Donald Trump Jr. Stole Copyrighted Photo of Skittles He Used to Denigrate Refugees – From a Refugee

Entire Concept Appropriated From Racist and Nazi Propaganda

‘This was not done with my permission’

The offensive and, frankly, stupid, tweet Donald Trump Jr. Monday night posted, comparing poisonous Skittles to Syrian refugees included a copyrighted photo stolen from a UK photographer who himself was a Middle Eastern refugee when he was a child.

The image was taken by 48-year old photographer David Kittos, of Guildford. 

“This was not done with my permission, I don’t support his politics and I would never take his money to use it,” Kittos told the BBC. “In 1974, when I was six-years old, I was a refugee from the Turkish occupation of Cyprus so I would never approve the use of this image against refugees.”

In Trump Jr.’s tweet, he compares people fleeing the war-torn country of Syria, to Skittles, and asks if three of the colorful candies were poison, would you eat them.

“I would like the Trump campaign to delete the image, but they are probably not interested in what I have to say,” Kittos says, noting he is thinking of retaining an attorney but doesn’t know if he has the “the patience” to deal with it.

‘This is pure greed from them’

“This isn’t about the money for me. They could have just bought a cheap image from a micro stock library. This is pure greed from them. I don’t think they care about my feelings. They should not be stealing an image full stop.”

Raw Story’s Travis Gettys, who also wrote about the BBC story, Monday pointed out that the analogy the eldest Trump son used is “based on two separate white supremacist memes with roots in Nazi propaganda,” and points to a blog post written by Emil Karlsson:

“It is often deployed as a way to prop up indefensible stereotypes by taking advantage of human ignorance about base rates, risk assessment and criminology,” Karlsson writes at Debunking Denialism. “In the end, it tries to divert attention from the inherent bigotry in making flawed generalizations.”

‘About 68.7 million handfuls’

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump published a detailed analysis of Trump Jr.’s Skittle propaganda and concluded, statistically, one could eat “about 68.7 million handfuls” of these supposedly poisoned Skittles before coming across one that was poisoned.

EARLIER: Donald Trump Jr. Posts Ridiculous Meme Comparing Victims of Syrian Humanitarian Crisis to Skittles

 

Image via Twitter