Cartoon not at all funny

Editorial

Last week, just as the Saskatchewan provincial election campaign got under way, a New Democratic party operative distributed a cartoon that depicted the opposition Saskatchewan party leader, Elwin Hermanson, marching hordes of people identified as NDP activists onto boxcars. The allusion was clearly intended to equate the Saskatchewan party with the Nazis' extermination transports of Jews.

To say it wasn't funny is to state the blatantly obvious. Political cartoons need not be funny, of course, if their intent is to make a serious statement, but this statement was beyond repulsive.

The cartoon is a reference to a list compiled by the Saskatchewan party that included names of provincial government employees who may be subject to dismissal if a new regime takes office after the election. It is not uncommon in Canada for new governments to replace some senior bureaucrats who are perceived as being closely tied to the outgoing administration's agenda. One can argue whether that practice is correct or whether it is always carried out with fairness. But, whether the names on Hermanson's list are party hacks or dedicated civil servants is absolutely irrelevant.

The cartoon compares the firing of bureaucrats to mass murder and the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. In political commentary, there are bounds to what is appropriate and this cartoon implies that getting fired from one's government job is analogous to Hitler's Final Solution. It is insulting to Hermanson, to say the very least, but it is most repugnant to people who understand what it means to be placed on a boxcar destined for death, or worse.

To his credit, Premier Lorne Calvert reacted quickly and decisively to condemn the cartoon and to remove from his team the individual responsible.

Still, there is a larger lesson, that diminishing the tragedy of the Holocaust is a direct assault on the most fundamental respect for human dignity, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. We can only wonder when, if ever, that lesson will be learned.

^TOP