"I haven’t responded to Heidi MacDonald because I consider any analogy drawn between the pampered, cosseted and universally capitulated-to North American feminists and what European Jews experienced between 1933 and 1945 to be among the worst examples of trivializing the Shoah that could be imagined and to be, quite literally, beneath comment."  --  Dave Sim

ABOUT LAST COLUMN

I enjoyed the comments and emails about what you guessed or thought should have been in my Top 12 comic events of all time, and most of those suggestions I really have already enjoyed somewhere along the way.  I’d really love for there to be comics in the future that would push some of those on my list down in rank, but I’m just not feeling it.  Perhaps I’m a bit jaded about the current scene, but somewhere deep inside I’m still holding out hope.

Of Agenda and Character Assassination

Dave Sim is about to publish JUDENHASS, a photorealistic comic about the plight of Jews in Europe some sixty to seventy years ago.  As advanced copies have been released and snatched off of ebay, it has received many positive reviews and much glowing praise:

"Dave Sim's "Judenhass" is a noble enterprise, reminding us of a painful and shameful part of human history. His writing and artwork are dramatic"

   -- Jean Shuster Peavy, Sister of Joe Shuster, Artist-Creator of SUPERMAN

"To apply the term ‘beautiful’ to this book may be a misnomer considering the subject matter, but its impact cannot be denied."

-- Joe Kubert

"Judenhass is an astonishing piece of work. Painful and real and unflinching. I don't remember the last comic I read that made me cry, but this did."

    -- Neil Gaiman

The comic that made Neil Gaiman cry, apparently made Heidi MacDonald wail. 

Heidi, a comics editor for Publishers Weekly, posted on her blog after first hearing about Sim’s new comic:

"If Dave Sim had said the things he’s said about women and gays about blacks or Jews, it’s doubtful he’d be considered quite the wise elder of comics he’s often accepted as. And to me, that’s worth examining…

"And then, after all this ‘biology is destiny’ stuff, along comes Judenhass, the preview of which, anyway, looks like a heartbreakingly beautiful historical account of the Holocaust. Given Sim’s views on the natural role of women (the upsetting of which is leading to a bleak, dehumanized world in which more women than men enter college) the irony in [Judenhass] is gut-wrenching."

"Sim makes it clear that he doesn’t really want to think about anything because he’s made his mind up. (No wonder he avoids the Internet! Facts don’t seem to be of much interest to him on several topics.) And he hasn’t made a career out of ‘Frauleinhass.’ Aside from a few loonies who follow him around the web [I suppose that accusation would include me! –Rick], he doesn’t have followers or acolytes, and doesn’t even want them.

"Well, I can only speak for myself, but it’s that double standard that bothers me. Why, 70 years later, remember the Holocaust? Because in the words of misogynist (but noted anti-anti-Semite) Nietzsche Santayana, ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.’ You can’t just sweep 9 million murdered Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies and gay men under the rug, and I salute Dave Sim for knowing this.

"Tragically, as with anti-Semitism and racism, with anti-feminists, or misogynists, or crackpots or whatever you want to call them, the battle never, ever ends. Discussion, as Dave himself contends when it suits him, should be encouraged. I don’t want Sim to be thrown in jail or silenced or shunned or to stop cartooning. I’m not going to boycott the Norman Rockwell museum because they invited Dave Sim to an event. It’s not like they put on a show called ‘Dave Sim talks about homemaking.’

"But I do think people should examine their own feelings about the double standard…" 

                                                                                     --  Heidi MacDonald

There are some people, like Heidi, who simply cannot see past their agenda-filtered blinders, and her "observation" is a classic case of Marxist-feminism at its finest.  A few weeks after this was posted in Heidi’s blog, the reverence and admiration for JUDENHASS began to be tainted with this Misogynist smear against Sim, and soon the Marxist-feminists had jumped all over the Misogyny/Anti-Semitism analogy and began associating almost any mention of Dave’s new comic with that propaganda.  It wasn’t long before it hit the CEREBUS YAHOO list, and so I sent Dave a quick fax about "the usual suspects" littering the YAHOO group with these libelous analogies, and he responded with:

"I have never commented unfavourably about women, my opposition is directed toward feminism and the way it has turned our society in an extreme misandrist direction.

"I haven’t responded to Heidi MacDonald because I consider any analogy drawn between the pampered, cosseted and universally capitulated-to North American feminists and what European Jews experienced between 1933 and 1945 to be among the worst examples of trivializing the Shoah that could be imagined and to be, quite literally, beneath comment.

"Heidi and misandrists like her should be ashamed of holding such views but I realize that trying to point this out is a futile task in our society as constituted.  They are, quite literally, shameless in their obsessive focus exclusively on their own extremist political views."  -- Dave Sim, March 31, 2008

After receiving this from Dave, I posted to the group what he had said about this analogy "trivializing the Shoah" (The biblical word Shoa (שואה), also spelled Shoah, meaning "calamity", became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s), and almost immediately came more accusations that Dave was "hiding behind the Shoah". There were pleas from several people to drop the offensive analogy, but that only served to bring even more feminists out of the woodwork to encourage the smear campaign, rationalizing the shift-of-focus from the subject matter of JUDENHASS to Dave himself.

And then it just hit me…certainly not trying to trivialize it myself, but JUDENHASS has much more in common with what has been going on in the comics industry against Dave Sim than any weak comparison against a lone voice minority viewpoint. When Sim "switched sides" from a perceived leftist to a perceived conservative, anti-Feminist "Bush lover", he became a primary target for the potshots and smears of these feminists.

And, as time went by, not only did the false accusations of misogyny become an accepted "truth", but it became the norm to trash him at the mere mention of his name, whether it was the Comics Journal depicting him in a Nazi uniform or some prominent Marxist-Feminist comparing his minority anti-feminism stand with Hatred of Jews. So now the climate is one that treats Dave Sim as a person lower than low, dismissing his ideas and tarring him with hateful labels…in hopes that the Truth of his message will be lost in the shuffle. It's an atmosphere of "hatred" of Dave, and for that matter, a hatred of anyone who is not on board with their political agenda.

After informing Dave how this had escalated from "isn’t this interesting, look how this parallels Dave's Misogyny" to "this is all Dave’s fault, why the hell would he do a comic on the Holocaust", he responded:

"Far from Dave Sim ‘hiding behind the Holocaust’ I think this is yet another example of feminists hiding behind the charge of misogyny.

"As we’re seeing in the Democratic race in the U.S. and as I’ve been saying all along there are only two choices with feminism: capitulate or leave.  Hillary Clinton attributes those who want her to concede to ‘male chauvinism’ and has as much as said that anyone who doesn’t vote for her is a misogynist.

"Opposition to feminism isn’t misogyny, it’s common sense as is any political theory that is founded in just such fascistic frames of reference, just such intellectually dishonest forms of would-be dictatorship: you are either a feminist or a misogynist.

"It’s euphemistic and clever but once you pull the curtain aside what you have, inescapably is a perverse dichotomy: capitulate to my every whim or be declared a misogynist…and, ergo (as we’ve seen in the comic-book field with me) a non-person, a sub-human.  So we have the ostensible feminist goal of numerical parity in university admissions now tilted 60-40 in favour of women. If you point out that that isn’t numerical parity, you’re a misogynist.  If you ask at what point action needs to be taken to achieve numerical parity, you’re a misogynist."   --Dave Sim, April 2, 2008

Reactions have been mixed, partially because of that "social climate", and some lambasting of such shameful behavior has closely mirrored my own:

"Personally, I think you guys should be ashamed. The book hasn't even *come out* yet, and you're finding ways to bash Dave.

"And, don't hide behind, ‘I just raised the point that there were similarities’ . You know full well that any mention of Dave Sim and ‘misogyny’ (actually, anti-Feminism) in connection with any other topic (such as ‘Judenhass’) is only going to go in one direction with one predictable outcome.

Thereby, trivializing the Shoah.

"I'm saying I think that linking ‘Judenhass’ to misogyny, here especially, is wrong. My
opinion, strongly worded. I'm saying that the people who are doing that should show better sense and use some decorum. My opinion, less strongly worded."        

                                              --  Jeff Seiler, Mar 31, 2008

"This is my "tupence worth" on the subject of equating Dave's opinions on the innate inferiority of women, to the anti-Jew comments that Dave has condemningly quoted in his Judenhass book. I premise that I haven't got a copy of the comic yet, so I'm basing this on the preview pages available on the website.

"As we all well know, Dave has provided a wealth of essays and other written works on his position with regards to gender. True, there are some very negative comments to be found in there, however, I firmly think that one would have to take them right out of context if one wants to demonstrate that Dave would approve of any kind of persecution of women, or indeed even any kind of reduction in their democratically established liberties. Dave has conceded in writing to having formulated his own gender comments in such a way as to emulate the critical tones of Marxist-Feminists themselves, therefore this explains the reason why some of his writings on the subject of gender seem very harsh, he is much more personable and altogether less harsh-sounding when discussing his gender opinions when doing so face to face in conversation or in
personal correspondence. Dave has made it very clear that he is in favour of the democratic process which has led to the female gender having obtained many concessions that in of themselves Dave would not agree with, but as they are democratically obtained freedoms, he would defend their right to them to the death. I do not get the impression that many (if indeed any) of the historical figures from which Dave quoted in Judenhass would have said so much in the defence of the rights of the Jews.

"Generally speaking, I think that the negative comments being made here on Dave's attempt to increase the general public's awareness of the historical environment that inevitably led to the Shoah is just playing into the hands of those who show real hate for their fellows. ‘Yes, Dave makes some good points, but….’  The ifs and buts just serve to weaken the punch of the very valid message Dave is making. At face value, I agree that the current world climate in which we live, permeated as it is with the Marxist-Feminism against which Dave warns, leads us all to think along the lines of criticising Dave for acting like those he himself criticises, but going back to the ‘thinking’ vs. ‘feeling’ dichotomy that Dave uses, Dave's criticism of feminism and pointing out of some of the areas in which generally females are inherently less aptitudinous only ‘feels’
like the same kind of comment that a Jew-Hater would use. If one uses one’s thinking faculties, on the other hand, I would hope that the general consensus would be that there can be no comparison."

                                                      --  William Antonio Beach, Mar 31, 2008

I think that if there were ever any doubt as to whether Marxist-Feminists put agenda ahead of anything else, then this example should settle that issue once and for all.  The comic book, Judenhass, has not even hit the comic store shelves yet, and they could not wait, even out of respect for the subject matter, to attack Dave Sim, a man who they now consider a mortal enemy and one who must be silenced at all costs. 

JUDENHASS literally means "Jew Hatred".  The Marxist-Feminists who have likened it to Sim's views on Women have missed the boat completely.  On the contrary, it's as if Dave is showing them, "HEY YOU!  Do you see this comic depicting a worldwide acceptance of bias and a segmented persecution and imprisoning and murdering of these particular people??  Now THIS is what real, genuine Hatred is.  It's not my lone voice decrying whacky and illogical feminist ideology."

Lenny, one of the moderators for the CEREBUS Yahoo group made this profound observation about a comment from a feminist who stated that he would be first in line to criticize anyone who he saw publishing bigotry,  "Why not be first in line to praise the decrying of  prejudice and bigotry?" 

Why not, indeed.

Here's "why not"...because it's Capitulate or Be Smeared.  Relentlessly.

As Dave asks, would you want to live in a country run by these people?

NEXT COLUMN: Why some women really need that impossible makeover...

(FORM & VOID is a bi-weekly column...after a much-needed vacation, the next installment arrives on May 5th)

Rick Sharer