{"id":20745,"date":"2019-09-11T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/?p=20745"},"modified":"2020-10-20T15:02:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T13:02:26","slug":"exploiting-orientalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/society\/racism\/exploiting-orientalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploiting Orientalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Considered the master of orientalist painting, here G\u00e9r\u00f4me recreates the Orient as seen by his contemporaries, an Orientalist view in line with the 19th<\/sup> century Western imagination: A fantasized image imbued with exoticism and romanticism, that combines sensuality and violence. To this extremely loaded painting, the AfD adds a controversial slogan in bold type: \u201cEuropeans vote for AfD\u201d and \u201cSo that Europe won\u2019t become \u2018Eurabia\u2019\u201d. For this unapologetically nationalistic and Europhobic party, the message is clear. The co-opted image represents an archetypical Oriental man, violent and barbarous, who threatens the freedom and integrity of the Western woman, white, pure and innocent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wave of protest quickly swelled on social media. The Clark Art Institute<\/a>, which owns the painting and is located in Williamstown, Massachusetts (USA), took offence at the painting\u2019s misuse and strongly opposed its use to advance a political agenda. But much to the Institute\u2019s director, Olivier Meslay<\/a>\u2019s regret, the image is part of public domain: \u201cthere are no copyrights or permissions that allow us to exert control over how it is used other than to appeal to civility on the part of the AfD Berlin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Christian-Democrat Union (CDU) of Germany, party of German chancellor Angela Merkel, also denounced the poster\u2019s blatant racism by tweeting: \u201cNo, real Europeans do not elect racists. Real Europeans do not defend Europe with fear and hate\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the press and Web seem in concordance against this explicit xenophobia, it is not the first time that the AfD used controversy to gain publicity. During their legislative campaign in 2017, they used the seductive image of nude women for another poster, adding the following message: \u201cBurka? We prefer bikini.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vulgarity and manipulation of these billboard campaign images recalls another scandal: that of Robert M\u00e9nard, the infamous mayor of B\u00e9ziers, France, who made front-page news with his provoking municipal flyers. One of them boasted the \u201cpolice force\u2019s new friend\u201d with a large-scale image of a gun (2015). Another depicted Islam as a religion of conquest, or even invasion, by using a photo of a crowd of migrants alongside the slogan \u201cThe State ordered them, so here they come!\u201d (2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost everywhere in Europe (aside from Luxemburg and Ireland), international conflict, terrorism and the arrival of thousands of migrants in various countries have accentuated an anti-immigration sentiment that far right political groups usurp and exploit as they please. Some political extremist personalities do not hesitate to make openly racist statements, such as Tomio Okamura<\/a> (president of the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement in the Czech Republic) or Geert Wilders<\/a>, head of the PVV (Party for Freedom) in Holland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translation by Maya Dalinsky <\/strong>Cover: Campaign billboard, 2019, Germany. \u00a9 RR<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considered the master of orientalist painting, here G\u00e9r\u00f4me recreates the Orient as seen by his contemporaries, an Orientalist view in line with the 19th century Western imagination: A fantasized image imbued with exoticism and romanticism, that combines sensuality and violence. To this extremely loaded painting, the AfD adds a controversial slogan in bold type: \u201cEuropeans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101027,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1847],"tags":[1864],"corpus":[],"post_types":[1329],"associate_editors":[],"authors":[1486],"class_list":["post-20745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","tag-racism","post_types-chronique-en","authors-zoe-cosson-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20745"},{"taxonomy":"corpus","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corpus?post=20745"},{"taxonomy":"post_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_types?post=20745"},{"taxonomy":"associate_editors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/associate_editors?post=20745"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=20745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}