How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds

1  Introduction

2  How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds Products

3  The Idea Behind How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds

4  More How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds Products

5  Collaborators & Licenses

 

1  Introduction

As you may have gathered from the Tomcattin’ illustrations, their tom cat is Suburban Geek’s alter-ego and with this illustration, the world has discovered the ugly truth – Suburban Geek doesn’t just want to sell you T-shirts, he wants to take over the world! How? Well, merely by providing some background to the opinions that inspire some of our more thoughtful illustrations.

 

2  How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds Products

 

3  The Idea Behind How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds

WHY AN OCTOPUS?

The Suburban Geek “take over your minds” poster is actually an adaptation of a pamphlet from the 1938, depicting then-USSR Communist dictator, Joseph Stalin, as an octopus, whose tentacles are terrifyingly encircling our world. You may notice that there are only two European countries named, Russia and Spain, with the latter, then in the grips of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.

Interestingly, that original poster was made and distributed by the Catholic Library Service. Undoubtedly, in 1938, the Roman Catholic church placed Godless Communism as the greater threat to world peace, not Fascism. While it’s tempting to classify the Civil War as Left versus Right – the situation was actually far more complex than that.

History sees it more as a battle between, on one side, Modernity & an optimistic, pan-European-ism and on the other, Tradition, the weak monarchy & an accepted poverty for the majority. The Church (with numerous exceptions, admittedly) sided with the latter, fronted by Spanish fascist leader General Franco, who allied with other European fascist leaders of the time. Italy’s Mussolini  provided Franco with 40,000 Italian troops and Germany’s Hitler, provided several squadrons of state-of-the-art war planes from the Nazi German Air Force, the Luftwaffe.

The latter’s most famous sortie was at Guernica, in April 1937, the first known use of aerial bombing against civilians in the World War 2 era. Guernica was a small, country town that was known to sympathize with the Left. It was leveled within a few hours, resulting in more than 1600 deaths. There had never been an attack like that, from the air and few could have imagined anything so utterly devastating. Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, until then, notoriously apolitical, was to be capture the world’s horror in his epic painting, Guernica, considered to be the first Modern Art historical painting of note.

[Incidentally, Art Historian, Simon Schama’s Power Of Art BBC TV series devotes an entire episode to Picasso’s Guernica – it’s well worth catching, as is our parody of Mr. Schama, in our Elected video.]

And so the Octopus pamphlet, printed for domestic USA consumption, it hints at how the Church – as an international organization – colluded with the Fascists and tacitly encouraged their murderous excesses. The Church’s hope was patently, to defeat Communism in Spain – note the octopus’ tentacle circling Spain on the original – but in allying with the Fascists, she has to accept her responsibility in legitimizing Fascism and ultimately, her part in the deaths of World War 2’s 50-85 million victims.

NOTE: Suburban Geek certainly doesn’t champion Stalinist Communism – indeed, the opposite is true. While it’s factually accurate to plot the rise of Nazism with many tacit approvals from both the West and the Church, plus generous Western investment in German industry, the bigger, geopolitical picture proves conclusively that Western democratic governments fully believed that Hitler did not intend to attack the West. They believed that he only wanted war against Stalin’s Communist Russia.

Stalin was a monster, known to have killed millions, including the imposition, during 1932 & 1933, of a famine in the Ukraine – then possessing the most admired farming land in Europe – as a means of suppressing anti-Soviet nationalism. A second means of control was to attack the churches, who answered to an authority beyond the state. He brutally attacked the Roman Catholic Church, the Ukraine Orthodox Church & the Ukraine Greek Orthodox Church, killing or imprisoning many priests and clergy.

The West was aware of this but believed that a coming war between Fascism & Communism would exhaust and subsequently, annihilate both the extreme political persuasions. Ultimately, they were correct – they just hadn’t envisaged that Hitler’s plan was to attack the West first, invade and gain control of their collective industrial base and then attack Russia.

 

4  More How Suburban Geek Intends To Take Over Our Minds Products

5  Collaborators & Licenses

I had a lot of fun creating this illustration with Najami Rogers, from the Seychelles!

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