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Chilean Jewish community outraged by use of anti-Semitic meme in ad for discount alcohol

The ad featured an offensive caricature of a Jewish man

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Chilean Jews are outraged by the publication of an advert for cut-price alcohol that displays a notorious anti-Semitic meme.

The advert was published by the Chilean alcohol distributor Arbol Verde in Monday’s edition of the Chilean national newspaper, ‘Las Últimas Noticias’.

It featured the ‘Happy Merchant’ – an anti-Semitic internet meme depicting a hook-nosed man with a cunning smile, wearing a head-covering and holding banknotes.

The Jewish Community of Chile fired back on Twitter, saying “[it was] unacceptable advertising alluding to the classic stereotype of a Jew that Nazi propaganda turned into the germ of anti-Semitism that led to the genocide of 6 million Jews.

"Unpresentable way of promoting a product and a serious lack of editing of the media”.

The ‘Happy Merchant’ was created by cartoonist A. Wyatt Mann and was released both in print and online in 2001. The sketch was part of a cartoon that also included a racist drawing of a black man, captioned, "A world without Jews and Blacks would be like a world without Rats and Cockroaches."

According to the US advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “The Happy Merchant has become nearly ubiquitous in modern online white supremacist and anti-Semitic iconography”.

There are around 18,000 Jews in Chile, accounting for approximately 0.1% of the population. Separately, the country is also home to what's believed to be the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East, with as many as half a million Palestinians settling in Chile.

Last year saw the election of far-left, anti-Zionist Gabriel Boric as president of Chile. While the Jewish Community of Chile tried to form a positive relationship with Boric, the president responded with reluctance.

During the High Holy days, the Jewish Community of Chile sent the new president a pot of honey for the Jewish new year, Boric responded with a tweet, saying, “I appreciate the gesture, but they could start by asking Israel to return the illegally occupied Palestinian territory”. 

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