After causing international outrage, the publisher of a weekly Kansas newspaper has taken down a cartoon that was criticized as anti-semitic because it compared Gov. Laura Kelly’s mask mandate to the Holocaust.
Dane Hicks, chairman of the Anderson County Republican Party, took the cartoon off of the Anderson County Review’s Facebook page Sunday afternoon and apologized.
“After some heartfelt and educational conversations with Jewish leaders in the U.S. and abroad, I can acknowledge the imagery in my recent editorial cartoon describing state government overreach in Kansas with images of the Holocaust was deeply hurtful to members of a culture who’ve been dealt plenty of hurt throughout history – people to whom I never desired to be hurtful in the illustration of my point.
“It is not my intention to heap more grief onto this historical burden, and it’s apparent I previously lacked an adequate understanding of the severity of their experience and the pain of its images.
“While they have agreed with me on the concepts of press freedom and that newspapers and media should be constantly on the look out for creeping and abusive government authority and the dereliction of due process, it’s clear I should have chosen a less hurtful theme to convey the dire need for that vigilance.”
Hicks said he appreciated the patience and understanding of those who convinced him to take the cartoon down.
He said he was grateful for their “commitment to civil discourse as a means of resolution rather than mob noise.”
Posted on Friday on the newspaper’s Facebook page, the photo shopped cartoon shows Kelly wearing a mask with a Jewish Star of David.
The governor is next to a drawing of people being loaded onto box cars with the caption: “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask…and step onto the cattle car.”
The governor on Saturday called for the cartoon to be taken down right away.
“Mr. Hicks decision to publish antisemitic imagery is deeply offensive and he should remove it immediately,” the governor said in a statement.
“While it’s disappointing to see, on July 4th of all days, I know that Mr. Hicks views are not shared by the people of Anderson County nor Kansas as a whole.”
A spokesman for the governor said she would address the issue on Monday at one of her regularly scheduled news briefings.
The cartoon surfaced on social media early Saturday morning and caught fire throughout the day as it grabbed the attention of national and international publications.
On Saturday, Hicks initially defended the cartoon. He said he planned to run the cartoon in the paper’s July 7 print edition.
“Political editorial cartoons are gross over-caricatures designed to provoke debate and response – that’s why newspapers publish them,” he said in his statement.
“The topic here is the governmental overreach which has been the hallmark of Gov. Kelly’s administration,” he said.
“The most telling example of authoritarian government I can think of is Nazi Germany…,” he stated. “I certainly have more evidence of that kind of totalitarianism in Kelly’s actions…”
Gavriela Geller, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/AJC, said her group was pleased to see that the cartoon was taken down.
“We are very glad to hear that the editor had a change of heart and took the very offensive and antisemitic cartoon off of Facebook,” Geller said.
The group, she said, was particularly glad to see that Hicks didn’t not plan to publish the cartoon in its weekly paper.
“The other important element was making sure that this did not go to print and that more damage was caused,” she said.
Geller said it’s important for the group to be vigilant about any hate it might see in online images. A published image, she said, could be taken more seriously.
“A print version of a publication of what is supposed to be a county’s news source definitely has a different flavor and can be interpreted by some to have much more credibility than an image they may see online.”
“It was extremely important to us to make sure that wasn’t going to be printed.”
Geller said her group had worked with Midwest Center for Holocaust Education to arrange a meeting with Hicks and asked members of the Kansas congressional delegation to condemn the cartoon.
