Exploiting the Archives: The Communist Side of MAGA Political Cartoonist Ben Garrison
As longtime readers of this blog know, I am somewhat obsessed with MAGA political cartoonist Ben Garrison. I’m fascinated with bad, painfully non-self-aware comics and Trump worship and Garrison embodies both in highly concentrated form.
The Trump super-fan is notorious for drawing a President whose body looks like a lumpy, misshapen pillow that has been left out in the rain overnight like a golden-haired stud with the body of a Chippendale’s dancer and for portraying the angriest man in the world as a figure of unflappable cool.
Garrison is also notorious for labelling everything in his cartoons in a manner that suggests that for this figure of Uber-kitsch the concept of “too heavy-handed” or “overly obvious” does not exist.
The Ben Garrison Facebook group I belong to is called “well it LOOKS like a ben garrison drawing but there aren't enough labels” in recognition of the cartoonist’s hilarious need to over-label and over-explain everything, particularly things that do not need to be labeled or explained.
It’s a place for over six thousand “fans” of the right-wing cartoonist to post new Ben Garrison cartoons as well as other cartoons by crazed partisans similarly enamored of the forty-fifth president.
But members also post Ben Garrison cartoons that have been edited into Communist propaganda, with a big, burly, bearded and badass Karl Marx taking the place of the flaxen-haired, impossibly ripped Donald Trump.
For example a recent Garrison cartoon entitled “Trump the Counter Puncher” shows Donald Trump, wearing red, white and blue boxing trunks, delivering a devastating blow to Joe Biden’s mid-section while hissing coolly of the president-elect’s sinister scheme to steal the presidency by winning the electoral college, “I saw that one coming, Joe.”
I’m not entirely sure why, but judging from the way Garrison drew the comic, Joe Biden is apparently 11 feet tall, weighs seventy-five pounds and has a seven foot long wingspan.
This is a Garrison strip so everything is labeled. Biden’s failed attempt to punch Trump is labeled “Election Fraud” while Trump’s devastating counter punch is labeled “lawsuits.”
Only Garrison would see winning a presidential election as a sign of weakness and fraud and launching a series of desperate, doomed lawsuits in a pathetic attempt to deny the inevitable as a sign of strength.
If the last few weeks have illustrated anything, it’s that Trump’s lawsuits certainly have connected solidly with the media, the judicial system and the American people, which is why they’re all being laughed out of court and dismissed as worthless.
In the Communist edit, Biden is still a freakishly skinny beanpole getting socked right in the gut by a manlier man, except this time it’s Karl Marx doing the pummeling while hissing confidently, “Neo-liberalism is no longer viable, Joe”
Instead of packing the ferocious punch of “lawsuits”, Marx attacks Biden with the righteous force of “Working Class Solidarity” while Biden’s feeble punch has been re-labeled “Corporate Hegemony.”
The idea is still to attack Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for their many weaknesses (a favorite pastime of the left and right alike) but to do so from the far left rather than the far right.
It works shockingly well because the subversive editors are able to use Garrison’s own drawing of Marx in their prankish re-imaginings (Garrison draws Marx a lot as the not-so-secret guiding force behind the Democratic Party) and because Garrison’s brand of hokey propaganda isn’t that removed from that of authoritarian regimes like the Soviets.
In another, Marx, once again replacing Donald Trump (the re-editor even neglected to remove his telltale endless red tie), valiantly tries to pull Uncle Sam out of a fetid swamp filled with labels like “Capitalism”, “Nationalism”, “Far Right Propaganda” , “Systematic racism” and “Imperialism” to a shining future labeled “Marxism”, “Class Consciousness”, “Freedom” and “Equal Opportunity.”
Many of these edits take satirical aim at Garrison’s famous predilection for over-labeling. A cartoon showing Trump as a bratty little boy yelling, “You’re a threat to American imperialism!” (to which badass Marx confidently replies, “Yes, I am”) helpfully labels the red, white and blue balloon Trump is holding as a balloon, and the wall and floor as a wall and floor respectively as well.
Garrison is the most meme-friendly editorial cartoonist around. His garish exercises in right-wing propaganda angrily demand to be subverted by smart-asses on the internet, who have been only too happy to oblige.
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