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[It's a boy!]

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(Laughter)

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No.

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[Merry Christmas to all!
Except all those pathetic losers. So sad.]

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(Laughter)

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And basically, the next day,
Trump tweeted this:

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[Happy New Year to all,
including to my many enemies

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and those who have fought me
and lost so badly

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they just don't know what to do. Love!]

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[I'll help you find the hackers.
Give me your password.]

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[Hard Brexit?]

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[That was close!]

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That was --

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(Applause)

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[What kind of hair gel?]

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[Memorial Day 2018.
(on tombstone) Truth. Honor. Rule of Law.]

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they lost their positions

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because their publishers
found their work too critical of Trump.

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And the same happened
to Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder.

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Hey, maybe we should start worrying.

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Political cartoons
were born with democracy,

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and they are challenged when freedom is.

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["(Life is) a tale told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury, signifying nothing."]

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This speaks to me.
Shakespeare is still very relevant, no?

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But the world has changed a bit.

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[Too long!]

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(Applause)

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[Covering Iraq?
No, Trump!]

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[Satire can hurt your feelings]

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[Under your bikini
you could be hiding a sex bomb]

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[Without humor we are all dead]

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Whatever one thought
of that satirical magazine,

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however one felt about
those particular cartoons,

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we all sensed that something
fundamental was at stake,

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that citizens of free societies --
actually, citizens of any society --

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need humor as much as the air we breathe.

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This is why the extremists,

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the dictators, the autocrats and, frankly,
all the ideologues of the world

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cannot stand humor.

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I've been a political cartoonist
on the global stage for the last 20 years.

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Hey, we have seen a lot of things
happen in those 20 years.

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We saw three different Catholic popes,

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and we witnessed that unique moment:

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the election of a pope
on St. Peter's Square --

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you know, the little white smoke

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and the official announcement.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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We saw four American presidents.

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Obama, of course.

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Oh, Europeans liked him a lot.

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He was a multilateralist.

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He favored diplomacy.

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He wanted to be friends with Iran.

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(Laughter)

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And then ...

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reality imitated caricature

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the day Donald Trump became the President
of the United States of America.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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You know, people come to us and they say,

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"It's too easy for you cartoonists.
I mean -- with people like Trump?"

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Well, no, it's not easy

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to caricature a man
who is himself a caricature.

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(Applause)

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Populists are no easy target for satire

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because you try to nail them down one day,

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and the next day, they outdo you.

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For example, as soon as he was elected,

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I tried to imagine the tweet
that Trump would send on Christmas Eve.

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So I did this, OK?

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(Laughter)

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It's the same!

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(Applause)

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This is the era of strongmen.

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And soon, Donald Trump was able to meet
his personal hero, Vladimir Putin,

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and this is how the first meeting went:

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(Laughter)

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And I'm not inventing anything.

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He came out of that first meeting
saying that the two of them had agreed

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on a joint task force on cybersecurity.

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This is true, if you do remember.

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Oh, who would have imagined
the things we saw over these 20 years.

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We saw Great Britain run towards
a European Union exit.

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(Laughter)

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In the Middle East,
we believed for a while

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in the democratic miracle
of the Arab Spring.

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We saw dictators fall,
we saw others hang on.

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(Laughter)

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And then there is the timeless
Kim dynasty of North Korea.

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These guys seem to be coming
straight out of Cartoon Network.

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I was blessed to be able
to draw two of them.

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Kim Jong-il, the father,

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when he died a few years ago,
that was a very dangerous moment.

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(Laughter)

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And then the son, Kim Jong-un,

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proved himself a worthy
successor to the throne.

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He's now friends with the US president.

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They meet each other all the time,
and they talk like friends.

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(Laughter)

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Should we be surprised

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to be living in a world

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ruled by egomaniacs?

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What if they were just
a reflection of ourselves?

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I mean, look at us, each of us.

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(Laughter)

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Yeah, we love our smartphones;

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we love our selfies;

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we love ourselves.

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And thanks to Facebook,
we have a lot of friends

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all over the world.

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Mark Zuckerberg is our friend.

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(Laughter)

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You know, he and his peers
in Silicon Valley

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are the kings and the emperors

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of our time.

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Showing that the emperors have no clothes,

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that's the task of satire, right?

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Speaking truth to power.

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This has always been the historical role
of political cartooning.

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In the 1830s, postrevolutionary France
under King Louis Philippe,

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journalists and caricaturists fought hard
for the freedom of the press.

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They were jailed, they were fined,
but they prevailed.

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And this caricature of the king by Daumier

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came to define the monarch.

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It marked history.

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It became the timeless symbol
of satire triumphing over autocracy.

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Today, 200 years after Daumier,

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are political cartoons
at risk of disappearing?

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Take this blank space on the front page of
Turkish opposition newspaper "Cumhuriyet."

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This is where Musa Kart's
cartoon used to appear.

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In 2018, Musa Kart was sentenced
to three years in jail.

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For doing what?

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For doing political cartoons
in Erdoğan's Turkey.

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Cartoonists from Venezuela, Russia, Syria
have been forced into exile.

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Look at this image.

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It seems so innocent, right?

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Yet it is so provocative.

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When he posted this image,

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Hani Abbas knew it would change his life.

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It was in 2012, and the Syrians
were taking to the streets.

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Of course, the little red flower
is the symbol of the Syrian revolution.

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So pretty soon, the regime was after him,

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and he had to flee the country.

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A good friend of his,
cartoonist Akram Raslan,

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didn't make it out of Syria.

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He died under torture.

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In the United States of America recently,

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some of the very top cartoonists,
like Nick Anderson and Rob Rogers --

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this is a cartoon by Rob --

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You know, over the years,

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with the Cartooning for Peace Foundation
and other initiatives,

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Kofi Annan -- this is not well
known -- he was the honorary chair

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of our foundation,

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the late Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Laureate.

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He was a great defender of cartoons.

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Or, on the board of the Association
of American Editorial Cartoonists,

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we have advocated on behalf of jailed,
threatened, fired, exiled cartoonists.

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But I never saw a case
of someone losing his job

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over a cartoon he didn't do.

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Well, that happened to me.

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For the last 20 years, I have been
with the "International Herald Tribune"

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and the "New York Times."

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Then something happened.

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In April 2019,

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a cartoon by a famous
Portuguese cartoonist,

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which was first published
in a newspaper "El Expresso" in Lisbon,

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was picked by an editor
at the "New York Times"

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and reprinted in
the international editions.

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This thing blew up.

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It was denounced as anti-Semitic,

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triggered widespread outrage,

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apologies

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and a lot of damage control by the Times.

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A month after, my editor told me

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they were ending
political cartoons altogether.

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So we could, and we should,
have a discussion about that cartoon.

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Some people say it reminds them
of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda.

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Others, including in Israel,

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say no, it's just
a harsh criticism of Trump,

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who is shown as blindly following
the Prime Minister of Israel.

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I have some issues with this cartoon,

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but that discussion did not happen
at the "New York Times."

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Under attack, they took the easiest path:

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in order to not have problems
with political cartoons in the future,

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let's not have any at all.

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Hey, this is new.

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Did we just invent
preventive self-censorship?

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I think this is bigger than cartoons.

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This is about opinion and journalism.

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This, in the end, is about democracy.

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We now live in a world

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where moralistic mobs
gather on social media

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and rise like a storm.

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The most outraged voices
tend to define the conversation,

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and the angry crowd follows in.

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These social media mobs,

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sometimes fueled by interest groups,

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fall upon newsrooms
in an overwhelming blow.

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They send publishers and editors
scrambling for countermeasures.

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This leaves no room
for meaningful discussions.

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Twitter is a place for fury,
not for debate.

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And you know what?

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Someone described pretty well
our human condition in this noisy age.

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You know who?

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Shakespeare, 400 years ago.

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(Laughter)

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It's true.

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You know, social media is both
a blessing and a curse for cartoons.

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This is the era of the image,
so they get shared, they get viral,

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but that also makes them a prime target.

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More than often, the real target
behind the cartoon

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is the media that published it.

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That relationship between
traditional media and social media

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is a funny one.

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On one hand, you have
the time-consuming process

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of information, verification, curation.

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On the other hand,
it's an open buffet, frankly,

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for rumors, opinions, emotions,

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amplified by algorithms.

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Even quality newspapers mimic the codes
of social networks on their websites.

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They highlight the 10 most read,
the 10 most shared stories.

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They should put forward
the 10 most important stories.

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(Applause)

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The media must not be
intimidated by social media,

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and editors should stop
being afraid of the angry mob.

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(Applause)

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We're not going to put up warnings
the way we do on cigarette packs, are we?

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(Laughter)

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Come on.

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Political cartoons are meant
to provoke, just like opinions.

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But before all, they are meant
to be thought-provoking.

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You feel hurt?

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Just let it go.

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You don't like it?

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Look the other way.

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Freedom of expression
is not incompatible with dialogue

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and listening to each other.

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But it is incompatible with intolerance.

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(Applause)

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Let us not become our own censors
in the name of political correctness.

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We need to stand up, we need to push back,

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because if we don't,
we will wake up tomorrow

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in a sanitized world,

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where any form of satire and political
cartooning becomes impossible.

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Because, when political pressure
meets political correctness,

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freedom of speech perishes.

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(Applause)

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Do you remember January 2015?

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With the massacre
of journalists and cartoonists

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at "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris,

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we discovered the most
extreme form of censorship:

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murder.

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Remember how it felt.

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In the insane world we live in right now,

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we need political cartoons more than ever.

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And we need humor.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)