Analysis of the Holocaust Cartoon Competition as a Global Communicative Event

Abstract

This paper examines the Holocaust cartoon competition as an instance of social and political controversy and concludes that freedom of speech as a conditional right incites various oppositional arguments. The paper also describes how the cartoon competition creates enemies through binary discourse—peaceful and oppressor, Palestine and Israel, Zionism and Nazism—then poses a challenge to the dominant Western understanding of freedom of speech. Using the theories of oppositional arguments (Olson & Goodnight, 1994), the paper argues that the cartoon competition honours the Holocaust victims as a social/cultural norm in Jewish community and in the West, and that the contest as a rhetorical act challenges the Gayssot Act as a legal norm in several European countries. Examination of the Holocaust cartoon contest, through the theory of ‘clash of civilizations’, illuminates that the competition contributes to reproduce the notion of clash of civilizations as a belief in the incompatibility of the West and Islam. By using the theory of ‘global journalism’, the study also creates a discussion to explain how the Holocaust contest as a communicative event (based on two themes: freedom of speech and the Holocaust) relates various international issues and thereby fulfils one main functions of the global journalism concept: establishment of transnational connections.