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Happy Merchant
Happy Merchant
	Edited caricature illustration of a stereotypical Jewish man by "A. Wyatt Mann".
First appearance	Artwork by A. Wyatt Mann

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The Happy Merchant is a common name for an image depicting an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish man. The image appears commonly on websites such as 4chan or Reddit, where it is frequently used in hateful or disparaging contexts.

History

The image was first created by cartoonist A. Wyatt Mann (a wordplay on "A white man"), a pseudonym of Nick Bougas.^[1]^[2]^[3] The image was part of a cartoon that also included a racist caricature of a black man and used these images to say: "Let's face it! A world without Jews and Blacks would be like a world without rats and cockroaches." The cartoon was first released in print, but appeared online in February 2001.^[1]

The stereotypical image of a Jew from the cartoon began to spread on various internet communities, where users began to make variations of it.^[1]

The Happy Merchant meme endorses the idea that Jews secretly conspire to conquer the world.^[4]

Description

The image is intended as a derogatory depiction, and employs many stereotypes of Jews. These include:

A large, hook-shaped nose ("Jewish nose");
A yarmulke (Jewish head garment);
A malevolent smile, with a slightly hunched back and hands being rubbed together, to indicate greed or scheming;
Balding, tightly curled black hair and a tightly curled black beard.^[5]

Use

This image is a form of antisemitic propaganda, common on alt-right internet communities such as 4chan, other "chan" websites, and on other message boards.^[6]

In 2017, Al Jazeera tweeted an image that included the Happy Merchant on its official English-language Twitter account. The tweet was promoting a story about climate change, and insinuated that Jewish people were behind climate change. Al Jazeera later deleted the tweet, explaining that it had been used in a segment covering alt-right antisemitic climate change conspiracy theories.^[7]

A 2018 study published by Savvas Zannettou et al. focused on online antisemitism recorded that the Happy Merchant and its variations were "among the most popular memes on both 4chan's /pol/ board and Gab, two major outlets for alt-right expression.^[8] The study found that usage of the Happy Merchant on /pol/ remained largely consistent (with a peak during the US airstrike on Syria in April 2017), while usage of the meme on Gab increased after the Charlottesville rally in August 2017.^[9] It was also determined that /pol/ influences the spread of Happy Merchant to other web platforms such as Twitter and Reddit.^[10]

The same study also found that the Happy Merchant has been incorporated into other common memes on the site, including Pepe the Frog.^[11]

References

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c "The Surprisingly Mainstream History Of The Internet's Favorite Anti-Semitic Image". BuzzFeed News. February 5, 2015. p. 11. Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
^ Malice, Michael (May 19, 2019). The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-250-15467-5. Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor.
^ Ellis, Emma Grey (June 19, 2017). "The Alt-Right Found Its Favorite Cartoonist—and Almost Ruined His Life". Wired. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2019. But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.
^ Perry, Marvin., and Frederick M. Schweitzer.Antisemitic Myths: a Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.
^ Savvas 2019, p. 2.
^ "The Happy Merchant". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
^ Kestenbaum, Sam (May 31, 2017). "Al Jazeera Tweets, Then Deletes, Anti-Semitic 'Greedy Jew' Meme". The Forward. Archived from the original on July 30, 2021. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
^ Zannettou, Savvas, Tristan Caulfield, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. "On the Origins of Memes by Fringe Web Communities." arXiv.org, September 22, 2018. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512.
^ Savvas 2019, p. 9.
^ Savvas 2019, p. 11.
^ Savvas 2019, p. 10.

Bibliography

Zannettou, Savvas (November 24, 2019). "A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism". arXiv:1809.01644 [cs.CY].

External links

Happy Merchant entry at Know Your Meme

[:0-1] "The Surprisingly Mainstream History Of The Internet's Favorite Anti-Semitic Image". BuzzFeed News. February 5, 2015. p. 11. Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2021.

[2] Malice, Michael (May 19, 2019). The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-250-15467-5. Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor.

[wired-3] Ellis, Emma Grey (June 19, 2017). "The Alt-Right Found Its Favorite Cartoonist—and Almost Ruined His Life". Wired. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2019. But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.

[4] Perry, Marvin., and Frederick M. Schweitzer.Antisemitic Myths: a Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.

[FOOTNOTESavvas20192-5] Savvas 2019, p. 2.

[6] "The Happy Merchant". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2021.

[7] Kestenbaum, Sam (May 31, 2017). "Al Jazeera Tweets, Then Deletes, Anti-Semitic 'Greedy Jew' Meme". The Forward. Archived from the original on July 30, 2021. Retrieved July 30, 2021.

[8] Zannettou, Savvas, Tristan Caulfield, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. "On the Origins of Memes by Fringe Web Communities." arXiv.org, September 22, 2018. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512.

[FOOTNOTESavvas20199-9] Savvas 2019, p. 9.

[FOOTNOTESavvas201911-10] Savvas 2019, p. 11.

[FOOTNOTESavvas201910-11] Savvas 2019, p. 10.

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@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 {{Short description|Antisemitic caricature}}
 {{Infobox character
-| name = Happy Merchant
+ |name         = Happy Merchant
-| image = [[File:The Happy Merchant.jpg]]
+ |image      = [[File:The Happy Merchant.jpg]]
-| caption = Edited caricature illustration of a stereotypical Jewish man as drawn by "A. Wyatt Mann".
+ |caption      =  Edited caricature illustration of a stereotypical Jewish man by "A. Wyatt Mann".
+ |  first = Artwork by [[Nick Bougas|A. Wyatt Mann]]
-| first = 1940
-| designer = [[Philipp Rupprecht]]
 }}
-The '''Happy Merchant''' is a common name for an image that depicts an [[anti-Jewish]] caricature of a Jewish man. The Happy Merchant is common on websites such as [[4chan]] or [[Reddit]] where it is frequently used in a hateful or disparaging context.
+The '''Happy Merchant''' is a common name for an image depicting an [[Racial antisemitism|antisemitic]] [[caricature]] of a [[Jewish]] man. The image appears commonly on websites such as [[4chan]] or [[Reddit]], where it is frequently used in hateful or disparaging contexts.
 == History ==
+The image was first created by cartoonist A. Wyatt Mann (a [[wordplay]] on "A white man"), a pseudonym of [[Nick Bougas]].<ref name=":0"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Malice |first1=Michael |author1-link=Michael Malice |title=The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics |date=May 19, 2019|publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-250-15467-5 |page=40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D6FuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT39 |language=en |quote=Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor.}}</ref><ref name="wired">{{Cite news|last=Ellis|first=Emma Grey|date=June 19, 2017|title=The Alt-Right Found Its Favorite Cartoonist—and Almost Ruined His Life|magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]|url=https://www.wired.com/story/ben-garrison-alt-right-cartoonist/|url-status=live|url-access=limited|access-date=May 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180702204611/https://www.wired.com/story/ben-garrison-alt-right-cartoonist/|archive-date=July 2, 2018|quote=But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.}}</ref> The image was part of a cartoon that also included a racist caricature of a black man and used these images to say: "Let's face it! A world without Jews and Blacks would be like a world without rats and cockroaches." The cartoon was first released in print, but appeared online in February 2001.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=The Surprisingly Mainstream History Of The Internet's Favorite Anti-Semitic Image|url=https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/the-surprisingly-mainstream-history-of-the-internets-favorit|url-status=live|access-date=July 30, 2021|website=[[BuzzFeed News]]|date=February 5, 2015 |page=11|language=en|archive-date=February 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190228063743/https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/the-surprisingly-mainstream-history-of-the-internets-favorit}}</ref>
-The image was created by [[Germans|German]] cartoonist [[Philipp Rupprecht]] during the [[Nazi era]], its first known appearance bearing the caption "The Reich is Aryan" in a collection of Rupprecht's cartoons published on [[Adolf Hitler]]'s birthday in 1940 although it's believed to predate this.<ref>{{Cite web|date=January 29, 2022|title=Sold at Auction: Fips, Philipp Rupprecht. Das Reich ist Arisch.|url=https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/philipp-rupprecht-das-reich-ist-arisch-110-c-2174fc18ab|access-date=March 3, 2024|website=Invaluable}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=January 29, 2022 |title=Philipp Rupprecht. Das Reich ist Arisch. - Auktionen & Preisarchiv
-|url=https://www.lotsearch.de/lot/philipp-rupprecht-das-reich-ist-arisch-55882039?searchID=6804283|access-date=March 3, 2024|website=LotSearch}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=January 29, 2022 |title=Philipp Rupprecht |url=https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Das-Reich-ist-Arisch/F46D0BEB65915F56B92342FCC8910C9C |access-date=March 3, 2024 |website=MutualArt {{!}} Das Reich ist Arisch (1940) {{!}} MutualArt}}</ref> Decades later Rupprecht's image was apparently reproduced in a cartoon signed "A. Wyatt Mann", a [[wordplay|play]] on "A white man" and pseudonym of [[Nick Bougas]],<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Malice |first1=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D6FuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT39 |title=The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics |date=May 19, 2019 |publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-250-15467-5 |page=40 |language=en |quote=Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor. |author1-link=Michael Malice}}</ref><ref name="wired">{{Cite news |last=Ellis |first=Emma Grey |date=June 19, 2017 |title=The Alt-Right Found Its Favorite Cartoonist—and Almost Ruined His Life |url=https://www.wired.com/story/ben-garrison-alt-right-cartoonist/ |url-access=limited |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180702204611/https://www.wired.com/story/ben-garrison-alt-right-cartoonist/ |archive-date=July 2, 2018 |access-date=May 28, 2019 |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |quote=But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.}}</ref> that also includes a racist caricature of a black man and is captioned: "Let's face it! A world without Jews and Blacks would be like a world without rats and cockroaches." Bougas' cartoon was first released in print but appeared online in February 2001.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=The Surprisingly Mainstream History Of The Internet's Favorite Anti-Semitic Image|url=https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/the-surprisingly-mainstream-history-of-the-internets-favorit|url-status=live|access-date=July 30, 2021|website=BuzzFeed News|date=February 5, 2015 |page=11|language=en|archive-date=February 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190228063743/https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/the-surprisingly-mainstream-history-of-the-internets-favorit}}</ref>
 The stereotypical image of a Jew from the cartoon began to spread on various internet communities, where users began to make variations of it.<ref name=":0" />
@@ Line 24: / Line 22: @@
 * A large, hook-shaped nose ("[[Jewish nose]]");
 * A [[yarmulke]] (Jewish head garment);
-* A malevolent smile, with a slightly hunched back and hands being rubbed together, to indicate [[greed]] or scheming;
+* A malevolent smile, with a slightly hunched back and hands being rubbed together, to indicate [[greed]] or [[scheming]];
 * Balding, tightly curled black hair and a tightly curled black beard.{{sfn|Savvas|2019|p=2}}
 == Use ==
-This image is a form of antisemitic propaganda, common on alt-right internet communities such as 4chan, other "chan" websites, and on other message boards.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Happy Merchant|url=https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/the-happy-merchant|access-date=July 30, 2021|website=Anti-Defamation League|language=en|archive-date=July 10, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200710202445/https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/the-happy-merchant|url-status=live}}</ref> In 2017, [[Al Jazeera Media Network|Al Jazeera]] tweeted an image that included the Happy Merchant on its official English-language Twitter account. The tweet was promoting a story about [[climate change]], and insinuated that Jewish people were behind [[climate change]]. Al Jazeera later deleted the tweet, explaining that it had been used in a segment covering [[alt-right]] antisemitic climate change [[conspiracy theories]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kestenbaum|first=Sam|date=May 31, 2017|title=Al Jazeera Tweets, Then Deletes, Anti-Semitic 'Greedy Jew' Meme|url=https://forward.com/fast-forward/373476/al-jazeera-tweets-deletes-anti-semitic-greedy-jew-meme/|url-status=live|access-date=July 30, 2021|website=The Forward|language=en-US|archive-date=July 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210730161641/https://forward.com/fast-forward/373476/al-jazeera-tweets-deletes-anti-semitic-greedy-jew-meme/}}</ref>
+This image is a form of antisemitic propaganda, common on alt-right internet communities such as 4chan, other "chan" websites, and on other message boards.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Happy Merchant|url=https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/the-happy-merchant|access-date=July 30, 2021|website=[[Anti-Defamation League]]|language=en|archive-date=July 10, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200710202445/https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/the-happy-merchant|url-status=live}}</ref>
+In 2017, [[Al Jazeera Media Network|Al Jazeera]] tweeted an image that included the Happy Merchant on its official English-language Twitter account. The tweet was promoting a story about [[climate change]], and insinuated that Jewish people were behind [[climate change]]. Al Jazeera later deleted the tweet, explaining that it had been used in a segment covering [[alt-right]] antisemitic climate change [[conspiracy theories]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kestenbaum|first=Sam|date=May 31, 2017|title=Al Jazeera Tweets, Then Deletes, Anti-Semitic 'Greedy Jew' Meme|url=https://forward.com/fast-forward/373476/al-jazeera-tweets-deletes-anti-semitic-greedy-jew-meme/|url-status=live|access-date=July 30, 2021|website=[[The Forward]]|language=en-US|archive-date=July 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210730161641/https://forward.com/fast-forward/373476/al-jazeera-tweets-deletes-anti-semitic-greedy-jew-meme/}}</ref>
 A 2018 study published by Savvas Zannettou et al. focused on online antisemitism recorded that the Happy Merchant and its variations were "among the most popular memes on both 4chan's [[/pol/]] board and [[Gab (social network)|Gab]], two major outlets for alt-right expression.<ref>Zannettou, Savvas, Tristan Caulfield, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil. "On the Origins of Memes by Fringe Web Communities." arXiv.org, September 22, 2018. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512.</ref> The study found that usage of the Happy Merchant on [[/pol/]] remained largely consistent (with a peak during the [[2017 Shayrat missile strike|US airstrike on Syria]] in April 2017), while usage of the meme on [[Gab (social network)|Gab]] increased after the [[Unite the Right rally|Charlottesville rally]] in August 2017.{{sfn|Savvas|2019|p=9}} It was also determined that /pol/ influences the spread of Happy Merchant to other web platforms such as [[Twitter]] and [[Reddit]].{{sfn|Savvas|2019|p=11}}
@@ Line 35: / Line 35: @@
 == References ==
-'''Notes'''
+=== Notes ===
 {{Reflist}}
-'''Bibliography'''
+=== Bibliography ===
 *{{Cite arXiv|last=Zannettou|first=Savvas|date=November 24, 2019|title=A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism|class=cs.CY |eprint=1809.01644|ref={{SfnRef|Savvas|2019}}}}
@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 {{Nick Bougas}}
-[[Category:Internet memes]]
+[[Category:Internet memes introduced in 2001]]
-[[Category:Antisemitic works]]
+[[Category:Antisemitism in art]]
-[[Category:Alt-right]]
-[[Category:/pol/ phenomena]]
 [[Category:Stereotypes of Jewish people]]
 [[Category:Caricature]]
-[[Category:Nick Bougas]]
-[[Category:2001 works]]
 [[Category:Individual printed cartoons]]
+[[Category:Alt-right]]
+[[Category:/pol/ phenomena]]
 [[Category:Fictional Jews]]
-[[Category:Internet characters introduced in 2001]]
 [[Category:Fictional salespeople]]
+[[Category:Internet characters introduced in 2001]]
+[[Category:2001 works]]
+[[Category:Nick Bougas]]
+[[Category:Internet meme characters]]

v t e Nick Bougas
Films directed	Death Scenes (1989) Speak of the Devil: The Canon of Anton LaVey (1993) The Goddess Bunny (1994)
Other works	Happy Merchant (caricature) Satan Takes a Holiday (1995 album)