Happy Merchant
| Happy Merchant | |
|---|---|
| File:The Happy Merchant.jpg Edited caricature illustration of a stereotypical Jewish man by "A. Wyatt Mann". | |
| First appearance | Artwork by A. Wyatt Mann |
The Happy Merchant is a common name for an image depicting an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish man. The image appears commonly on websites such as 4chan or X (formerly Twitter) where it is frequently used in hateful or disparaging contexts.
History
The stereotypical image of a Jew from the cartoon began to spread on various internet communities, where users began to make variations of it.[1] The Happy Merchant meme endorses the idea that Jews secretly conspire to conquer the world.[2]
Description
The image is intended as a derogatory depiction, and employs many stereotypes of Jews. These include:
- A large, hook-shaped nose ("Jewish nose");
- A yarmulke (Jewish head garment);
- A malevolent smile, with a slightly hunched back and hands being rubbed together, to indicate greed or scheming;
- Balding, tightly curled black hair and a tightly curled black beard.[3]
Use
This image is a form of antisemitic propaganda, common on alt-right internet communities such as 4chan, other "chan" websites, and on other message boards.[4] In 2017, Al Jazeera tweeted an image that included the Happy Merchant on its official English-language Twitter account. The tweet was promoting a story about climate change, and insinuated that Jewish people were behind climate change. Al Jazeera later deleted the tweet, explaining that it had been used in a segment covering alt-right antisemitic climate change conspiracy theories.[5] A 2018 study published by Savvas Zannettou et al. focused on online antisemitism recorded that the Happy Merchant and its variations were "among the most popular memes on both 4chan's /pol/ board and Gab, two major outlets for alt-right expression.[6] The study found that usage of the Happy Merchant on /pol/ remained largely consistent (with a peak during the US airstrike on Syria in April 2017), while usage of the meme on Gab increased after the Charlottesville rally in August 2017.[7] It was also determined that /pol/ influences the spread of Happy Merchant to other web platforms such as Twitter and Reddit.[8] The same study also found that the Happy Merchant has been incorporated into other common memes on the site, including Pepe the Frog.[9]
References
Notes
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs named:0 - ↑ Perry, Marvin., and Frederick M. Schweitzer.Antisemitic Myths: a Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.
- ↑ Savvas 2019, p. 2.
- ↑ "The Happy Merchant". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
- ↑ Kestenbaum, Sam (May 31, 2017). "Al Jazeera Tweets, Then Deletes, Anti-Semitic 'Greedy Jew' Meme". The Forward. Archived from the original on July 30, 2021. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
- ↑ Zannettou, Savvas, Tristan Caulfield, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. "On the Origins of Memes by Fringe Web Communities." arXiv.org, September 22, 2018. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512.
- ↑ Savvas 2019, p. 9.
- ↑ Savvas 2019, p. 11.
- ↑ Savvas 2019, p. 10.
Bibliography
- Zannettou, Savvas (November 24, 2019). "A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism". arXiv:1809.01644 [cs.CY].
External links
- Happy Merchant entry at Know Your Meme