Calling Wilcox’s cartoon “unacceptable” misunderstands both satire and journalism. Political cartoons are meant to be provocative, compressed and confronting. They exaggerate power relationships to expose hypocrisy and danger, not to offer polite balance.
This cartoon does exactly that. It highlights unchecked US imperial behaviour and the hollow language of “freedom and security” used by institutions like NATO while aggression proceeds regardless. Discomfort is not a flaw, it is the point.
If a cartoon criticising military power is deemed unacceptable simply because it offends those aligned with that power, then the problem is not the cartoon. It is a shrinking tolerance for dissent and satire in public debate.
It’s that time of the year again! Here is my personal top 10 of international cartoons (I’ll post a Dutch top 10 soon) I did in 2025, selected from the roughly 150 I did in total.
Thanks for all your support, hope you’ll continue to enjoy my work next year as well. If you’d like to get my cartoons directly by email, you can subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.tjeerdroyaards.com/
Cartoon showing a large billboard. A worker is putting up a new poster, showing EU soldiers, tanks and nuclear missiles, accompanied by the text: 'Prepare for War'. Behind the new poster, we can still see the one that was there before, which has a wind turbine and the text 'Towards a sustainable future'. Below the billboard is a truck marked 'EU campaigns' with more posters in it. People in the street are going about their daily lives and looking up at the new poster.
Some cartoons I drew to accompany an essay a peer of mine wrote about America's past and present double-standards regarding migrants and refugees #krita#digitalart#sketches#politicalcartoons