Nick Bougas | |
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 Bougas in 2008 | |
| Born | Nicholas Bougas Savannah, Georgia, U.S. |
| Other names | A. Wyatt Mann |
| Occupations | Film director, illustrator, record producer, cartoonist |
| Years active | 1977–present |
Nicholas Bougas is an American documentary film director, illustrator, video and record producer. [1] As a cartoonist, he has used the pen name A. Wyatt Mann to produce racist, antisemitic, antifeminist and homophobic cartoons. [2] [3] [4]
Bougas directed the mondo film Death Scenes , hosted by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. [5] The film was followed by Death Scenes 2 in 1992, [6] and Death Scenes 3 in 1993. [7] In 1993, he directed the documentary Speak of the Devil: The Canon of Anton LaVey , a profile of LaVey. [1] [8] [9]
In 1988, he was a contributing editor and artist to the pro-Charles Manson book, The Manson File . [10] [11] [12] Bougas has directed several other films, such as the 1994 documentary The Goddess Bunny , about disabled transgender tap dancing artist Sandie Crisp. [13] [14] In 1998, Bougas released the album Celebrities... At Their Worst!, a collection of comedic audio blunders by such celebrities as Elvis Presley, Casey Kasem, Paul Anka, and John Wayne. [15] [16] As an illustrator, Bougas has worked with writer and publisher Jim Goad on such publications as Answer Me! [17] [18]
According to a 2015 BuzzFeed News report, Bougas used the pseudonym "A. Wyatt Mann" (phonetically: 'a white man') to produce overtly racist and antisemitic cartoons in the late 1980s and early 1990s. [3]
Besides black people and Jews, his cartoons occasionally targeted other minorities and groups, including gay people and feminists. Many of them were published at the time by white supremacist Tom Metzger and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey. Bougas has never publicly confirmed his authorship; however, his identity as Mann was confirmed by multiple people who worked with him at the time, and in captions of photos taken at various events. [3] It has been suggested that Bougas's intentions were not motivated by racism or White nationalism, but instead, by protesting against political correctness of the era. [19]
The Mann cartoons have been widely reused as memes in original context by white supremacists, various internet trolls, and later, the alt-right. One cartoon in particular, a stereotypical caricature of a Jewish person referred to as the "Happy Merchant", became one of the most popular antisemitic images on the internet. It has been reused, modified and parodied multiple times, eventually becoming part of the visual language of websites such as 4chan. [2] [3] [21] [22] Bougas' work as Mann has frequently been combined by Internet trolls with cartoons by political cartoonist Ben Garrison, which Garrison has said generates confusion between the two artists. [2] [23]
But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.
So. You could stop right there and say that Nick Bougas is the most widely disseminated anti-Semitic cartoonist of all time and not be wrong.
Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor.
Jim Goad is the former editor of Answer Me!, a magazine that ran from 1991 to 1994 and often featured the artwork of racist cartoonist Nick Bougas (Bougas published elsewhere under the pseudonym A. Wyatt Mann).
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