StoneToss: Episode 81

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Comic Name: The Pen is Mightier?
Description: If you think speech is deadlier than bombs, congrats, you are a Zionist.
Mouseover: They cry out as they drone strike you.
Image Name: israel-gaza-conflict-stonetoss-political-cartoon.png
Amogus: First panel, the profile picture on the phone.
Originally Published: 5/18/2021

What The Comic Is: A man is shocked to see an anti-Semitic meme shared by the Red Crewmate. The second panel reveals the man to be a Jew, evidenced by his silly little Jew beanie. He remarks with concern, wondering if genocide is next. In the background, from beyond a border wall, bombs strike Palestinian buildings.

What StoneToss Actually Thinks: Israel shoots missiles at Palestine, therefore it’s okay to be anti-Semitic.

Why It’s Fucking Stupid: The bombings shared between Israel and Palestine is wrong, most honest people will admit this. Though the USA (who deeply supports Israel) will always pussyfoot around criticism of military action (go figure, the USA quietly twiddles its thumbs when someone else is doing the bombing for a change), this doesn’t mean it’s illegal to criticize Israel for bombing Palestine (or vice versa, though it should always be considered that due to the support the USA, Israel will always maintain an unfair upperhand against Palestine).

However, no matter what, Israel doing anything is not a green light for anti-Semitism, or for the minimalization of bigotry. And here’s a flash of news: All Jews actually don’t live in Israel, did you know that? (StoneToss knows that; he can’t go a single fucking day without thinking about all the Jews that live in the USA. Don’t they know it’s supposed to be FOR WHITE (Non-Jew) PEOPLE ONLY???). StoneToss feels anti-Semitism is either okay, or at least minimal, in the face of Israel killing Palestinians. Far from some kind of fair logic, this is literally Nazi-level anti-Semitism that is used to justify the escalation to genocide. Perhaps anti-Semitic memes alone are not one step away from genocide, but the normalization of them under the justification of “but Israel, that place where Jews live, is militarily aggressive” is.

The comic’s title (and then its description) are a reference to the old adage “the pen is mightier than the sword”, commonly meaning that you can get more done with diplomacy rather than warfare (or that no matter how hard a war is fought, it will be diplomacy that leads to resolutions). StoneToss is trying to flip the meaning of the quote around to further justify his anti-Semitism. Memes about Jews being evil aren’t as bad as bombs, so why do people care so much when StoneToss hates Jews?! This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that StoneToss attempts to minimalize anti-Semitic trolling/memes/hate speech, and while it is always a tactic to try and normalize bigotry (and therefore grow it, such as into general public sentiment and then political office), it is also always stupid as fuck.

With the description, StoneToss attempts to strawman anyone who thinks anti-Semitism is wrong. “Oh, you think we shouldn’t spread bigoted memes?? Don’t you know Palestine is being bombed??? You just think words are worse than bombs, congrats, you’re a Zionist (and this is inherently a bad thing of course, because that means you support Jews!!). Dishonest rhetoric is thankfully a very weak tool that is easily crushed if it’s opposed whenever an idiot attempts to employ it.

Comic Name: Ballot Blocked
Description: Today we have a special guest comic from Café, a Spanish speaking cartoonist. (the description includes a link to the artist’s long-since suspended Twitter along with their somewhat popular Facebook page)
Mouseover: oi, where’s your immigration loicense?
Image Name: british-election-cafe-monera-guest-comic.png
Originally Published: 12/16/2019

What The Comic Is: A man wearing a suit with the Communist symbol on it listens as a worker in hardhat and overalls complains that “they” need less immigration. The man offers instead to “give” more Muslims and gays, much to the anger of the worker. In the final panel it is revealed that the labour party has lost an election.

What Café Actually Thinks: Literal mask-off bigotry.

Why It’s Fucking Stupid: First of all, “Gays” are not immigrants. Just throwing it out there quick. Anyways, so this ridiculously bad comic has the worker as a stand-in for the everyman, a generic metaphor for all of the voters in the UK. A great way for someone like Café, who lives in Mexico, to try and strawman the entirety of the UK people. The other guy, some kind of generic labour party politician, promises “more gays and Muslims” instead. Yeah, who would ever vote for a politician that is tolerant of gay people and Muslims, AM I RIGHT?

StoneToss at least (usually) tries to hide his bigotry, or present it as somehow being a non-PC twist to the side of enlightened logic. It’s amusing when he features guests like this who can’t come up with anything other than “BIGOTRY IS AWESOME LOL”. If there’s one good thing you can say about Café and their shitty comics, it’s that they’re not going to sway anyone. No one will look at a comic like this and think “I value myself as a closet bigot moderate, and this really inspires me to be more open about my hatred of other people” in the same way StoneToss does. A comic like this can only elicit either a “Wow, this comic is very dumb” or a “LOL I HATE GAY PEOPLE AND MUSLIMS TOO” reaction, depending on how much grey matter vs. shit your skull contains.

But we do get a great example of how StoneToss works. This comic says nothing, it contains literally zero message. It’s not a commentary on anything, it’s not trying to expose some kind of “Leftist hypocrisy” (a hypocrisy that never exists, of course, but honesty/reality isn’t the point), it’s just base bigotry. It’s the artistic equivalent of dryly stating “I hate gay people”. StoneToss might be a fucking idiot, but at least he makes comics that are worth evaluating. This is why StoneToss is so popular. Not because he makes ‘good comics’ (he doesn’t), but because he appeals to bigots due to the fact that his comics can, sometimes, be reasonably argued to only be “an unpopular opinion” or something like that. When people ask me why I bother maintaining a blog like this and analyze StoneToss comics, this is exactly why. StoneToss isn’t like this Café moron. His comics are fucking dumb, but they have a depth to them that is worth exploring and explaining fully; so the next time some fucklehead is running his mouth on Facebook about how something like a coded anti-Semitic comic is “just an opinion about Israel”, you can link him a blog he won’t read because he’s a knowingly dishonest idiot. But at least other people can learn from it, no?