Donald Trump wants to make America great again but ‘Sikh Captain America’ feels the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is making America hate again.
“Donald Trump has certainly been a candidate whose words have been alarming for someone like me, who happens to be at the front lines of bigotry in post-9/11 America,” said Vishavjit Singh, a Washington-born Sikh artist-activist in his mid-40s who occasionally transforms into ‘Sikh Captain America’.
Mr. Singh, who is a political cartoonist, on occasions transforms into ‘Sikh Captain America’, a costumed soldier with a turban who fights bigotry and champions cultural understanding through public appearances and talks.
As the film Captain America: Civil War plays at theatres, Mr. Singh drew a stark contrast between Mr. Trump and Captain America’s alter ego, Steve Rogers — two New York characters born in the 1940s. “Captain America as a character would stand in complete opposition to Donald Trump and his candidacy.,” he was quoted as saying by The Washington Post .
The artist also creates cartoon campaigns, such as the ‘Send Sikh Note To Trump’ postcard campaign, in which he and some of his fans send Mr. Trump a postcard every day “with a message focused on processing our anger inspired by his jingoistic madness into small kernels of humour and compassion”. “He might be full of himself, overstuffed with his achievements with a towering skyscraper of an ego, but even deep inside him resides seeds of benevolence,” Mr. Singh said. “I wish him well; I wish him compassion; I wish him to realise the violence of his words; I wish him a landslide loss in the elections for his own good,” he said.
Captain America was born in New York during World War-II, from the minds of Jewish creators and future comic-book legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who introduced their super-soldier by having him deliver a haymaker to the jaw of a reeling Hitler.
’Sikh Captain America’ was also born in the Big Apple for socio-political reasons, as Mr. Singh was planning to attend his first New York Comic-Con as an exhibitor in 2011 fall.“Some of my art is informed by my own experience on the streets of America and being targeted as an outsider — at times as a threat just based on my looks,” Mr. Singh said. “So I had this vision of an American superhero fighting hate and intolerance.”
