To give OP credit, I think the connection theyre making is with the “happy merchant” image of a bearded Jewish man hunched over, cackling and rubbing their hands together menacingly. My comment was that laughing evilly is too general to associate with that image, because the happy merchant is meant to specifically convey scheming underhandedness (an anti-Semitic trope) and the photograph doesn’t frame the soldier as scheming. He’s just generally sadistic.
To give OP credit, I think the connection theyre making is with the “happy merchant” image of a bearded Jewish man hunched over, cackling and rubbing their hands together menacingly. My comment was that laughing evilly is too general to associate with that image, because the happy merchant is meant to specifically convey scheming underhandedness (an anti-Semitic trope) and the photograph doesn’t frame the soldier as scheming. He’s just generally sadistic.