Since 2010 Garrison’s work has been repeatedly altered to create some of the internet’s most vitriolic, anti-Semitic cartoons which, despite his best efforts, still regularly appear on far-right websites and can act as a gateway drug to white nationalism. The most surprising fact about Garrison: he himself was once subject to a vicious online trolling campaign – from the far-right. “My former friends and co-workers are smart people, but when it comes to politics, they’ve become too brainwashed by political correctness.” They think I’ve gone off the deep end,” he continued. “I’ve lost nearly all of my old liberal friends from Seattle due to my cartoons. “To be sure, many are interpreted…as such, but I have no control over what people read into them.” “I don’t draw racist or anti-Semitic cartoons,” he said, speaking with ThinkProgress. Garrison maintains that he is a conservative libertarian cartoonist and that there is no “racist oil” buried within his work. In 2016 he was accused of racism for drawing a cartoon that featured a pageant-ready Melania Trump next to a butch, unhappy-looking Michelle Obama. Garrison now has nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter. His work regularly features at the top of the popular sub-reddit, r/The_Donald, and has been shared by Mike Cernovich and Julian Assange.
Since 2015, Garrison has been the de facto chief cartoonist for right-wing communities online. Meanwhile “SJWs” - internet slang used to refer to liberal activists, or “social justice warriors” - are blue-haired and shrill. Other prominent far-right figures also feature, including Milo Yiannopoulos, who is drawn in one cartoon as a suited JFK lookalike. Instead of using his artwork to mock the president, he frequently depicts Trump as a young, muscular, all-American hero, standing up to the Deep State swamp monster or slaying the dragon of Political Correctness. Spend any time on some of the internet’s more devoted pro-Trump sites and you’ll likely come across one of Ben Garrison’s cartoons. But one Montana-based artist approaches his depictions of the president from a vastly different angle. His toupee-style golden hair, large figure, and even larger mouth have made him the target of endless ridicule and derision from illustrators across the country. President Trump is a dream come true for most cartoonists.
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