Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Lazyweb request: Pro bono political graphic design

Okay, so this is the evil racist advertisement which the Swiss right wing party, the SVP, has posted up all over the country.

It is an ad supporting a referendum on deporting criminal foreigners, and it JUST HAPPENS, apparently, that the criminal sheep getting kicked out is a black sheep, and the good Swiss sheep profiting thereby are, you know, white.

Oh, and did I mention that in an earlier version of the poster, one of the white sheep in the background is dead with a bloody dagger sticking out of him? Presumably because SVP voters have a little trouble with, you know, implication and stuff.

In many posters in my neighborhood, I am happy to say, the letters "SVP" have been written on the black sheep, neatly inverting the message, so that it says "wouldn't Switzerland be safer if we kicked out the SVP?" I did not, I hasten to add, do any of this graffiting... yet... but it's nice to know that at least someone has the courage of my convictions.

However, I have a better idea. I would like to commission from the Internet the following posters, suitable for downloading, printing out, and leaving in places where handy Swiss anarchists will put them up.

Poster #1: In this poster, the sheep in the upper left is once more dead with a bloody dagger. The sheep in the upper right is standing around looking mournful, and the Blocher sheep at lower left is kicking out the black sheep.

But! There is also a thought bubble above the apparently mournful sheep which says "Juhui! Jetzt werden sie's nie rausfinden!" ("Yay! Now they'll never figure it out!"). Or perhaps "Rassismus sei Dank - ich werde nicht verdächtigt" ("Thanks to racism, no one suspects me!").

(German-speaking readers, please correct my grammar and idiom as indicated. Update: Thanks, Jonas!)

Poster #2: In this poster, slightly more ambitious, we see a rendition of the famous Renaissance picture of the soldiers gambling for Christ's clothes. The soldiers are the white sheep, in Roman helmets. The black sheep is Christ, on the cross, which is the white cross of the Swiss flag. The background of the flag, red, is dripping blood across the bottom of the poster. Just because, you know, you can't be too subtle with SVP voters.