Hundreds of cartoonists convened in Iran this week to compete in a Donald Trump cartoon contest, replacing the yearly Holocaust denial competition held by the same organizers.
The contest, which began Monday and lasts an entire week, has received entries from 1,614 Iranian and foreign participants from 74 countries. Four Americans participated in the contest, and two received special recognition for their work.
One of those men was American Robert Jones Clayton, whose cartoon showed two separate copies of TIME magazine, in the years in which Adolf Hitler (1938) and Donald Trump (2016) were their nominated person of the year. “It is a great honor,” Trump tells Hitler, to which Hitler replies “Ja.”
Another American entrant, Ed Wexler, portrays Trump running away from a snowball with the communist logo, a reference to his unproven connections to Russia.
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Eventual winner Hadi Asadi, who won $1,500 for his cartoon depicting Trump wearing a coat made from dollar bills with his hair on fire while dribbling on a pile of books, told the Associated Press he wanted to show Trump’s “money-mindedness and war monger nature.”
“I wanted to show Trump while trampling symbols of culture,” he said.
The event’s director, Ali-Asghar Jafar, told the Iranian state-run PressTV that the exhibition sought to highlight U.S. hostility towards Iran. “Today, the US is moving against Muslim countries, especially Iran,” he said. “It was difficult to prove US brutality in the past, but Trump’s presence has made it easy.”
“Today, the US is moving against Muslim countries, especially Iran,” he said. “It was difficult to prove US brutality in the past, but Trump’s presence has made it easy.”
Another event organizer, Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei, said the contest aimed to highlight Trump’s flaws by displaying satirical paintings on themes such as sexism, immigration, and attitudes towards the media.
“The ism in Trumpism is a reference to racism and Nazism,” said Tabatabaei. “Many believe his remarks are similar to Hitler. He has had a bad attitude towards the media and refugees.”
Last year, Tabatabaei organized his third Holocaust denial cartoon contest competition, which he claimed was not anti-Semitic but aimed at highlighting Western double standards towards criticism of Islam.
“We have never been after denying the Holocaust or ridiculing its victims,” Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei said at the time. “If you find a single design that ridicules victims or denies, we are ready to close the exhibition. Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust were subject to oppression by Nazis.”
Depictions of Muhammed, who Muslims revere as a prophet, are still forbidden in Iran under Islamic blasphemy law, which can result in the death penalty. In March this year, a 21-year-old man was sentenced to death for “insulting Islam” through messages he sent online.
You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com
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