Latuff depicts VTech killer as U.S. soldier in Iraq

Ah, Latuff. I haven’t heard his name since the early days of LGF, when Charles used to spotlight him regularly for the unusual viciousness of his attacks on Israel. No anti-semitic trope was too taboo — blood libels, Nazi analogies, even literal demonization. He placed second, in fact, in last year’s Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest for this excrescence. I can’t think of any American cartoonist who quite compares; even a provocateur as shameless as Rall pretends to something grander than the comic-book agitprop Latuff specializes in. (Here’s a self-portrait, fyi. The black-and-white stock and Arafat terrorist keffiyeh are there for extra “authenticity.”)

A quickie search reveals that he’s spent much of the past few years addressing the U.S. presence in Iraq, in explicitly pro-jihadi terms of course. Which brings us to his two latest works: this one will get all the attention due to its sheer noxiousness, but this one is more interesting in my opinion. There’s no overt political message to it that I can discern; it looks like, having been presented with a fresh American wound, he naturally thought to rub a little salt in it. Either that or it’s his version of a Gil Elvgren painting, i.e., a guy bringing his own considerable artistic powers to bear to see how much he can turn himself on.

Seems like a really, really good guy, though. I’m really, really sorry he’s not on our side.

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