Benjamin Rosenbaum has made a Lazyweb Request for people with mad graphic design skillz to make up posters parodying the rather nasty SVP “black sheep” poster of which you may have heard. Or not, depending on what news you get. The image has a white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland whilst other white sheep look on like, well, like sheep. The SVP is supporting a policy of deporting foreigners convicted of ... well, look, nobody really cares about the policy issue, do they? Because the image is quite clearly about beating up black people sheep, and how white sheep should either help or stay out of the way.
Mr. Rosenbaum has, unsurprisingly, some rather good ideas for anti-SVP posters. I’d be inclined, myself, to just make up some stickers of wolves and paste those over the lower-left sheep (the one doing the kicking). Wouldn’t we be safer? Of course, defacing other people’s political posters would be wrong (not in all cases more wrong than not defacing them, but wrong anyway), so Mr. Rosenbaum’s idea of competing posters would probably be better. So, Gentle Readers, feel free to help the man out.
This also ties in with what Chris Cobb was saying in response to my note about persuasion. The issue here is not persuading the SVP gang that their racism is disgusting and evil. That would be nice, but isn’t the point. The point is persuading people who might be inclined to take seriously the policy measure in question, to weigh its merits and demerits, to view the universe and the Swiss government through the filter of competing arguments in this matter, that you cannot take seriously the policy proposals of people who distribute racist posters. You must reject those proposals. Not because they are bad proposals—there are minuscules of merit in the most wantonly vicious worldview—but because passing those proposals gives a measure of power to people who should not have power. Even seriously debating those proposals gives them power. But mocking them—mocking them is always a good idea. Isn’t it?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.