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Dr. Seuss might be known for his children's books, but his political cartoons were next-level

The well known author wrote more than 400 clever and poignant cartoons during World War II.

Image dated November 25, 1969, via SIO Photographic Laboratory Collection: Selections, UC San Diego Library

This photo was taken of Theodor Seuss Geisel at the UC San Diego Library.

Did you know that in addition to being a beloved author of children's books, Dr. Seuss wrote more than 400 political cartoons during World War II?

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, gifted the world with stories like "The Cat in the Hat," "The Lorax," "Green Eggs and Ham," and dozens of other childhood classics until his death in 1991.

In recent years, however, it's some of his lesser known works from the 1940s that have gained attention.

As World War II was slowly moving toward a reality, Seuss began penning cartoons for PM, a liberal publication, frequently pushing back against the "America First" mentality of U.S. isolationists opposed to U.S. involvement in the war.

So when Donald Trump adopted "Make America Great Again" as his campaign slogan, echoing cries of "America First" — the rallying call for an anti-Semitic and Nazi-appeasing segment of the wartime U.S. population — some of Seuss' cartoons began to find new relevance more than 70 years after first being published.

Like this one, which depicts a mother reading a book titled "Adolf the Wolf" to children while wearing an "America First" shirt, explaining that because the wolf's victims were foreign children, it didn't really matter that the wolf ate them — a clear parallel to the conflicting approaches to our modern refugee crisis.

Dr. Seuss, political cartoon, isolationism, refugee crisis

A Dr. Seuss political cartoon sharing thoughts on isolationism.

Image dated Oct. 1, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library

"And the Wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones ... but those were Foreign Children and it really didn't matter."

Russia, Germany, Europe, war, political cartoon

Cartoon about WWII and Hitler dragging Russia into the war.

Image dated June 25, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"A. Hitler taxidermist"

clams, frantic, Hitler, political satire, 1941

Dr. Seuss uses clams in talking about Hitler in a political cartoon from 1941.

Image dated July 17, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"We Clams Can't Be Too Careful."

political satire, cartoon, WWII, war commentary

A political satire created by Dr. Seuss on the impending World War II.

Image dated May 27, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"The old Family bath tub is plenty safe for me!"

Suess's other comics took aim at overarching issues like anti-Semitism, racial inequality, and political obstructionism — all issues still relevant today.

To be sure, the comics were far from perfect and reflected some ugly stereotypes of their own. For instance, many of his cartoons amplified some pretty awful impressions of Japanese citizens and Japanese-Americans. And while it's easy to chalk that up as being simply an element of the time, that type of anti-Japanese sentiment helped fuel the racism and paranoia that eventually led to Japanese internment.

WWII, Hitler, cartoon, singing, antisemitism

A Dr. Seuss cartoon depicts Hitler singing.

Image dated July 20, 1942, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"Only God can make a tree to furnish sport for you and me!"

elephant, tank, satire, archives, political, Dr. Seuss

An elephant tries to stop a tank in a political cartoon.

Image dated Oct. 24, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"Stop all U.S. progress."

pledge of allegiance, flag, political cartoon, racial prejudice

Political cartoon uses 'Pledge of Allegiance' to make a point.

Image dated July 30, 1942, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"The Guy Who Makes a Mock of Democracy."

appeasement, Nazism, America first, political cartoon

Political cartoon suggests the war is coming to America.

Image dated Sept. 9, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"Relax, Sam, I assure you the express turns off right here!"

If the world of Dr. Seuss can teach us anything, it's that history is our best defense against modern tyranny.

Well, that, and the fact that Americans will always love goofy hats:

satire, analogies, political satire, cartoons, 1940's

Political cartoon suggests burying your head in the sand.

Image dated April 29, 1941, via Dr. Seuss Political Cartoons/Special Collection and Archives, UC San Diego Library.

"We Always Were Suckers for Ridiculous Hats."

See more of Seuss' wartime comics at the University of California San Diego Library's website.This story originally appeared on 03.02.17

In the midst of racial equality protests following the murder of George Floyd, a recent photo of college students with drawn-on swastikas on their shoulders surfaced—bringing me to tears.

It's hard to imagine Ryann Milligan, a Penn State student, who has been identified in a change.org petition, stands with her friends smiling proud, showing off their swastikas and anti-Semitism. All over the country, people are angry and hurting. These egregious acts tear us further apart.


The photo reminds me of the first time I saw a swastika tattoo. It was 2007, and I had just turned 21 years old, entering into my junior year at Temple University. I was moving into a new apartment in Philadelphia, bright-eyed and hopeful to be a journalist and graduate soon. My roommate at the time was dating a sweet guy, someone I had met through social circles and lived down the hall from me on campus the year before. He invited his friend, someone I had never met, to help us move all the heavy furniture. It was a sweltering day in Center City, temperatures nearing 100 degrees, pearlescent sweat mustaches dotted our upper lips and perspired our faces. The friend I never met before, peeled off his shirt, leaving his white chest exposed. There it was—the hooked cross swastika tattoo of oppression and symbol of hatred— right in front of me.

I stood there, alone with him, looking at this large swastika near his right shoulder. It was an immediate gut punch. I wondered if he knew I was Jewish? If he found out, would he harm me? Does he hate black people too? I thought about all the times I read about people like him. All the racism, prejudice, xenophobia and white supremacy that's continued to grow across the globe. I remembered my recent trip to Israel and the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. What about my great grandmother—she was 13 years old when she escaped Nazi Germany on a boat after her entire family was slaughtered in a concentration camp. I thought about all the Jews who have been discriminated against for centuries.

I was silent for a few minutes, but those minutes felt like hours. A phone went off. I ignored it. I stared at him a little longer. "You going to answer it?" he asked me. I gripped the cell phone to my chest. "You know I'm Jewish," I blurted out. He looked perplexed. I pointed to the swastika. "Oh, that," he said. "I got dared to get that one night. I was really drunk. It doesn't mean anything to me." I don't know what offended and enraged me more—that he dismissed it or that he didn't understand why it was a big deal.

He clearly knew very little about the history of Nazism. I felt like it was my responsibility to strengthen his understanding of what it meant. Knowledge was my way of responding to the hate and anti-Semitism. I told him how horrible it made me feel. I explained how Jewish people and black people take that symbol as a sucker punch in the face. To my surprise, he listened and then apologized. He told me he would get it covered up immediately. I hope he did.

Things like this continue to happen in our country. Let's not forget, less than three years ago, hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched the streets of Charlottesville, Va., in the "Unite the Right" rally, protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. They brandished weapons and lit tiki torches, performing Nazi salutes and chanting "Jews will not replace us."

The rally turned violent when white supremacist James Field Jr. steered his Dodge Challenger into a peaceful crowed of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others. There was also the off-the-rails press conference with President Trump and his infamous quote: "You had some very fine people on both sides." It's difficult for things to actually change when the leader of our country doesn't fully condemn racism.

Seeing that picture of those young women really brought me back to that day in 2007. That was twelve years ago, but what has really changed? According to the NY Times, the Anti-Defamation League statistics reveal that anti-Semitism has more than doubled in the United States in 2018 over 2015. The question begs why would these young college girls do this? What were they thinking? It could be that they don't know better. Maybe they were raised like this. Maybe it was supposed to be a joke. Who knows.

The University responded to the image in a tweet stating, "We are disgusted by the behavior portrayed, which does not reflect our values. It is deeply troubling that as a society, we today are still facing racism." They also mentioned that they will continue to speak out against hateful speech, but they don't have the power to expel students over it, even if it is reprehensible. "But the University does have the power to condemn racism and address those who violate our values." However, theChange.org petition is asking for Milligan's removal at the college, which has garnered over 120,000 signatures so far.

In a time when our country is in turmoil, strife and demanding change, this can be a learning experience. When the women wash away the black ink swastikas on their skin, I hope they think about the visceral impact it's caused others. I can promise you that pain won't wash away as fast. Maybe they'll think about their actions—let's hope it's tattooed inside their brain. At least, this time, the ink wasn't permanent.

According to the Community Security Trust (CST), an organization that monitors anti-Semitism in Britain, anti-Semitism incidents are at their highest since records began in 1984. There were 892 recorded incidents in the first six months of 2019, which is up by 10% compared to the same time period in 2018. Not only that, but anti-Semitism is up for the third year in a row. Even though it feels like we live in irreparably divided times, something happens to remind us that there are still those willing to step in and do the right thing.

Recently, Jewish family was harassed on the London tubes. Chris Atkins filmed the incident and posted it to Twitter. It went viral.



The video shows a man reading anti-Jewish Bible passages to the family. The father keeps his composure and whispers in his son's ear, "just ignore it."

RELATED: Muslim groups are rushing to support the Jewish victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

A woman wearing hijab steps in to deescalates the situation. "I thought, if I reason with him and talk to him and pretend that I'm sympathetic with what he's saying, maybe I can defuse the problem because he was actually talking to a little boy," the woman, who was later identified as Asma Shuweikh told Sky News.

Atkins said one factor of the incident stood out as being the most egregious. "It was the children that really got me and everyone else, he was just screaming at these children. It was horrific in every sense," Atkins said, according to the JC Reporter.

According to Shuweikh, the man became more aggressive after Atkins stopped recording. "I did start to panic when he came up into my face, but I managed to keep a calmness and keep trying to defuse the situation," she told Sky News. The father, who chooses to remain anonymous, told the Independent that without Shuweikh's intervention, the man would have continued and "could have escalated to physical violence".

Shuweikh explained why she did the right thing. "I would have loved more people to come up and say something, because if everyone did, I do not think it would have escalated in the way that it did," she told BBC Radio 5Liv. "Being a mother-of-two, I know what it's like to be in that situation and I would want someone to help if I was in that situation."

Shuweikh says she had an obligation to step in. "To be honest I thought it is my duty as a mother, as a practicing Muslim, as a citizen of this country, to have to say something," she told BBC Radio 5Liv. "You can't just sit back and watch that because I felt that it was just getting out of hand. It was really getting too much."

In the moment, Shuweikh didn't think about the consequences of her actions. She just thought about doing what was right. "All my friends and family have been so supportive. But they're also worried about my safety because I have children back home," she told BBC Radio 5Liv. "But when you're put in that situation you don't really think about yourself. You just think, 'look this is the right thing to do. I need to say something'."

If she found herself in a similar situation, she says she "would not hesitate to do it again," she told BBC Radio 5Liv.

RELATED: A newly unearthed letter from Albert Einstein warning about anti-Semitism is a must read

Shuweikh was called a hero because of her actions.








Ultimately, Atkins says the video shows different religions working together. "In this day and age we are told how intolerant everyone is and all religions hate each other and there you had a Muslim woman sticking up for some Jewish children," he told CNN.

While it would be wonderful to live in a world where religious tolerance is the norm, it's at least heartening to know that there are those who will intervene when religious intolerance rears its ugly head.

Incidents of anti-Semitism have been on the rise in Germany.

Things have gotten so bad that — after a recent crime targeting two men because of their religious clothing — the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned Jewish people against wearing a kippa (skullcap).

Far-right groups have tried to shift the blame for these crimes to Muslim immigrants.

The tensions between Muslim and Jewish peoples is a story nearly as old as time itself. Far-right groups in Germany have tried to capitalize on this stereotype by blaming the rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes on Muslims.


But these crimes are not being carried out by Muslims against Jews.

A report from Germany's Interior Ministry shows that the exact opposite is true: 1,381 of the 1,468 reported anti-Semitic crimes in 2016 were in fact carried out by the same far-right groups trying to stir tension between the two communities of faith.

"They try to use the 'We stand with the Jews so we can't be racist, we're not anti-Semitic' line, which is of course what they are." said Dalia Grinfeld, president of the Jewish Student Union of Germany.

Instead of living in fear, people in Germany organized "Kippa March" rallies to show their support for Jewish people.

Thousands of people turned out in Berlin for the event. And among those marching were many Muslims, including women who bravely donned kippa in a stunning display of solidarity.

The display of unity was inspiring and potentially transformative.

This wasn't even the first recent unity act between the Muslim and Jewish communities, who held a bike ride in March to show their support and solidarity.

Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images

One recent attack showed how horrific and indiscriminate hate crimes can be. A young man attacked in Germany wasn't even Jewish. An Israeli of Arab descent, he'd worn the kippa to highlight the risks Jewish people are currently facing in Germany.

The responses from people of all different backgrounds in Germany has been a loving display of unity. One German newspaper even made a cut out kippa for people to wear to the marches.

Tension between people of different faiths seems to grab all the attention. But it's good to be reminded that there's love in the world .

With far-right groups getting more attention in America and across Europe, it's easy to focus on what's wrong in the world today.

And the very real threat of violence against marginalized groups should never be ignored.

But in moments of fear and hate, we're reminded that compassion and solidarity are a far greater force for good that easily eclipses whatever challenges we face.