{"id":41180,"date":"2025-05-08T13:47:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T20:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=41180"},"modified":"2025-05-09T19:34:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T02:34:16","slug":"fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/08\/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"FIRED AFTER ZIONIST UPROAR, ARTIST MR. FISH WON\u2019T STOP DRAWING THE TRUTH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therealnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Eternal-Damn-Nation-scaled.jpg?fit=2000%2C804&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"&quot;Eternal Damn Nation 2021,&quot; original artwork by Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth). Art used with permission from the original artist.\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Fired after Zionist uproar, artist Mr. Fish won\u2019t stop drawing the truth | The Marc Steiner Show\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l4kctUEWSiY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>POSTED IN<a href=\"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/category\/shows\/the-marc-steiner-show\">THE MARC STEINER SHOW<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After becoming a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics for his political cartoons, Dwayne Booth (\u201cMr. Fish\u201d) was fired from the University of Pennsylvania in March. Marc Steiner speaks with Booth about his firing and how to combat the current repressive crackdown on art and dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>BY&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/author\/marc-steiner\">MARC STEINER<\/a><\/strong> MAY 6, 2025 (TheIntercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Eternal Damn Nation 2021,&#8221; original artwork by Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth). Art used with permission from the original artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>World-renowned political cartoonist&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/clowncrack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dwayne Booth<\/a>, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth\u2019s illustrations as \u201creprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/support.therealnews.com\/-\/XYPGXQHF\">At The Real News Network, we refuse to back down!<br><\/a><\/strong><mark>We\u2019re committed to telling the stories that corporate media ignores\u2014stories from Gaza, from Baltimore, from labor picket lines and prison yards, and from communities organizing for justice. But we can\u2019t do it without you.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/support.therealnews.com\/-\/XYPGXQHF\">Please don&#8217;t wait. Show your support today!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.therealnews.com\/-\/XYPGXQHF\"><strong>DONATE NOW<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Get the truth that fuels action directly into your inbox. Sign up for The Real News. Join the movement. Don\u2019t wait\u2014<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>Subscribe now<\/strong>!SIGN UP<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/posts\/fish-fired-124805975\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">In a statement<\/a>&nbsp;about his firing, Booth writes: \u201cThe reality \u2013 and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn \u2013 is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans\/black\/immigrant, and women\u2019s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research \u2013 speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this special edition of&nbsp;<em>The Marc Steiner Show<\/em>, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Producer: Rosette Sewali<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Studio Production \/ Post-Production: Cameron Granadino<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">TRANSCRIPT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I\u2019m Marc Steiner, and it\u2019s great to have you all with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump\u2019s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they\u2019ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel\u2019s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard\u2019s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Booth\u2019s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth\u2019s illustrations as reprehensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: \u201cThe reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women\u2019s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we\u2019re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we\u2019re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Great to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh my gosh. Well, that\u2019s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father\u2019s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents\u2019 house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I\u2019m not getting a job, I\u2019m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn\u2019t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn\u2019t sign it \u201cBooth\u201d because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn\u2019t just write \u201cDwayne\u201d because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn\u2019t going to go for just this straight first name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I\u2019ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons \u201cMr. Fish\u201d, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can\u2019t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I love it. I love it. So the work you\u2019ve been doing, first of all, it\u2019s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it\u2019s just innate inside of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the \u201cGuernica\u201d piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use \u201cGuernica\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, it\u2019s called \u201cEternal Damn Nation\u201d. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what\u2019s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he\u2019s portrayed eating feces \u2014 Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, it\u2019s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you\u2019re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don\u2019t want to look at it. It\u2019s important to look at these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He\u2019s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don\u2019t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The way you portray what\u2019s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that\u2019s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don\u2019t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a lost art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it\u2019s not. It\u2019s comedy, it\u2019s burlesque is what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s burlesque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s burlesque, it\u2019s parody \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s burlesque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you\u2019re telling your body, in a way, that it\u2019s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we\u2019ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it\u2019s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you\u2019re finished with it, you\u2019re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, \u201cTake away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It\u2019s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I\u2019m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They\u2019re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it\u2019s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I\u2019m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is so important to me, and you\u2019re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, The Great Dictator<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool \u2014 A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he\u2019s an idiot. He\u2019s an idiot. You\u2019re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you\u2019re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where\u2026 I don\u2019t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that\u2019s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it\u2019s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I\u2019m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There\u2019s no way around it. There\u2019s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we\u2019ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that\u2019s a privileged position? There\u2019s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there\u2019s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don\u2019t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I\u2019m saying there\u2019ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, that\u2019s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you\u2019re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what\u2019s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even\u2026 When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn\u2019t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to \u201csucceed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you\u2019re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it\u2019s going to do, if I\u2019m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we\u2019re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That\u2019s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there\u2019s examples all through history where you\u2019re penalized for that kind of thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It\u2019s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It\u2019s about pushing back against that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do \u2014 And I don\u2019t want to dive too deep into this now \u2014 But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you\u2019re not doing that, then you\u2019re not teaching, and you\u2019re not learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that\u2019s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn\u2019t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn\u2019t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can\u2019t even say the word \u201cIsrael\u201d, I can\u2019t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn\u2019t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They\u2019re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That literally happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They wanted all your communication?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. And I wasn\u2019t alone. This is what\u2019s going on on college campuses. So A, it\u2019s a really interesting thing to ask because I don\u2019t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don\u2019t. So it\u2019s not even up to me. I can say no, but they\u2019re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you\u2019re going to cooperate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that\u2019s an easy equation to make, but it\u2019s accurate. It\u2019s a hundred percent accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m really curious. Let\u2019s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Me being pushed out, it\u2019s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The one that accused you of being an antisemite?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don\u2019t look at the truth of the matter. We don\u2019t look at the specifics. We don\u2019t push back, we surrender. That\u2019s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It\u2019s the School for Communication. It has a history of\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a school where you\u2019re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And to say no when you need to say no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn\u2019t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I\u2019m an antisemite and that I\u2019m reprehensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the \u201960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember it well [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Very good. And so that\u2019s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I\u2019m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let\u2019s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don\u2019t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it\u2019s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there\u2019s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it\u2019s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we\u2019re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we\u2019re back in this old ridiculous argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And luckily, I\u2019m not alone. I\u2019m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m going to France, actually, and I\u2019m going to interview Robert Crumb. I\u2019m staying over his house. Oh, that\u2019s great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, that\u2019s great. He must be really old now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. I\u2019m really looking forward to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I was at Washington Free Press back in the \u201960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn\u2019t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there \u2014 Well, let\u2019s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we\u2019ve heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the idea as a journalist, what you\u2019re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I\u2019m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it\u2019s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we\u2019re just stories. We\u2019re really just stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Storytellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I don\u2019t\u2026 Well, again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s part of what got you fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it\u2019s always there, it\u2019s just below the surface. It doesn\u2019t take much to unleash it. So I think we\u2019re in this very dangerous moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we\u2019re in trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you mean by that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they\u2019ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can\u2019t have an argument that says, you\u2019re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they\u2019re two different things. And if you\u2019re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is. I don\u2019t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted \u2014 My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You\u2019re going there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. There is that. Yep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what I\u2019m saying to all that, I\u2019m saying it\u2019s a very complicated matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that\u2019s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because again, that\u2019s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don\u2019t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I\u2019m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they\u2019re called, they\u2019re shut down by people who don\u2019t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don\u2019t admit that they\u2019re antisemitic or racist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, and the question, they don\u2019t admit it. So again, so that\u2019s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don\u2019t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can\u2019t burn that flag. I\u2019m an American, it\u2019s hurting my heart. Let\u2019s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It\u2019s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it\u2019s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it\u2019s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I\u2019ve been Chris Hedges\u2019s illustrator for a very long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He used to work out of this building [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you\u2019re doing cartoons or you\u2019re doing any illustrations, what you\u2019re trying to do, you\u2019re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it\u2019s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges\u2019s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges\u2019s articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer\u2019s publication. And I\u2019ve known Bob for decades. And if you don\u2019t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can\u2019t believe he\u2019s still rolling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is. He\u2019s 89.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so again, there I am \u2014 And I\u2019ve had hate mail. I\u2019ve had death threats before. I\u2019ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was\u2026 All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We\u2019ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can\u2019t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it\u2019s not accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I\u2019ll ask you a question. I\u2019ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It\u2019s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not Netanyahu. I know which\u2026 Is it with the dove?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s right, I\u2019m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus\u2019s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That\u2019s not the reaction you want us to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that\u2019s probably the leading one that people \u2014 And now when all this started up, again, they don\u2019t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\u2019re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, no. But in the cartoon, it\u2019s actually, it\u2019s power brokers. These guys look like they\u2019re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of\u2026 And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they\u2019re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they\u2019re power brokers at a cocktail party. It\u2019s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So they\u2019re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says \u201cGaza\u201d. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn\u2019t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn\u2019t know what blood libel was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m sure you didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody\u2019s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you\u2019re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there\u2019s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you\u2019re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you\u2019re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let\u2019s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power \u2014 Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it\u2019s used and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she\u2019s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I\u2019m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don\u2019t need it to be that, because you don\u2019t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn\u2019t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren\u2019t trying to do that? I\u2019m like, no, I wasn\u2019t trying to do that. So that\u2019s what that one was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I\u2019m glad we talked about this because I think that\u2026 I\u2019m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\u2019re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because your cartoons, they\u2019re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they\u2019re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it\u2019s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It\u2019s like you can\u2019t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn\u2019t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Trump one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, no, no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, the blood libel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, yeah \u2014 Don\u2019t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that\u2019s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we\u2019re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don\u2019t have to shout. You don\u2019t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there\u2019s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There\u2019s just no way. There\u2019s too many bodies, there\u2019s too many dead people. There\u2019s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It needs not to be happening. [I\u2019ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn\u2019t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about\u2026 I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel\u2019s doing to Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I\u2019ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That\u2019s also what I\u2019m [crosstalk] \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They\u2019re very difficult talks to have people just\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because it\u2019s an emotional issue as much as it\u2019s a \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014 Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it\u2019s not just his little typical political cartoon. It\u2019s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That\u2019s what I felt looking at your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, yeah, yeah. It\u2019s funny because just hearing you say that, it\u2019s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I\u2019m already onto the next one. And I\u2019ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I\u2019ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don\u2019t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He\u2019s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you\u2019re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I\u2019m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what\u2019s going on, then I post it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I\u2019ll let you think of it since I don\u2019t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it\u2019s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he\u2019s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let\u2019s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don\u2019t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We\u2019ve seen what that looks like. Let\u2019s, OK, satire. But let\u2019s talk about, let\u2019s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there\u2019s some Israeli warships. And it\u2019s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody\u2019s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that\u2019s what I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that\u2019s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I\u2019m going to show you what that looks like as something that\u2019s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, \u201cA Modest Proposal\u201d, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it\u2019s very interesting because it\u2019s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don\u2019t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem \u2014 Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It\u2019s been completely normalized. Look what\u2019s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that \u201cModest Proposal\u201d was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m curious. The first one is, where\u2019s that latest cartoon published?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I\u2019ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does\u2026 Gosh, what\u2019s it called? The Capitol\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I should know this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Myself. I should know this too, because I\u2019ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Capitol Hill Citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s it. See, I missed the word \u201chill\u201d. Thank God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Capitol Hill Citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I\u2019d rather \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that you\u2019ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn\u2019t know whether it was the latest one you\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that\u2019s hyperbole, you\u2019re being crazy. But we\u2019re not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, it\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it\u2019s just what I\u2019ve always done, but the other part is I don\u2019t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don\u2019t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That\u2019s what I see out there. And it\u2019s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they\u2019re targeting people who are not citizens, but what\u2019s next? We all know the poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But at the same time, I feel like it\u2019s a responsibility that I have, and I\u2019m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it\u2019s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I\u2019m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And I\u2019d had conversations, remember, that there\u2019s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we\u2019re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can\u2019t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s another colleague I have who\u2019s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he\u2019s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let\u2019s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can\u2019t do it because I\u2019ll lose my job. I can\u2019t do it because I\u2019ll be targeted and I\u2019m too afraid. I can\u2019t get close to this subject, my editor won\u2019t let me do it, so I can\u2019t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I\u2019ve been jailed. I\u2019ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, the United States is, by and large, it\u2019s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we\u2019ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we\u2019ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don\u2019t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we\u2019re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It\u2019s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we\u2019ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dwayne Booth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marc Steiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you\u2019d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I\u2019ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I\u2019m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.<a href=\"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/author\/marc-steiner\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/author\/marc-steiner\">MARC STEINERHOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Host, The Marc Steiner Show<\/strong><br>Marc Steiner is the host of &#8220;The Marc Steiner Show&#8221; on TRNN. He is a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has spent his life working on social justice issues. He walked his first picket line at age 13, and at age 16 became the youngest person in Maryland arrested at a civil rights protest during the Freedom Rides through Cambridge. As part of the Poor People\u2019s Campaign in 1968, Marc helped organize poor white communities with the Young Patriots, the white Appalachian counterpart to the Black Panthers. Early in his career he counseled at-risk youth in therapeutic settings and founded a theater program in the Maryland State prison system. He also taught theater for 10 years at the Baltimore School for the Arts. From 1993-2018 Marc&#8217;s signature \u201cMarc Steiner Show\u201d aired on Baltimore\u2019s public radio airwaves, both WYPR\u2014which Marc co-founded\u2014and Morgan State University\u2019s WEAA.<br>&nbsp;<br>marc@therealnews.com<br>&nbsp;<br>@marcsteiner<a href=\"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/author\/marc-steiner\">More by Marc Steiner<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>POSTED INTHE MARC STEINER SHOW After becoming a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics for his political cartoons, Dwayne Booth (\u201cMr. Fish\u201d) was fired from the University of Pennsylvania in March. Marc Steiner speaks with Booth about his firing and how to combat the current repressive crackdown on art and&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/08\/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41197,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41180\/revisions\/41197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}