Political graffiti

Political graffiti

Graffiti is a passion. The street artists paint what comes in their mind. As a consequence the people started to create political graffiti that often criticize the government. Typical topics of political graffiti’s are: ideology, religion, anti-Semitism, racism, discrimination against minorities like homosexual people. Moreover the graffiti’s are an expression of fury against the police and political power relations (especially in illiberal and totalitarian systems). 
Political graffiti also represent slogans and symbols. Furthermore they are mostly artistically modest because they are just conducive to the anonymous depiction of the artist’s opinion.
In order to get a large number of recipients, political graffiti’s are painted on well-frequented and clearly visible places. A typical example is the Tahrir Square in Cairo during the Arab Spring in 2011.
You can find political graffiti all over the world; for example in Northern Ireland or Basque country but also in metropolises like Los Angeles and especially in Lisbon. At this places you can also find elaborate political murals.

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Alsasua (northern Spain) – you can see a political graffiti with an axe that is entwined by a snake. This symbol is the logo of the Basque underground organization ETA. The organization killed two officials of the Guardia Civil by a bomb attack in the Mallorquin bathing place Palmanova in 2009. 

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Here you can see one of the most famous political graffiti’s that shows Breschnew (on the left) and Honecker (on the right) kissing each other. This graffiti was painted on the Berlin wall and it criticizes the system of the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union. 

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A modern, political graffiti that criticizes Putin and the government in Russia.