[Figure 1: picture of Wario, a Nintendo character who is a fat man with a yellow hat and purple overalls, pointed green shoes, a pig red hooked nose, large ears and a squiggly mustache next to a picture of antisemitic Nazi propaganda of a Jewish man with a big stomach, a pink hooked nose, upturned shoes, large ears, mustache, and purple coat carrying a yellow sack]

Update: Social Justice Wario has since read this post and apologized

Tumblr user Social Justice Wario recently received an ask claiming that Wario was a “racist” caricature of a Jewish person. In response, SJW (social justice wario) made a joke out of it and said nothing to address the claim. Granted, the ask was anonymous and hostile, and could possibly be from a troll. But a quick google DOES pull up results for video gamers pondering the same question. And as a person of Jewish descent, I want to discuss this issue. There’s enough silence on antisemitism in the social justice sphere as it is–and a lot of ignorance about what it means to be Jewish and the history of antisemitism. I want to explore the question: IS Wario a Jewish stereotype–and I’d like people to seriously consider this question and have more tools to analyze antisemitic stereotypes in the media.

The first thing I want to do is provide some background on Jewishness and antisemitism because I’ve noticed people tend to think being Jewish is just a matter of what religion you practice, and there’s a lot of confusion and ignorance on Jewishness as an identity. Being Jewish is a cultural and ethnic identity, as well as a religious one. I am half Jewish by blood and have some Jewish features–namely my large hooked nose, but I do not practice Judaism. I am still Jewish. It’s true, though, that Jewish identity is complicated–according to Jewish orthodoxy, you are only technically Jewish if your mother is, but Reform Jews have changed this and would count me as Jewish–being Jewish often includes cultural aspects as well as religious ones, although being religious isn’t required to be Jewish. Someone may convert to Judaism, but the process is difficult, and being religiously Jewish would not make someone ethnically Jewish. Almost all antisemitism targets those who are ethnically Jewish.

Antisemitism has a long and ugly history–not just in Nazi Germany, but in many countries, including the US. In various points in history, Jewish people have been oppressed: there have been Jewish pogroms or genocides around the world and throughout history, as as Jews being regularly discriminated against and denied employment and forced to live in ghettos throughout europe for centuries–not to mention the Holocaust–and this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the 50s in America, it was not uncommon to see signs that said NO JEWS alongside signs that said “no colored people.” Americans denied Jews trying to escape the Holocaust immigration into the US and refused to help save the Jews from genocide. Even when they fought in Europe, they refused pleas to bomb the gas chambers. Currently, Jews in the Europe are not racialized as white, and only recently have been seen as white in the US (and by recently I mean 60s/70s). It’s still debatable whether we ARE white or not, even in the US (you can see my Jewish tag for more details on the complexity of the racialization of Jews in the US).

Stereotypes about Jews and antisemitism goes back centuries, even back to Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice written in the 1500s, and back still further. Jews in Europe were relegated to ghettos and denied basic rights and were forced only into certain forms of employment. Even back in Shakespeare’s day there were stereotypes about Jews being miserly and greedy, crafty, heartless, unfeeling, violent, dirty, uncouth. Shylock, the prominent Jewish character in Shakespeare’s play, is all these things. He, like many Jews, was a lender, because lending money is forbidden in the Christian religion. That job was of the few Jews could have and yet, because they had this occupation, they were stereotyped as being, you guessed it, greedy, miserly, and selfish and crafty. These stereotypes never died and were perpetuated by Nazis centuries later (in fact Shakespeare’s play was later used as Nazi propaganda). The stereotypes continued in the US, when Jews came over to the states during and after the Holocaust, they had to cut corners, save money and be resourceful to survive. One common occupation for Jews in Manhatten was being a lawyer, for example. And before the US became litigious, being a lawyer as a profession meant poverty and was seen as a low occupation. Jews were seen as greedy and privileged when lawsuits became profitable and common, and being a lawyer became a lucrative profession. Being greedy, rich and miserly is still associated with the Jewish stereotype.

Other stereotypes of Jews include being dirty–this was common during the Nazi period when Jews were relegated to ghettos and seen as subhuman and unclean. It’s also associated with the Jewish orthodox tradition of never cutting one’s hair and having “dirty long beards.” That Jews are crafty was also important for scapegoating us for Germany’s economic woes, establishing justification for the Holocaust. Another long-standing myth is that Jews are masterminds, taking control of the movie and music industries today, of Nazi Germany’s flailing economy and government back in the 30’s. That, historically, the occupations we were willing to pick up to scrape by became lucrative later, have long been used as a sign of our greed, cunning, and a Jewish conspiracy. That we managed to survive through our wits and education, even through horrors like the Holocaust, constant ghettoization, and constant discrimination, was a sign of our craftiness, secretiveness and untrustworthiness.

Now, what does all this have to do with Wario?

[Figure 2: picture of Wario holding a stack of gold]

Growing up, my brother was a huge gamer, and I’d often play with him and watch him play and I have since always been involved with nerd culture and grew up with Nintendo games and Mario and Wario and gang. Before that anon stated Wario was an antisemitic stereotype, I’d never considered it. But the moment I read that ask I saw Wario with renewed eyes: his hooked nose was awfully reminiscent, he was constantly pictured as greedy and with gold, and described in instruction booklets as crafty and cunning. I wondered if there was any truth to it and started googling it. I found a few different forums and online discussions questioning if Wario is an antisemitic stereotype, but found no comprehensive article or post on the topic. I also found a yahoo ask from a concerned Jewish person about the topic, an offensive parody video characterizing King Deedee as Hitler and Wario as Jewish (culminating in the parody voice for Wario saying–“my nose gives me away!”), and a couple other jokes about Wario’s “Jewish nose.”

One discussion (cw: ableist slur and some fatphobia), also included a couple of videos from a game as evidence. One does include music as Wario plays that is reminiscent of Jewish music (klezmer) (in my very limited knowledge of Jewish music it sounded reminiscent). I don’t know what they mean about Wario’s victory dance, though, but my knowledge of Jewish dance is incredibly limited.

This was another forum I found on the topic. It was in this forum I found the Nazi propaganda image I used at the top of this post. They also mention Wario’s shoes resembling shoes worn by Jews–but not at all those Italian people have traditionally worn. The only arguments against claims of Wario being an antisemitic stereotype were “he’s Italian” and “he’s just a character.” For one thing, Italian people can Jewish. For another, other posters argued there is reason to doubt Wario is intended to be Italian. And of course there’s the point made by these twitter users that characters are made by people with biases, and Wario being a video game character is no argument against him being an antisemitic stereotype.

For context, one example of a fictional characters that are confirmed to represent an antisemitic stereotype are the dwarves in Lord of the Rings. They are greedy, overly concerned with their hoarded gold, clannish, isolated, dispossessed of their lands, forced to wander, adopt the languages of others, have long beards depicted as an important part of their aesthetic, and their language was derived from Hebrew. Tolkein even said himself that they are intended to represent Jewish people. Of course, the dwarves have some positive traits and are not depicted as villains (except in Tolkein’s earliest writing of them). But there are enough negative stereotypes related to dwarves for it to be seen as antisemitic or at the very least stereotypical.

[Figure 3: an image of Lord of the Rings dwarves from the first Hobbit film, all who have dark long hair, long beards, some have braids in their hair and many have big and or/hooked noses]

Wario is a harder nut to crack. As far as I know, no Nintendo creator has stated Wario is meant to be Jewish or represent Jews. For another, there’s no culture tied to Wario that suggests Jewishness like there is for the dwarves. But to me, the main qualities that would suggest Wario might be an antisemitic stereotype are:

his big, prominent, hooked, red nose which is often featured strongly

his greed, love of, and obsession with gold/money as being a central character trait

him being depicted and described as crafty/evil/selfish/cunning

him being dirty/gross/rude

Alone, these traits separately would not suggest an antisemitic stereotype, but together they might, especially when you consider the music associated with Wario in that video and the associations some players have made. HOWEVER, it’s difficult to tell because if he is a Jewish stereotype, it’s subtle. I couldn’t say definitively, unless I saw more evidence, that Wario was intended as a Jewish stereotype. But one unsettling trend is that noses that are hooked, large, prominent and semitic in the media are often seen on EVIL people and/or depicted as ugly. I’m sure this isn’t intentionally antisemitic, but it’s a product of anglo-centricism, antisemitism and racism because anglo white people tend to have small, straight, narrow noses. Mario has a round nose, but it’s a button nose, not a HOOKED nose, and it’s the hooked nose that tends to be associated most with evil (witches, mustache-twirling villains, archetypical “ugly” people etc). Although it’s important to note Wario was made by Japanese people, anglo-centric beauty standards have become globalized and also influence Japanese culture.

[Figure 4: a picture of Wario sitting with a pile of gold and jewels, his back turned to the viewer and looking over his back as if suspicious]

Is Wario a Jewish stereotype? Possibly, but it’s hard to say. Is he any more antisemitic than any given cartoon-ish villain? There’s no hard evidence, but it’s troubling that antisemitism seems to underlie the very notions of villainry we already have. Is a Jewish person who is offended by Wario just over-sensitive or paranoid? No. I wouldn’t blame a Jewish person for interpreting Wario as an antisemitic stereotype. There’s evidence to support that. But I also wouldn’t blame anyone for doubting the claim because it’s difficult to tell for sure. However, I do criticize Social Justice Wario for DISMISSING a claim about Wario as an antisemitic character and not looking into it. And I would criticize any non-jewish person for dismissing any Jewish person’s feelings about Wario and not giving this serious thought once it was brought to their attention.

I hope social justice wario will read this post, reblog it and apologize for disregarding that anon ask. Yes the anon was hostile and possibly a troll, but that doesn’t change the fact SJW should have looked into this issue and treated it more seriously. I also think it’s symptomatic of SJ tumblr’s antisemitism and ignorance around this topic. It’s true though that possibly stereotypical representations like Wario’s that are out of context and so subtle to be debatable are hard to deal with–because you have to wonder, am I deluded or am I seeing something that’s really there? For me, the question of Wario is still open. I probably will continue to do research and keep my eyes open and am curious to hear other Jewish people’s take on Wario.





Edit: I do not want argue with people about this issue. You can believe what you will and discuss it on your own blogs or your own time elsewhere. This post is not meant to be an indictment on Nintendo or Wario as a character- nor was it meant as an argument to be refuted or supported. The point was to educate others on antisemitism and explore this issue.