Death to world imperialism
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Other · File:Death of International Imperialism (poster, 1919).jpg · Public domain · Catalog record
The pins
Context
For discussion
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Dehumanization The serpent's head Capitalism as a green reptile with bulging eyes. A monster has no argument and no rights; the only question is how to kill it.
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Appeal to fear The city in its coils The serpent has the whole city, factories and all, wrapped in its body. The threat is not abroad but around everything the viewer works in.
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Bandwagon The crowd Workers, sailors, and peasants, bayonets raised, already attacking. The viewer is shown the crowd he is expected to be part of.
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Transfer The sun A rainbow sun behind the serpent's tail. The revolution's dawn is placed where the icon painters put the halo.
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Name-calling The caption "World imperialism" names no country and no person. It is a label large enough to cover any enemy the state would later need.
Dmitry Moor's "Smert mirovomu imperializmu" of 1919. A green serpent coils around a black city of factories while workers with hammers and bayonets attack it from below. Moor had drawn for satirical magazines before the revolution, and the poster turns their caricature into monumental form: capitalism as a monster, the proletariat as the crowd that kills it.
- Why a snake?
- The workers are a crowd and the snake is one creature. What does that contrast do?
- "World imperialism" is an abstraction. What does the poster gain by giving it a body?
See also
Same era, or the same techniques.
