Tintin Forums

Here is an interesting article from Wired magazine about how far right groups sometimes use Tintin to highlight their hostility towards immigration, Muslims etc.

It also raises some of Herge's own politics, including his own right-wing views in his youth and his controversial behaviour during World War Two, though leading Tintin expert Benoît Peeters is quoted as saying that he would not have approved of the abusive way the far right uses Tintin today.

Interesting, but nothing surprising. Groups will always use famous characters to articulate/reinforce their points, and their use of Tintin is unheard of, but not nerve wracking.
As for the article itself, I doubt the people it's targeting are right wing, given how that label gets applied to everyone that's anywhere right of the left, and it's tiptoeing in an effort to stimulate your emotions rather than name names is suspect. Besides the fact people are allowed to be critical of immigration, Islam and whatever subjects or ills concern people, I feel like this article is no better than the one it's condemning. If I could read French, I might agree with them.

It doesn't really though, does it? It makes suggestions and implications, but doesn't actually provide hard evidence of anything - and actually makes some serious omissions.
Take for example the Léon Degrelle association - he was an acquaintance of Herge's through the circles of the paper, but it over-eggs the pudding to say that they were "close". As far as I know Herge was monarchist, but not actually a Rexist (which was a political movement) and misses entirely the fact that Herge was incensed when the Degrelle and the Rexists used one of his illustrations on a poster, and either sued, or threatened to sue (I can't remember which) them if they didn't desist.

I don't understand the point here - do you mean the people that the article is aimed at, or the people whom the article is about? If the former, probably not, if the latter, then yes, they are, and would not wish to be seen as anything else. There are still Degrelle apologists in Belgium, for example, and they take any opportunity to peddle nonsense about how close Degrelle and Herge were, and how Degrelle was an influence upon, and even a model for, the creation of Tintin.

Well, yes - that goes without saying, just as anything left-wing is anywhere left of the right.It can't really be any other way, can it? I agree, it may be reductive to look at the world in binary terms, but that is what those terms mean.
You are also making an implication that criticism of far-right views is the preserve of the left, and it isn't; Herge was definitely a conservative, and he was critical of Degrelle, but there are many, many conservatives (and indeed Conservatives) who have stood up and fought against the likes of Degrelle and that ilk. The author of the article doesn't state their politics, just that far-right groups have tried to adopt Tintin as some sort of example of their beliefs - this could be position of a moderate, what in Britain has been called in the past, "compassionate Conservative", without any hint of being "leftie".
There's also a circularity in the argument that they are "tip-toeing" around something, while also "stimulating emotion" - which surely would mean that they aren't tip-toeing at all, but addressing their subject?