Last Updated on November 16, 2021
Representative Paul Gosar has been attacked by both Democrats and establishment Republicans for a now-deleted anime meme video which National File has acquired.
Earlier this month, Representative Paul Gosar, the staunchest supporter of the America First agenda in Congress, tweeted a short parody video of the anime “Attack on Titan,” a series that depicts heroes fighting against giant monsters known as titans.
In the video, Gosar was portrayed as the hero of the anime, while Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were digitally altered to be the monsters for comedic effect in a process colloquially referred to as photoshopping. National File obtained the full video earlier this week and has made it available exclusively via Gab TV:
Despite the video being a satirical attack on mass migration and its defenders, the Democrats and establishment Republicans took fantasy violence included in the video literally. Last week, House Democrats introduced a resolution to censure Gosar, arguing that “violence against women in politics is a global phenomenon meant to silence women and discourage them from seeking positions of authority and participating in public life, with women of color disproportionately impacted,” claiming that the video incited violence against AOC.
However, despite House Democrats including Jackie Speier, Eric Swalwell, Rashida Tlaib, and dozens of others officially introducing the resolution, rumours abound that Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was behind the motion. McCarthy told CNN that he had called Gosar when he heard about the video, at which point it was then taken down following the call.
In an email statement, Gosar defended his staff for the creation of the video, and said that he found “the faux outrage infantile and the hyperventilating and shrill accusations that this cartoon is dangerous to be laughable or intentionally hyperbolic.” He noted that the anime video symbolises the scourge of illegal immigration, and that those depicted in the cartoon are merely “representative” of the problem itself.
“This is a cartoon. It is not a documentary. It is not real life,” Gosar added, arguing that “while the degree of punishment differs,” censuring him is the expression of the same sentiment seen from the Charlie Hebdo attackers in 2015, with both parties attacking media that lampooned something they held sacred. And like the Charlie Hebdo publishers, nothing in the video that Gosar posted “uttered a single threat. Nothing in fact was threatening to any person”:
It is a meme – a meme apparently many don’t understand, and to be honest, I have to be debriefed by my young staff on the meaning of some memes. My staff is creative, talented and passionate. They are not dangerous. They are not violent. They do not incite violence or glorify violence. It is a cartoon intended to be entertaining while making a point that the open borders our country suffers is an evil that plagues the land.
I do not think anyone reasonably thinks it promotes violence. Any more than one could assert that Tom and Jerry promote violence between cats and mice. Or that Peter Griffin actually fought a chicken. Or that Elmer Fudd truly hates rabbits. Or that Rick and Morty actually engage in combat with various space monsters. These are all fictitious works of fantasy. They work on a variety of levels of literary themes and entertainment.
Gosar concluded in his statement by arguing that anyone who would dare to suggest that an anime meme video was a “call for violence against any person” would have to have “an insufferably low IQ to make that assertion with a straight face.”
While the video has been removed from Twitter, National File has obtained a high quality copy of the original, and uploaded it to Gab TV.
