Reddit mentions of Red Scare

For my Illustration class, we had to either do a caricature or a statement portrait of a public figure. I chose to do a statement portrait of Donald Trump and Joe McCarthy, who is famous for McCarthyism/Second Red Scare. In short, he used the labeling of people as "communists" and similar labels to not only remove their trustworthiness and patriotism, but to justify the unlawful search of themselves and homes, as well as government surveillance. I believe we are entering another Red Scare, but instead a Brown Scare, where the people portrayed as the "enemy" are brown and black people, most notably Latinx, Arabic, and Black individuals. McCarthy is not shaded in to symbolize how he doesn't feel real - a person in the past - while Trump is very present and very real, and thus shaded. The style is intended to mimic 40's-50's political cartoons. The backgrounds are how information was spread about the two people - behind McCarthy are blurred newspaper articles about him, while behind Trump are blurred tweets from his Twitter account. Their signatures are above their portraits in case people do not know who they are. Excellent reading material to go with this art is Griffin Fariello's Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition , which contains the accounts of people who lived during McCarthyism - both governmental targets and government workers.

Please share this art with the hashtag #brownscare, it is meant to be circulated and become a political meme.

Amusing note, it turns out Joe McCarthy looks a lot like Richard Nixon.

Art © Slipping-Star