How the Axis of Resistance absorbs cultural talent without suppressing it, and what a Houthi cartoonist's trajectory from dissident to regime artist reveals about the proxy model's infrastructure.
Very interesting, as usual. But I wonder if the 'creativity'/sophistication is a more a function of the propagation mechanism -- the software -- than the commissioners, or their client-proxies.
"Houthis with Ubers" (or cruise missiles) isn't necessarily a sign of sophistication, but the ability to apply a template. And the IRGC's outsourced lego-shaping, allegedly indigenous, ingenious, youth-run propaganda could be following the same instructions the Houthi cartoonist does.
I imagine this particular form of 'creativity' is neither IRGC, nor Houthi, but crowd-sourced and global. 'Whatever works' is flagged, rewarded, branded, and pushed out as the standard to emulate. The original 'idea' might come from Copenhagen, or Bangkok, or Ta'iz.
In 1970s-early 2000s Libya, some of the (few) in-country satirists operated on multiple levels: one always visibly served the regime and maintained 'acceptability'; another, much more subtle, was deeply anti-regime. Is there any evidence of this in the author's work? Whatever the case, as soon as a caricaturist loses slght of the universality of this targets, he/she is doomed as an artist, and becomes a gun for hire.
Thanks :) appreciated and great insights as always. The Libyan double-life parallel is interesting, but what I found in Sharaf's case is that he is genuinely talented, wholeheartedly part and parcel of the machine, and he has found his shape inside it. Some of the stuff in Jihad magazine is obviously Iranian language and shaping (Knowledge and Jihad is straight up Khamenei), but on a personal level, Sharaf's family are well-known Sayyids (Hashemites) so the movement he serves is restoring the social order his class once presided over, and his ideology is being elevated, circulated, and rewarded andI think he is intoxicated by both that and by the fame he is finding. This is the same man who once organized children's workshops in Taiz under the banner of tolerance and the rejection of violence and hatred (a direct jab at the Houthis' ethos), and who now illustrates children planning naval assaults. The transformation is devastating, but it also makes sense. The environment did not corrupt him so much as reveal him. From a bird's eye view, what I was trying to get at in the piece is that the proxy relationship is fractal. Iran builds proxies that believe they are sovereign. Those proxies absorb talent that believes it is free. Sharaf is what that looks like one scale down.
Very interesting, as usual. But I wonder if the 'creativity'/sophistication is a more a function of the propagation mechanism -- the software -- than the commissioners, or their client-proxies.
"Houthis with Ubers" (or cruise missiles) isn't necessarily a sign of sophistication, but the ability to apply a template. And the IRGC's outsourced lego-shaping, allegedly indigenous, ingenious, youth-run propaganda could be following the same instructions the Houthi cartoonist does.
I imagine this particular form of 'creativity' is neither IRGC, nor Houthi, but crowd-sourced and global. 'Whatever works' is flagged, rewarded, branded, and pushed out as the standard to emulate. The original 'idea' might come from Copenhagen, or Bangkok, or Ta'iz.
In 1970s-early 2000s Libya, some of the (few) in-country satirists operated on multiple levels: one always visibly served the regime and maintained 'acceptability'; another, much more subtle, was deeply anti-regime. Is there any evidence of this in the author's work? Whatever the case, as soon as a caricaturist loses slght of the universality of this targets, he/she is doomed as an artist, and becomes a gun for hire.
Thanks :) appreciated and great insights as always. The Libyan double-life parallel is interesting, but what I found in Sharaf's case is that he is genuinely talented, wholeheartedly part and parcel of the machine, and he has found his shape inside it. Some of the stuff in Jihad magazine is obviously Iranian language and shaping (Knowledge and Jihad is straight up Khamenei), but on a personal level, Sharaf's family are well-known Sayyids (Hashemites) so the movement he serves is restoring the social order his class once presided over, and his ideology is being elevated, circulated, and rewarded andI think he is intoxicated by both that and by the fame he is finding. This is the same man who once organized children's workshops in Taiz under the banner of tolerance and the rejection of violence and hatred (a direct jab at the Houthis' ethos), and who now illustrates children planning naval assaults. The transformation is devastating, but it also makes sense. The environment did not corrupt him so much as reveal him. From a bird's eye view, what I was trying to get at in the piece is that the proxy relationship is fractal. Iran builds proxies that believe they are sovereign. Those proxies absorb talent that believes it is free. Sharaf is what that looks like one scale down.