A farce on fascism

TitleCarriers of the New Black Plague, in Ken Magazine, Iss. 1
CreatorWilliam H. Cotton
Year1938
Dimensions35 × 54 cm
LocationLeventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library
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This map appeared in the very first issue of Ken magazine, from 1938. Ken was founded as a glossy, richly illustrated current-affairs bimonthly featuring prominent literary figures and journalists. Its editorial roster featured several left-wing thinkers whose politics of the time were shaped by the ongoing Spanish Civil War. An opposition to the fascist tide that was sweeping the world in the 1930s was therefore one of the magazine's most noteworthy political stances.

A reproduction of Ackerman's original map that appeared in the New York Times, 3 January 1938, p. 7.
A reproduction of Ackerman's original map that appeared in the New York Times, 3 January 1938, p. 7.

That attitude shines through in this map illustrated by William H. Cotton. Borrowing from a contemporary map created by Carl Ackerman, Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, this map uses black and gray to show a world threatened by a a “new Black Plague.” Black areas show nations with “dictatorial control of the agencies of public communication,” with gray “varying degrees of control,” and yellow “relative freedom.” Ackerman's map had gone out of its way to include as many places as possible, marking down even the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Quebec for their censorship laws. ()

Cotton and the Ken editorial team took Ackerman's rather workmanlike map and added a compelling illustrative narration to it. With a caption decrying the “mangy motley pack of little ‘strong men’ who are now leading the world on a backward march to the Dark Ages,” the editorialists gave taunting names to the world's dictators: Hobgoblin Hitler, Man Mountain Mussolini, and so on. Cotton's exaggerated portraits of the fascist leaders, with Hitler's hand looming towards the Americas, was meant to stir up support in favor of confronting the men who “with distended ego and outsized adrenal glands,” were dragging the world towards totalitarianism.

Bibliography

Times 1938
“Ackerman Scores Dictators’ Press,” New York Times (3 January 1938): 7.