Zak Asplin’s Somali “New Mainers” post shares a racist “Two Buttons” edit

Zak Asplin shared a Tommy Robinson post about Somalis in Britain and warned that Somali “New Mainers” might treat America similarly. The embedded image alters Jake Clark’s “Two Buttons” comic. It retains the red shirt, white glove, cloth, and forehead-wiping pose, but replaces the original light-skinned man’s anxious face with an anti-Black caricature: an enormously enlarged forehead, hollow cheeks, half-closed eyes ringed by dark shadows, an elongated nose, exaggerated protruding lips, and two prominent yellow front teeth. The buttons read “Learning” and “Learing.” The latter echoes the misspelled sign at Quality Learning Center, a Minneapolis childcare center highlighted in Nick Shirley’s December 2025 video alleging fraud at Somali-run childcare facilities. That reference places the image in a controversy over childcare services and funding for children and families. The edit combines ridicule of the center’s sign with a demeaning portrayal of Somali intelligence, then carries that racial generalization into Asplin’s warning about Somali immigrants in Maine. Its distorted Black facial features and intellectual ridicule echo minstrel caricature.

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@zakasplin (Zak Asplin-Mounter)