Rats. 

For literal centuries, the plague of vermin has been used as an allegory to represent undesirables in certain communities. Beginning in the 19th century, however, it gained a particular traction where Jews are concerned. 

It’s a visceral image, no doubt, conjuring up the traits that Jew-haters love to attribute to us. And it does double duty as a metaphor, at once dehumanizing us and also justifying our eradications. Rats are a plague — they carry diseases, they destroy much of what they come in contact with, they’re shrewd, cunning, and simultaneously viewed as dirty and a representation of evil and untrustworthiness. 

But it took the reach of the Weimar Republic, and later, the Third Reich, to really infect public consciousness en masse with the antisemitic analogy. 

Der Stürmer, one of the most virulently antisemitic publications in the 20th Century, began publishing in Germany in 1923—fully a decade before the Nazi party seized control of the state. Founded by Julius Streicher, it was dedicated almost exclusively to spreading racist and antisemitic propaganda, popularizing the Jews-as-rats imagery. A famous example of this was on the cover of the publication from Dec. 5, 1927. The image depicts an exterminator wearing a swastika armband, using poison gas to kill rats representing Jews around an oak tree. The rats are labeled “the press,” “stock exchanges,”and “trusts.” Each branch of the tree, which is labeled “Germany,” is labeled “workers,” “agriculture,” “industry, “arts,” “commerce,” and other business sectors. The headline translates to “The Poisoned Ronig (a common Jewish surname).” The subhead at the bottom of the page translates to, “The Jews are our misfortune,” and the caption translates to: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will bloom again.”

This is just one in a long series of hateful Jews-as-rats caricatures levied by the Nazi party published throughout the Holocaust. 

And here we are more than 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, and aligning Jews with rats remains as popular a tactic with certain elements of the populace today. Notably, the Fremont County, CO Republicans Facebook group. 

On Feb. 7, an individual named “Juan Chavez” posted a political cartoon in the open-to-the-public Fremont County, CO Republicans Facebook group. It depicts George Soros—a favorite Jewish Boogeyman of the Republican party, given his enormous financial contributions to left-wing causes—freeing an army of rats from a box labeled “paid protestors” and “Soros Inc.”

If anyone’s been paying attention for the last several years, this kind of imagery is an all-too-obvious dog-whistle to the growing chorus of online antisemitic trolls.


“Not sure how I can help,” admits Kevin Grantham, Commissioner of Fremont County District 1. “I spend exactly zero time on that page.” A Republican himself, currently running for Colorado State Treasurer, he admits that he’s seen that image in other places, and didn’t immediately clock the antisemitism as others might. “Talking to you now, I do understand that perspective,” he says over the phone from his home in Cañon City. “I don’t know the person who posted it or the page they posted it from (it was a reshare from the Democrats are destroying America Facebook group)… I can honestly say I don’t know people in my circles (who are antisemitic). I know it’s a well-known meme that Soros is funding protests and paying protesters. We just had a protest last weekend—a follow-up to the No Kings protests—I don’t know if the protesters were paid or not. Maybe it’s common in the big cities. I don’t know. But I’m not interested in getting dragged down into the muck with stuff like (this cartoon). I don’t engage in this kind of—well, it’s not discourse, it’s just base, low-brow humor that doesn’t advance the conversation.”

The artist of the cartoon is Dick Wright— a long-time political cartoonist now well into his 80s. “Dick Wright has been an award winning editorial cartoonist for decades, drawing for the San Diego Union, the Providence Journal, Scripps-Howard Newspapers and the Columbus Dispatch,” reads his bio. His republican political perspective is unmistakable, and he claims that was all that was at play as he put pen to paper.

“I was not aware of any connection between Jews and rats,” he said in reply to my message via Facebook messenger. “My intent was to put the focus on Soros (who happens to be Jewish) and who is financing the radical left protesters who oppose ICE. There was no hidden meaning in the cartoon.”

The issue there is that the meaning — to most Jews around the world — isn’t hidden at all. It’s pretty overt to us. And while it’s easy to believe that a man in his 80s hasn’t had much exposure to the online proliferation of the Jews-as-rats memes and emojis, it’s also disappointing that a man so entrenched in political discourse wouldn’t have enough historical knowledge to know better than to trot it out. And it wouldn’t be the first time Wright’s work reflected an antisemitic trope, either.

“I was dumbstruck by the Dick Wright syndicated editorial cartoon in the Sept. 8 Press Herald,” reads a letter to the editor that was published in September of 2023 in the Portland Press Herald, “featuring a caricature of Merrick Garland with a partially clad Hunter Biden in his ear (Page A6).”

The cartoon in question portrays former U.S. Attorney General Garland with a significantly exaggerated “hooked” nose, one of the oldest and most pervasive antisemitic tropes, with origins back as far as the 12th Century. But, much like most modern Jew-hate, it really took hold during the Holocaust.

Wright’s earlier political cartoon, juxtaposed against an actual picture of Merrick Garland from the Associated Press on the right. (source.)

“It goes back to antisemitic and Nazi propaganda from the 1930s and since then has gone on to become a common trope—and, whether intentionally or not—pushes antisemitic stereotypes to this day,” says Jeremy Ullmann in a piece he penned for the Media Diversity Institute, published Sept. 29, 2020. MDI is an international non-profit organization based in London, dedicated to encouraging, “accurate and nuanced reporting on race, religion, ethnic, class, age, disability, gender and sexual identity issues in media landscapes around the world.”

Ullman continues: “‘The hook nose stereotype is very much still alive, it might be old, but it’s far from being irrelevant,’ a spokesperson for Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, an organisation which campaigns against far-right-wing parties, racism and anti-Semitism in German society, told Media Diversity Institute.

“‘…Caricatures of Jews with grotesque features, and specifically with large noses, was ubiquitous in antisemitic propaganda deployed by Nazi Germany, but can also be found in the outpourings of a wide range of antisemitic regimes, organisations and ideologies,’ said Community Security Trust Director of Policy Dr. Dave Rich, speaking to the way that these caricatures have worked as a propaganda tool over time. ‘It is a technique used to stir up a sense of disgust and repulsion towards Jews, either collectively or individually, and is often found alongside other antisemitic motifs involving money, power, conspiracy and blood.’”

Taking Wright at his word, it nonetheless remains surprising to me that a man with his decades of experience would plead ignorance as to how these cartoons perpetuate antisemitic canards.

To Wright’s credit, however, he at least took the time to respond to my request for comment. Meanwhile, the three admins identified on the Fremont County CO Republican party Facebook group whom I reached out to did not.



The rules on the Fremont County Republicans of Colorado facebook group are as follows: “The FCRCC will allow all persons to post on its Facebook page. Posts that are spam, attack Republicans, repeated postings, or posts that otherwise inhibit the mission of the FCRCC will be removed at the discretion of the Chairman, Vice Chairman and/or Tech Committee Chair, subject to appeal at any FCRCC meeting. Posters who repeatedly break this rule may be banned from posting on the page, subject to appeal.” One message stands out there to me: don’t you dare attack Republicans.

As for Jews? That appears to be another matter.