So I wrote about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in a rather rambling manner the other day.
I’m still thinking about what happened a lot – the conflict between unrestrained freedom of speech defenders (here!) and a sort of “Can’t we all get along/be kind and non-offensive to everyone” reaction which I have some sympathy to but also think is, if not only unrealistic, is still trumped by the right to freedom of speech. (There’s also a related issue of how the French version of left-wing/liberal may be different than how we think of those terms in North America.)
What I’m calling the “no offense/get along” side of the argument has different points of view ranging from articles and and social media posts calling out Charlie Hebdo magazine and its staff for being racist bigots to others pointing out how it wasn’t the cartoonists but actually the Muslim guard who was the true hero as he died defending a bunch of white cartoonists right to attack things he (presumably) held dear.
Here’s a quote by Time’s Paris Bureau Chief which captures that side of the argument quite well:
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren’t going to tell “us” what can and can’t be done in free societies? Because not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?
[…]
But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring.
Or as someone else put it more gently…
I think people are genuinely concerned about the content of the cartoons, and genuinely want to discuss the ethics of representing a minority group as a subject of satire and humor. And that’s a totally valid discussion, although I think, at the moment, it is one that won’t be appreciated, because it feels like bad timing.
As I said I come down ultimately for free speech, even in its extreme forms, even when it could be considered racist/offensive/”punching down” by some, and even for speech I don’t personally agree with. As Voltaire famously said (well, unless the quote is falsely attributed to him – which is likely given that I get all of this from the Internet):
I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
So I thought it might be useful to pull the quotes from that resonated with me the most from the relevant MetaFilter thread as many of the posters in that thread are saying things *way* better than I did. (I also acknowledge I’m pulling quotes that support my point of view. There are lots of great counter-points in the thread too about tolerance, anti-racism and so on so you should really take the time to read the whole thread top-to-bottom to get the true picture.)
Anyhow, I’m doing this mainly as a way of helping to clarify my take on the whole situation as well as capture many of the arguments I believe in so strongly when it comes to freedom of speech issues.
(I’ll attribute the quote below if it’s from someone well-known but you’ll have to search the Metafilter thread for the specific words/phrase if it’s from a regular MetaFilter poster. I’ll also highlight some of the longer quotes/exchanges to make them easier to read.)
“Hatred is still the best recruiting tool for war and barbarity still the best way to generate hate.”
“As terrible as these actions were, as reprehensible, as murderous, as criminal, they did not target cartoonists and humorists because the murderers’ beliefs are fragile, but because humor is so powerful it can dismantle empires.”
“As far as I can tell, [Charlie Hebdo has] never acted out of Islamophobia themselves, but from the principle that nobody should be save from satire when they deserve it and personal safety be damned. They got firebombed back in 2011 after all and that didn’t stop them.”
In response to a point that Charlie Hebdo brand of satire is kicking minorities when they’re already down…
“Let us be clear on this, satire hurts ideas, not people. People only feel hurt because they refuse to let go of ridiculous notions long after they have been exposed. A person is still a person with inherent value even if their beliefs are worthless.”
…which got this response in turn: “Unrecognizable satire can still hurt a repressed population if it reinforces the prejudices of the majority.”
“I continue to reject, absolutely, treating Islam any differently from other religions which were satirized by Hebdo. It strikes me that treating Islam like a special snowflake is exactly the wrong thing to do – it alienates it from the mainstream by implying that one needs to walk on eggshells when dealing with it, and therefore is not part of the European landscape on the same plane as any other religion. Islam is not some fragile faith that needs special handling, and Muslims are not ticking bombs one has to take special measures not to set off. The more we treat people differently, the more different they’ll feel. And this was the ultimate aim of these terrorists – to make the French – or indeed everyone – feel differently about Muslims. They must not succeed.”
This sequence was spot-on…
“I would never, never think that this justifies violence or the suffering of those poor people who were killed and their friends and family
Frowner
But you implicitly are. You and MartinWisse and gorbweaver and that Bruce Crumley piece Joe in Australia link to above are all engaging in blaming the victim and tacitly saying Charlie Hebdo deserved what they got when you bemoan how horrid these publications were.
“Of course violence is bad, but really, what they were publishing was so coarse and offensive…”
Until the day anything can be published without fear of being murdered, what Charlie Hebdo does is badly needed. If that’s “kicking” anyone, let them be kicked.”
“If anything can be said to be universally true of human nature, it is that most if not all of us are afraid to think [critically] about things we hold dear.”
This is one of the great issues facing the left – what passes for the left in the United States.
On one hand, being on the left means that you strongly support tolerance of people regardless of religion, race, gender… On the other hand, one of the great targets for intolerance in the West are Muslims, some prominent subset(*) of which is deeply and violently intolerant.
I don’t see a good solution here.
But let me make one thing absolutely clear. Charlie Hebdo had and has my complete support for their work. If you live in a modern pluralist society, it is your responsibility NOT to get pissed off by words – no matter how extreme the words are.
“You’re only really for free speech if you support inappropriate speech.” (Later clarified that you support the *right for others* to express inappropriate speech while also opposing it and trying to change people’s minds or whatever.)
“There are two ways of pushing equality, trying to make everyone a special snowflake, and making sure no one is. Charlie Hebdo exists in one form or the other since the 60s, I’m pretty sure they aren’t in fact naive or racist. Please try to avoid patronising and imposing American-only ethics onto other countries, it smacks of imperialism.”
In response to a caution about running the cartoons in newspapers around the world giving offense to the majority of Muslims…
“If they’re perfectly peaceful they’re also plenty smart enough to understand why newspapers would take this action, peaceful enough to applaud this non-violent response to violence, and peaceful enough to understand that their notions of offensiveness do not trump free speech, particularly in non-theocratic countries.”
“As a Muslim, killing innocent people in the name of Islam is much, much more offensive to me than any cartoon can ever be.” – Arab Spring activist Iyad el-Baghdadi
On whether newspapers should re-print the cartoons…
“The point is for the newspapers to do what is moral. If some Muslims are foolish enough to get upset about Mohammed in the centrefold, that’s no longer the papers’ moral problem: they’ve gone to reasonable lengths to avoid hurting people while demonstrating their commitment to free speech (another moral value).”
“Yoink, Charlie Hebdo’s take on Islam is indeed offensive. Their take on Christianity, Judaism, the far-right, capitalists, communists, drug-takers, anti-drug-takers, Gerard Depardieu, beauty shows, football, and everything else is offensive. They are an unbendingly anti-authoritarian, anti-ideological publication, deride everything, and love everyone… Anyone calling them ‘racist’ shows a flabbergasting ignorance of the context.”
And further to that last point…
“One of the cartoonists killed, Cabu, wrote Mon Beauf, a comic so savagely skewering the average Frenchman’s racism, pettiness, and self-satisfaction that the word ‘Beauf’ entered common language. Anyone calling him racist can only be referred to as an ignorant prick.”
…although someone later points out Mon Beauf was from the 1960’s so it has less relevance to what Charlie Hebdo today (an arguable point in and of itself.)
Countering the idea that Charlie Hebdo was “punching down” on a disadvantaged minority…
“Of course they were poking fun at authority. Authority does not necessarily mean the government or the privileged majority group. The “Authority” in this context is a nebulous group of fanatics who have expressed the desire and the capability to kill you for publishing things they don’t like. The fact that Charlie was willing to stand up to these barbaric threats speaks to their extraordinary bravery and moral strength.”
“After all, there are reasons why extreme-right organizations have borrowed arguments based on feminism and secularism. These arguments are useful precisely because they have an intellectual and emotional appeal independent of their convenience to extreme-right opportunists. Regardless of who uses these arguments, they plausibly apply to certain elements of Islam, or at least to attitudes and practices associated with it. Whether or not they are put in good faith by organizations such as the BNP, nothing precludes them being put sincerely, and perhaps cogently, by others who are genuinely passionate about the issues.”
“Nothing is sacred. When you make a box and mark it “sacred”, you’re making a box and marking it “unfree”.”
“It would be so easy for Islamists to rob the mocking infidel of this power to outrage them. All they’d have to do is shrug and say “my religion says I may not make any representations of the Prophet. It says nothing about what infidels may do.” Or they could say “that is not a representation of the Prophet, because you do not know the Prophet. That is a meaningless scribble.” But my guess is that the seriously militant Islamists don’t actually want it to stop, because it’s useful.”
“It doesn’t really matter what the offended person is offended by. It’s all happening inside their head. People get offended by all kinds of stupid shit, and the only person in control of it is them.”
“If someone were to say “I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t mock my religious beliefs, as it offends me”, the polite thing to do would be to honor that request. If someone says “mock my religious beliefs and I will murder you”, then mocking those beliefs becomes an act of moral courage.”
“If satirizing the world’s second largest religion isn’t “punching up,” I’m not sure what is.”
…although it is later pointed out that there’s a difference if you’re thinking of satire of “the entire Muslim world” or “the minority Muslim population in France which already experiences xenophobia.” (Of course, using guns against pencils is the ultimate definition of “punching down”, especially since one is legal in France and one isn’t.)
“I think people fixated specifically on the offensiveness of intentionally violating the Mohammed taboo are barking up quite the wrong tree – it seems pretty clear to me that it’s actually the other side of having one’s religious practice tolerated that one cannot insist on much at all from nonbelievers except that they will let you do your thing.”
A good (but quite long) post about the meaningless of the “punching up” and “punching down” analogy which gets used quite a bit in the MetaFilter thread.
“I’ve got my own arguments with Charlie Hebdo, and in other circumstances I’d elaborate on them. But here? Now? In the context of a bunch of religious assholes murdering people for daring to speak ill of their religion? In that context I can do nothing but stand with Charlie Hebdo and give an unqualified condemnation of the evil, barbaric, people who committed this terrible crime and act of terrorism.”
“If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more.”
A good test to see if you truly believe in having no sacred cows…
“If you want to show your commitment to the principle of free speech please do it by insulting your own prophet, whoever or whatever that is.”
“What you’re seeing, on this thread and elsewhere, is the dissonance that arises when Leftists-of-this-sort have to deal with members of a group whose interests they would naturally promote carrying out heinous crimes against people higher up the [social] ordering”
“The fact that the cartoons were offensive and needlessly provocative was precisely the point of their existence. If one person says “I will kill anyone who says the word Jehovah” and, as a result, no one says the word Jehovah, then everyone has ceded their freedom of speech to the whims of that one person.”
“[Humour/satire] simply takes the power away from a moment of seriousness.
This is probably the reason why fanatics, particularly religious ones, despise humor. They represent a dead-serious, single, eternal truth. Jokes, no matter how thoughtful or funny, threaten that truth. Religion (along with plenty of other world views) is madness in the guise of rationality. Satire and humor are rationality in the guise of madness. The former must misunderstand the latter, which is why representatives of the sacred and serious must react to humor with anger. And it is their right to do so. As long as they do it with the same weapons satirists use: words and pictures. Not automatic weapons.”
“Satire is a context-heavy medium. It doesn’t really work to apply only your own context to what’s happening half a world away, with a different country, different language, different demographics and hot-button issues.”
Further illustrating the importance of context…
“How do professed progressives justify their enjoyment of this Stephen Colbert monster? Have you seen what he says on his show? I’m not very familiar with American politics or its media culture, but there is no way to justify what this man believes.”
“The terrorists chose their target with great strategic care. They knew that going after the French liberal intelligentsia would polarise opinion on the middle ground and result in a load of pearl-clutching about the merits of CH’s off-colour equal-opportunity-offensive humour. The very fact that we’re debating the merits of the cartoons and whether or not these cartoonists were racists represents a victory of sorts for the fundamentalists. We can’t let them win the censorship war.”
“It is especially critical not to blame the victims for the Paris attack, however challenging some of their drawings and writings may have been for some. That is what satirists do – push boundaries. That is their right, and indeed modern society needs those who dare to claim that none of our emperors have any clothes.”
“[The] “No True Scotsman” claim is false. The people who did that are obviously, self-descriptively, barbaricly… religious.”
“These were not insignificant people. They were the top in their art. If I have to make a comparison to a US situation, it would be as if a group of comedians like George Carlin, Richard Prior, and Louie CK were murdered in a shooting in a standup club. And that I would barge in here as a European without having followed any of their work saying “yeah, it’s horrible that they were killed, but I heard their jokes were all racist and in bad taste” [without actually being familiar with their work, their cultural context or really, any context beyond my immediate gut reaction.]”
This…
“Troubling, in what way, exactly? Troubling, as in it might make someone angry? Big fucking deal. Troubling, as in it might provoke terrorists? So, like a girl in a miniskirt provokes rapists?”
“Every joke is a tiny revolution.” – George Orwell
“Nobody has the right not to be offended.” – Salman Rushdie
