Joe Sacco: "Politicians need an enemy"

BarcelonaIn 2013, in a small village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a confrontation between two Hindu cousins from the Jati caste and a Muslim boy ended with all three young men dead: the Muslim from a stab wound and the Hindus at the hands of a vengeful mob. The incident triggered a chain reaction of altercations and violent clashes between the Muslim and Hindu communities, which the cartoonist Joe Sacco (Malta, 1960) analyzes in The once and future riot (The eternal disturbance (in the Spanish edition from Reservoir Books), a new and extraordinary work by the father of journalistic comics. With patience, tenacity, and empathy, Sacco draws a complex web of hatred, xenophobia, corruption, sexism, and electoral interests—a cycle of violence and death that, despite the distance that separates us from India, feels disturbingly familiar.

What led you to become interested in this specific conflict between Muslims and Hindus in northern India?

— I had worked in India before, and a colleague suggested I might be interested in some riots that had taken place. I thought it would be interesting to go to the scene of the riots and ask people what they remembered about the events to understand their narrative. I usually focus on getting the facts, but here I was also interested in the stories people created. So I went to certain villages and spoke with the authorities, and then I did the journalistic work, which wasn't just reporting what they said, but finding out what had actually happened and comparing it with people's accounts.

And why this interest in stories?

— Why is everything today determined by how events are explained? The United States is destroying small boats in international waters and claiming they are drug traffickers bringing fentanyl to our country. But this is a narrative that only seeks to escalate the crisis with Venezuela. And in reality, we don't know who these people are. From the few interviews available, they appear to be people traveling illegally, but not necessarily drug traffickers. It's all a narrative. To enter the Vietnam War, the United States created the narrative that the North Vietnamese had attacked a ship in the Gulf of Tonkin, and to invade Iraq, they invented the story of weapons of mass destruction.

Or the attack on the 'Maine' to justify the Cuban War.

— Yes, that's a good example. It seems that the Maine It exploded because of an internal problem, but the Spanish were conveniently blamed. In the book, I wanted to explore how these stories or narratives are formed, which often become the basis for the official history. We need to question these narratives, not only what the government tells us, but also what we tell ourselves. Because sometimes it's very convenient to believe certain narratives.

One of the most disturbing ideas in the book is that political parties were behind the riots, fanning the flames to gain electoral advantage.

— Well, it doesn't only happen in India, it happens in the West too. There's a connection between violence and electoral politics. I don't know if I should use the word democracy because I don't know if anyone in the world lives in a true democracy. I would call them electoral regimes, places where people vote periodically. Politicians need support, and what they do is provide favors to one community and stoke fear and hatred against another so that people don't realize their shared interests. A poor Hindu and a poor Muslim have the same interests, so you have to divide them into two blocs to get their votes. In fact, as a result of the clash between the Hindu and Muslim communities, the Hindu nationalist party managed to strengthen its base in Uttar Pradesh, which was one of the key factors in the victory of Modi, the current prime minister.

Another interesting aspect is that at the origin of all the riots in India there is usually a case of abuse or sexual harassment of a girl.

— That's right, and it happens on both sides. But in the case of India, there's an added subtext in Hindu nationalism, which they call romantic jihad. This supposedly involves Muslim men having sex with Hindu women to father children who will be raised as Muslims. It's their version of the racist theory known in Europe as the Great Replacement. But it's false. If you look at the statistics, you realize that romantic jihad doesn't exist; it's a narrative. But does it matter whether it's true or whether people believe it?

Ironically, India is not the country where women's rights are most respected. In fact, it ranks 123rd [out of 169] in the United Nations' gender inequality ranking.

— Yes, harassment of women is a constant in India. In India, women don't matter as individuals. If a car hits a woman, no one will care, only her family. But in this politically charged context, rife with accusations of romantic jihad, women become symbols of all that is virtuous in their own religion. And this is true for Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Strangely, women are always the focus. It's reminiscent of Helen of Troy, "the face that set a thousand ships sailing." When the United States invaded Panama in the 1980s, one of the incidents used as justification was that an American woman had been besieged by a Panamanian soldier. So this isn't an Orientalist way of looking at things; in the West, we also tend to turn women into a kind of helpless symbol.

In the more than ten years it took to finish it, the book's themes have become increasingly relevant in the West. Were you aware of this when you first wrote it?

— Not at that moment, but when I saw the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 I realized that the same things I had seen in India had been happening in the West, but in India they were obvious, while here they were somewhat more hidden. In this book, I don't offer answers, but questions, in a way that makes the Western reader reflect on our problems. It's like when Trump said about the Charlottesburg clashes that there were good people on both sides, or his support for the proud boysThey are essentially a paramilitary organization. They want confrontations and outbreaks of violence to create an atmosphere of intimidation and embolden the sociopaths among us.

Has fear become the main value in politics?

— Fear is always the greatest political asset. The great Nazi jurists already said it: politicians need an enemy, and it's true. Politicians don't dedicate themselves to discussing what people need or what to do to improve the economic situation. They want to stay in power. Not in every case, certainly, but in perhaps 80% of them. They've turned politics into a race.

In some interviews he has stated that The eternal disturbance It would be his last journalistic comic.

— No, it won't be the last time. Honestly, I wish it were, because I'm a bit tired of these topics. But I'm working on a new book about Gaza, this time with a journalist friend of mine. He's writing the text and I'll be doing the comics. We were recently in Egypt interviewing Gazans who fled the war. Since we can't go to Gaza, at least we interviewed the people who were there. By the way, I'm happy to see what the Spanish government is doing about Gaza. I don't know if it's a position shared throughout the country, but it's behaving much better than the rest of Western Europe.

He published another comic on the subject a year ago, The Gaza WarA political pamphlet filled with rage and frustration. And the comic that made him famous was, precisely, PalestineWhat compels him to speak repeatedly about the oppression of the Palestinian people?

— Because I carry Gaza in my heart, it's as simple as that. I've spent a lot of time there and I have friends; I've only met good people who have had a very hard time, people with very few opportunities to get ahead in life. The Gaza WarSpecifically, I did it because a friend wrote to me at the beginning of the genocide and asked me to please speak out. And I felt obligated to do so. Gaza matters to me, and this prevents me from moving on to other topics... I don't know if lightweight That would be the word, but with a less journalistic approach.

I suppose that when he talks about lighter topics he is referring to the comic about the Rolling Stones that he has been working on for more than a decade.

— Yes, exactly. But it's actually a very serious book, although written in a way that I hope will be entertaining. When I say it's lighter, it's because I find it easier to draw; I enjoy it while I'm doing it. I can't enjoy it anymore in more journalistic work; drawing these things in a more honest way is really hard. When I was younger, it wasn't so difficult, but now it drives me crazy to see how people behave.

And what can be said today about the Rolling Stones that hasn't already been said a hundred times?

— I have a thousand things to say about the Rolling Stones, but I actually use them to talk about many other things. If anyone expects this book to be a history of the Rolling Stones, they'll be sorely disappointed. It will be a very unusual book, but a fun one, I hope.

You are the leading figure in journalistic comics. How do you see the current state of the genre?

— I know there are other journalists who work in comics, and some are friends of mine, but I've been so focused on my own work that I'm not the best person to assess the state of the genre. I have noticed, though, that there are a lot of people experimenting in that field, and that's great. The advantage is that there are no rules in journalistic comics, and I hope no one ever makes them: everyone should find their own way of doing it, as long as they're honest and seek the truth, for lack of a better word.

What advice would you give to a young cartoonist who wants to create journalistic comics? Is it necessary to have studied journalism to create journalistic comics?

— Not necessarily. It helped me, but my advice would be to start with a small story and learn the craft, draw well, and always keep the reader in mind. You can't just present the facts, even if you think the facts speak for themselves; you need the human element.

And what kind of stories or news do you think are best suited to being told in comic book form? This interview, for example, works better in written form than in drawn form.

— Yes, that's true. If all you drew was my face talking in speech bubbles, what would be the point? Even if it's a conversation like this, you have to think about how to draw it in a way that's... not necessarily abstract, but interesting. Part of the job is done with your imagination, bringing the story to life on paper in a way that isn't dry or boring. I've seen things described as journalistic comics that are just a matter of putting a fact, a drawing, a fact, a drawing... But you have to be able to tell a story. In comics, my role model was Robert Crumb, but in journalism, it was the New Journalism writers of the 1960s: Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Michael Hurd... They're the ones I draw inspiration from when I write, not other cartoonists.

In The Gaza War He was very critical of Joe Biden, and had previously also expressed his disappointment with Obama for not implementing truly left-wing policies. Mamdani's victory in New York Does it make you feel hopeful?

— I'm very happy he won, but we'll see if he can face thestatus quo Or if he ends up being devoured by the system. I'm worried that Trump will intervene to make things difficult for him, and also that the Democratic establishment will try to sabotage him. I'm curious to see how it all goes. I liked many of the things he said, but we'll see.

Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns visited Barcelona a few weeks ago at the CCCB Kosmopolis festival And they mentioned his name several times. He even collaborated with Spiegelman on a short comic about Gaza. Does he maintain a good relationship with the authors of his generation?

— Yes, Arte and I are close friends, Chris and I are friends and we write to each other often, and I'm also friends with Charles. My generation, which is also Chris's and Charles's, felt very close to the pioneers of underground comics, and Art Spiegelman is one of the few left. Deep down, we were a small circle, two dozen artists, and we all knew each other. Nowadays there are many more people working in the industry, hundreds of talented people, it's harder to be friends with everyone. Besides, many young artists don't like the artists of my generation, the more established ones, because we're a kind of comics royalty. And I understand, they think it's their turn... What a load of rubbish!