaction to Belgium being a major importation centre of illegal firearms, such as the AK-47.

  3. How expressive this art form! It is an ideal way to achieve a feeling of shared public feeling. It seems to help by accepting the fact of the tragedy and encouraging us to move on. The best way to answer terrorism is to continue to live without fear and paralysis.

  6. I do get tired of the moments of silence, the prayers for the dead or soon to be, the vigils or the prayer walks. Yes, whatever works for you… What is really the difference between this and the nightly shootings in a city near you. Oh yes, and more prayer walks.

    I would much rather hear, what are you going to do about it.

    1. What I would do about it is to arm, train, organize and warn the potential victims. *Nous sommes toutes (Charlie et) Bruxelles. Laissez (Charlie et) Bruxelles se defende!*

  8. I completely agree. I’m thoroughly fed up with all this pious, Kumbayaya “can’t we all just get along” garbage that seems to fill the airwaves after each bloodbath. All it does is mark time until the next terrorist atrocity.

    I want to hear about massive airstrikes targeting the IS leadership in Raqqa and Mosul. I want to hear about troops being sent into the muslim ghettos of Paris and Brussels to root out the terrorist cells and their supporters. I want to hear about western mosques that act as platforms for hate preachers and as academies for the next generation of jihadists being closed down. I want to hear about strict border controls being imposed across Europe to stop the influx of migrants from the Middle East. I want to hear about mass deportations of illegal immigrants. I want to hear about a zero-tolerance policy towards muslim supremacism, misogyny and anti-Semitism in the west. I want to hear my government pledge its unequivocal support to Israel as it struggles to maintain itself as an island of civilisation in a sea of Islamic barbarism.

    Will I hear any of these things? Unlikely. But, hey, I can read a lot of comforting hashtag messages until the time comes to mop the blood off the streets again.

    1. “I want to hear about troops being sent into the muslim ghettos of Paris and Brussels to root out the terrorist cells and their supporters.”

      As it transpired, the Belgian police has been completely ignoring Muslim no-go zones for years, and only in the last three months started looking into the Muslim ghettos for possible terror suspects.

      So NO to Muslim no-go zones throughout Belgium, France and Sweden. No more muslim self-ghettoization!!!

    2. “I want to hear about strict border controls being imposed across Europe to stop the influx of migrants from the Middle East.”

      Everything but that. It’s people like the Brussels bombers that the migrants are fleeing /from/. Far more Muslims have been the victims of ISIS attacks since Paris than Europeans.

      /@

      1. If those migrants are fleeing from people like the Brussels bombers, then why are better than three-fourths of them military-age men? Refugees fleeing a war-zone take their whole families with them; they don’t leave their women and children and old folks behind to die.

        If they’re fleeing the war in Syria, then why are so many of them from Somalia, Chad, Niger, Pakistan and other Muslim countries far from Syria?

        If all they want is peace and a better life, then why do they make a habit of attacking, robbing and raping innocent people in the countries that have taken them in?

        For that matter, why won’t their fellow Muslim countries take them in?

        Let’s be honest; those poor-poor “Syrian refugees” aren’t in Europe to assimilate. They’ve come to conquer, in the name of Allah.

        Deport them all — to Mecca. Let them become the Saudis’ problem.

          1. Europol warned yesterday that there are some 5,000 potential terror suspects threatening Europe. Again, 5,000… considering how much destruction just 3 of them could do in Brussels, that’s an absolutely disturbing piece of news. And still, I worry that Europol doesn’t know the half of it.

        1. (If the link doesn’t work, you can find it by Googling his name and the date at the end of the url.)

        1. Whilst that uber tiresome female Mary Beard writes articles in the Guardian about how the current situation equates to the “refugee problem” that faced ancient Rome. Apparently Rome fell, she tells us, because it wasn’t sufficiently accommodating to them when they could have done so much for Roman civilisation – never mind the sackings, the violence and anarchy, and the centuries of dark ages. … and as for the state of the Labour party now

    3. Do you want to build a 40-foot wall too? You, along with Trump, don’t learn much from history, do you? All these things have been tried, and none of them have worked, and in fact have made the situation worse. We’re already bombing ISIS as best we can, but how do you single out “IS leadership” without harming the civilians they live amongst? How do you identify terrorist cells with troop invasions of neighborhoods? How do you deport millions of immigrants who are themselves running from ISIS? Where would you send them?

      Your simplistic and cruel plans wouldn’t solve the problem, and in the process would alienate millions of people who would then be more likely to become radicalized.

      1. From the bottom up, what makes you think those poor-poor “refugees” aren’t already “radicalized”? They’ve shown by their behavior that they have no intention of “assimilating”, and better than 80% of them are already fundamentalist Muslims who want to impose Sharia law everywhere they go.

        Where I would deport them to is the place where all good Muslims want to go at least once in their lives: Mecca. Let the Saudis use their oil-billions to take care of them.

        The way to tell the Jihadists from the harmless civilians whom they like to use for human shields is to employ spy-sats and spy-drones. Pick out precisely who and where the fanatics are, and then send precise bombs and missiles to kill them — and nobody else. The US hasn’t been doing this, so we can fairly say that the US has not been fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh “as best we can”.

        A “forty-foot wall” is only half the story; the barrier must be well and constantly patrolled in order to work. History *has* shown that such vigilance will work, whatever the barrier is. You don’t see hoards of refugees running across the border into North Korea, do you?

        1. I saw a video where someone from Qatar argued that no way could they take in any refugees because the country is very rich and the refugees very very poor and they just would not *fit in*. Totally different culture dontcha know!

    4. Actually I think we start going wrong immediately we start talking about cowardly terrorist attacks.

      Terrorism usually implies there is some political aim behind the attacks, and therefore ‘something’ that can be bargained over.

      In the case of the ISIS inspired attacks I believe we are seeing proselytization by warriors (in their eyes). They use violence against unbelievers to spread the word of God. Once you recognize that no political accommodation is possible with these people then possible courses of reaction become more straightforward. Plus, sadly, all the hashtags, cartoons, and candles provide nothing beyond support in grief. Solidarity means nothing to those who have no political aims.

      1. “You, along with Trump, don’t learn much from history, do you?”

        The most relevant lesson from history is that civilisations which fail to defend themselves from external enemies will ultimately be conquered by those enemies. The same is true of cultures which allow themselves to be subverted from within. That’s the situation Europe is faced with now.

        And as for Trump, I doubt whether it’s practical to build a physical barrier all along the US/Mexican border, but his objective of stopping illegal cross-border immigration and removing those illegals already present on American soil is one that I support completely.

      2. We need to expect Islam to be more moderate, stop excusing the illiberal behaviour and call out the snowflakes including comfortable professionals who happily back this form of multiculturalism for acceptance and career – for what they are. WE need to trumpet the virtues of the enlightenment and fund and set up new humanities institutes that don’t allow POMO interpretations. We also need to regulate schools more and expect our politicians to not be supine about faith issues.

    3. Took me a bit to unleash the meaning…but I see how cruelly brilliant it is. There are few motifs in our civilization as potent as satire.

  10. So sick of this kumbaya bullshit, as people are being butchered by these animals.

    Stop Muslim immigration into Europe, go into these ‘no go’ areas, kill any sympathizers, put in police and investigators to break up jihadist groups.

    But for gods sake stop letting these people immigrate into your countries.

    Europe was a place of light, now its a place of darkness.

  11. The Pliny cartoon is a stroke of genius.
    Sadly, I doubt too many of the people who should be stung by it are capable of removing their heads from their own backsides for long enough to see it, let alone let the message strike home, and those who will see it will, no doubt, lack the self-awareness and introspection to see themselves in in,or the intellectual honesty to accept the criticism.

    Bravo! Pliny, Bravo!

  12. Saw a tweet yesterday wherein the tweeter was more upset over the hashtag #stopislsm than over the bombing.

    Yep. We must protect the special snowflakes who would probably stone you to death for not covering up , lady.

  13. On Tintin: yes, early adventures were pretty racist. (Some libraries have removed _Tintin in the Congo_.)

    But Herge seems to have learned, partially perhaps, from his mistakes. The story of how some Chinese students contacted him was interesting. Of course, the Chinese adventure takes place in Tibet, so it isn’t politically correct on that light either … (I’m perfectly sympathetic with protesting and fighting against the authoritarian brutality against Tibetans, but the historical situation as to independence seems to me to be tricky.)

    But what can you do when your most famous citizen was a cartoon character anyway?

    1. You are forgetting Jean-Claude van Damme, the superbly named ‘muscles from Brussels’.
      And sprouts (yes, I know they’re not, but a joke doesn’t care about facts).

  14. While MSM covers Brussels from dawn to midnight, with the same slim facts and fear-mongering, no one seems to have noticed that the Arizona primary was sabotaged and local Democratic organization may have filched a victory for Hillary.
    I am confident that the Belgian government can take care of itself. The criminals responsible are locals, and those still alive seem to pose no danger to the US. The dangers to our democracy lie elsewhere.

    1. For us Arizonans there’s a simple solution, already available; vote by mail-in ballot, timed to arrive just before election day. I’ve been doing that for years, and haven’t had to stand in line at the polls since Clinton the First was in office.

  15. You know, before resorting to the measures some here are calling for, it might be a good idea to get a little perspective.
    As horrific as these attacks are, the chance of any of us of being a victim of terrorism is so slim as to be almost zero, so if you really want to minimise the chance of harm to life and limb may I suggest you take some of the following steps?
    First, stop worrying so much; stress-related heart attacks kill more Westerners in a day than Islamists have managed to kill since 8\11\2001.
    Stop eating crap and avoiding exercise; chances are your diet and inertia will see you off long before a terrorist gets the chance.
    Stop cycling.
    Stop crossing the road.
    Don’t drive.
    Don’t keep a firearm in your house.
    Don’t drink alcohol to excess.
    Avoid touching electrical items.
    Stop smoking.
    Avoid stairs.

    There are a million more immediate risks to your lives than terrorists. Obviously we cannot ignore terrorism, but let’s not go full Trump just yet.

    1. its not so much a question of how many killed as the effect on the functioning and culture of the state. We need to continue with our lives but not gloss over the effects of creeping islamism and the need to not give it constant intellectual excuses.

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