(More to Kay’s post below)
By now I’m assuming everyone’s heard about the dreadful attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo:
Masked gunmen burst into the Paris offices of a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday and killed 12 people, including top journalists and two police officers, before fleeing in a car. The gunmen were still at large at dusk, as an extensive police dragnet spread across a traumatized city.
Among the dead were four prominent cartoonists who have repeatedly lampooned Islamic terrorists and the Prophet Muhammad, leading to speculation that the attack on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, was the work of Islamic militants acting alone or in concert with extremist groups.
The gunmen — reports suggest there were three — are still at large, and, according to Times coverage, it remains unknown what group, if any, organized the attack.
Salman Rushdie knows something about words and art and the threat of deadly violence aimed at suppressing it. He’s one of many who have responded to the attack. The statement was apparently up at PEN’s site, but that’s down now, and (via a Neil Gaiman tweet) I found it at the Wall St. Journal. Here it is:
“Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.” –Salman Rushdie
Bad times, sad times. My thoughts and deepest sympathy to all the families and friends of the murdered.
Quaker in a Basement
If the gunmen were upset about what was printed by one satirical publication, they had better brace themselves for what is to come. Every cartoonist in the world is now pissed.
Villago Delenda Est
I think the Wonkette link (All Muslims Everywhere Murder French Satirists; Lone Wolf Acting Alone ‘Bombs’ NAACP, Alone) pretty much sums up the American media reaction to this.
currants
Typo in your first line–‘Charlie Hebdo’ –short for hebdomadaire.
/pedant
CONGRATULATIONS!
Hey, good on Rushdie. That says it all and very, very well.
Tom Levenson
@currants: Fix’t thanks. Blog in haste…correct at leisure
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yep.
currants
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Heartily seconded. I look forward to seeing (whether any) high-profile US writers (or, hey, politicians? bwahahahahaha!) step up similarly.
Elizabelle
Thank you, Tom. Sad day and it’s a huge issue. Quite aside from press freedom and religious extremism, it’s how do cultures coexist, when you apply religious fundamentalism to a modern world. Bloodier problem in Paris today, but it’s universal.
currants
@Tom Levenson: (Def–and if you’re writing in English using words/phrases from other languages and battling auto-correct, well, good luck to you.)
boatboy_srq
@Villago Delenda Est: @CONGRATULATIONS!:
THIS should be flung at Teahadists and ammosexuals at every opportunity.
MattF
Arthur Goldhammer has been blogging about French politics for a long time. He’s smart and knowledgeable– in particular, he knows French culture inside and out:
http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.com/
wilfred
I don’t get it. We have killed tens of thousands of people, including women and children, in the name of…what? The guys at Charlie Hebdo pissed off the wrong people and now they’re dead. It’s a long, long list of dead that they join but they knew what they were doing, they were warned about it, and they did more of it. Sorry, I’ll save my grief for people who had nothing to do with their own destruction.
It’s a tough world, as the Voice of America keeps reminding people after their villages have been bombed and their relatives killed. Free speech is a right given, or taken away, by the State. Some people don’t care about the State. Are their actions really any worse than the killing of innocents in the name of Liberty or Democracy or Free Speech? Review the French Revolution for the answer.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@boatboy_srq: More to the point, it needs to be flung at those who belong to neither group. Because the vast majority of Americans do not understand the nature or the aims of the fundamentalist cancer fermenting in our midst.
@wilfred: 10/10. Stellar troll post.
Belafon
@wilfred: We should always mourn those that were killed because they dared to speak against intolerance, whether they did it through grand speeches or satire. Pretty sure MLK was warned numerous times that he would be the target of someone’s wrath for daring to demand equal treatment for blacks.
Calouste
Mr. Rushdie, religion doesn’t need modern weaponry to be a real threat to people’s freedoms. It’s been doing that very well with whatever was on hand for some millennia.
Jeffro
Wonder who will be the first right-wing wunderkind who alludes that the French had it coming…because they’re French, or something…
dedc79
@wilfred: They were in their own country doing something that there own country’s laws expressly guarantee them the right to do and they were murdered for it. Had they flown to Saudi Arabia and started passing out the cartoons at a mosque, maybe I’d be a bit more sympathetic to your position.
Do we have blood on our hands from our actions in the middle east? Yes, of course we do (and we spend plenty of time discussing it here too). It has very little, if anything, to do with what happened in France today.
Dave C
@wilfred: Seriously, just fuck off.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Belafon:
Not to be agreeing with the troll, and I know I’m going to get unmercifully flamed, but the European insistence on publishing material that they KNOW is offensive to Muslims had always had an air of bullying to me. It’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to insult you all we want, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What are you going to do about it, crybaby?”
You can only poke a hornets’ nest for so long before the hornets come flying out at you, especially if you cut off all other avenues of peaceful protest and ways of coming to an understanding.
Chet
So who is “wilfred” the sockpuppet for? Mclaren? Bob in Portland?
Amir Khalid
A couple of threads down, I said this
and then, when I was criticised for that last sentence, this:
I should add, I was agreeing with what Mnemosyne had just said.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
FWIW, I agree with your distinctions. As a rule, however, I still place responsibility on the perpetrators of violence.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Amir Khalid:
FWIW, I tend to feel the same way — you can’t provoke people over and over again, give them no outlet for recourse, and then be shocked that they lash out at you. Yes, this was a horrifying overreaction, but it’s hard for me to agree with the Free Speech Uber Alles folks that it’s A-OK to bash a minority group and not allow them to have any speech in return. Once you cut off peaceful avenues for protest and dialogue and say that people have to put up with being insulted over and over again, this is the result.
wilfred
@dedc79:
If you piss people off deliberately, you have to expect a reaction. BTW, we are constantly telling people in the Muslim world what they can and can’t believe in. We’re doing it right now in Syria.
This is a good opportunity to watch how the press will begin to weave the narrative, employing the usual words of power and hypocritical self-righteousness that passes for reasoned political discourse. This wasn’t an attack on FREE SPEECH or the Western way of life our sacred, if imagined, freedoms. If that were the case, there’d be a multitude of targets every day of the week.
This was an attack on a group of people who routinely resorted to obnoxious, tedious and ultimately infantile attempts at humor. They crossed a very clearly delineated line with some people, who then killed them. End of. Spinning it into a thematic wankfest about the West and FREEDOM and Liberty, heaven help us, will just kill many more people. But who’s counting.
dedc79
@Amir Khalid: And who gets to determine what’s offensive/hurtful? An Eagles fan might find my burning an Eagles jersey offensive/hurtful, but it doesn’t mean I should bear part of the blame were that crazy fan to kill me for it.
Chet
@Amir Khalid: So if, say, some Christian fundamentalist were to murder Andres Serrano for “Piss Christ”, you’d be okay with that, huh? Because he asked for it?
The willingness of certain “progressives” to defend any barbarism, so long as the people committing it are non-white, non-Christian, and/or non-American, stopped surprising me long ago, but it hasn’t quit sickening me yet.
Baud
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Was there some law in France that silenced protest to the cartoons?
MattF
@Amir Khalid: The link to Goldhammer that I posted above notes that this sort of provocation is a very specifically French and very specifically Parisian tradition. Here’s the link:
http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.com/
It’s blasphemous, but that’s the point.
Mike J
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
They had recourse. The proper response to speech you dislike is more speech. They had as much right as anybody to publish articles and go on TV shows and make movies and write blog posts about how awful CH was. They didn’t do that. They killed people.
Baud
@Chet:
Your second paragraph is a gross mischaracterization of what people are saying. But I’m confident you know that and don’t care.
dedc79
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): How about boycotting the publication? Peacefully protesting outside their offices? They had plenty of options for voicing their views.
elmo
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Wait one. Unless I’ve missed something, you’ve just stolen a pretty significant rhetorical base. Are you saying that Muslims have no right to free speech or peaceful protest in France?
Violet
@Amir Khalid:
I said this in the previous thread, in response to your comment:
The short skirt was designed to sexually arouse others. The black man walking was designed to scare people, especially if he’s wearing saggy pants and a hoodie. Those provocations aren’t to offend; they are other types of provocations–sexual arousal, fear.
The concept of holding the person or entity responsible when someone else does something to them is wrong. The person or people committing the crime are completely responsible for their actions. In this case the people who murdered the people in the magazine’s office could have chosen any number of other reactions. Their choice to respond with violence was their choice and theirs alone.
Nick
Well, that’s pretty contemptible, Mnemosyne. WHy don’t we take the same approach with police unions, gun rights maniacs, anti-abortion fanatics? After all, if you poke a hornet it gets to sting you a few times.
Punchy
Oui are all Parisians today.
wilfred
@Baud:
That’s not the point. Many, many people have protested many, many times. Three people either had enough of it, or were so pissed off it didn’t matter anymore to them anymore. Three people. Not the 6 million Muslims in France who are not treated particularly well by the State, or the press.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@dedc79:
Here’s the way that dialogue should go:
Crazy Eagles Fan: Hey, I was offended when you burned that jersey.
You: I’m sorry you were offended. What about it upset you?
(Dialogue ensues)
The way that dialogue usually goes:
Crazy Eagles Fan: Hey, I was offended when you burned that jersey.
Not-You: Yeah? Well, too fucking bad, asshole! I burned it, and I’m going to burn 20 more now that I know it pissed you off! What are you going to do about it, crybaby?!
(Gunshots)
These things seem to come out of the blue to us, but the magazine has been running their Mohammed cartoons for years now, and thumbing their noses at anyone who was offended. I’m shocked at what happened and I think it’s a horrible crime that needs to be swiftly punished, but I can’t say that I’m surprised.
JPL
@Calouste: The crusades were good though.
Rushdie’s message was correct though. Evangelicals are upset about the rights that gays are receiving. They no longer stone them to death, but some might consider that acceptable.
SatanicPanic
Seriously, I sympathize with being picked on, discriminated against, attacked by mobs, insulted, etc. BUT, if you have all these groups against you, deciding to lash out at the cartoonists in the group is about the lamest choice you could make. It’s like if Mexican Americans were pissed about employment discrimination so we bombed Warner Brothers for making Speedy Gonzalez cartoons. Cartoonists are not even in the realm of a justifiable target for violence. Go make your own cartoons about racist French cartoonists, I’m sure there’s a market for it.
elmo
@wilfred:
That’s how I feel about Ben Stiller movies, but it’s still not okay for me to firebomb theaters showing “Night at the Museum.”
Don
People can be horrible jerks who live to annoy others and still never deserve to be shot and killed. Being jerky is sufficient provocation for people to shun you and refuse to financially support your endeavors, nothing more. Suggesting otherwise is contemptible.
Baud
@wilfred:
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. It never takes a lot of people to inflict violence.
Gopher2b
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I would like to think Europeans can do whatever they want within their own culture. We pretty much done when we let these morons tell us how to live. It’s incredibly naive to think if they stopped drawing cartoons, there would be peace. They would be telling secular women how to dress, etc next.
skerry
In my home state of Indiana, they are introducing a bill to protect the poor Christian bakers, photographers, etc that might have to go against their religious beliefs and cater to same-sex marriage couples.
While certainly not violence like seen today in Paris, I find the idea of a “religious liberty framework” chilling.
Woodrowfan
BoP will be along shortly to parrot what the Russian government has to say about it, probably something about the CIA.
blueskies
@wilfred: The murdering cowards killed those people over cartoons and lampoons. That is ridiculous. How about if I decide to kill assholes named wilfred, just because those assholes choose ‘wilfred’ as a screen name? Asshole.
I mean, ‘wilfred’ as a choice of screen name really pisses me off. Goddamit. And I was just talking to God, and it really pisses him off, too. Funny that he agrees with me.
You are clearly dissing my religion and my God, who, btw, has just given me permission to kill you. In fact, he’s now commanding that I kill you. Boy, things move fast with this violent god shit.
I’m on my way, fucker. Say your prayers to YOUR god. After I off you, I bet the next asshole will think twice about using “wilfred” as his screen name.
And “Mnemosyne”, you’re fucking next. God has his eye on you. Shape up, asshole. Judas Priest on a pogo stick, I’m going to be busy this afternoon.
.
.
.
See how that works, you two morans? You’re just bleating words on a website, but by your reasoning, it’s A-OK if you are murdered for those words because those words somehow upset some splinter group of some religion of some people.
wilfred
@elmo:
Who the fuck is saying that? Who the fuck is defending the murders? My point is that this involves only the people who were involved: the cartoonist, who knew exactly what they were doing, and the people who killed them, who knew exactly what they were doing. Extrapolating that into defense of murder is silly, or suggesting that it was an attack on everything that we hold sacred and dear are merely rhetorical tropes that will be shortly used to push the same murderous agenda we’ve live with forever.
schrodinger's cat
My response to Amir from the previous thread
@Amir Khalid: Isn’t the point of a political cartoon, provocation? So is it ok to target cartoonists or anyone else who (Salman Rushdie also comes to mind) because what they drew or wrote provoked the ire of a certain segment of the Muslim population? That the cartoonists or Rushdie are responsible for whatever violence is visited on them, is something I don’t agree with. Sorry.
ETA: I know you didn’t actually say it was ok to target cartoonists but your responses seem to say that the cartoonists had it coming.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
I decide what offends or hurts me, as you do for yourself, and I am solely responsible for how I react to it. If I kill you for burning my football team’s shirt, I am a murderer. If you have some idea of what hurts or offends me to the point of murder, like seeing you burn my team’s shirt, are you responsible for what you do with that knowledge? I think you are.
Another thing: The cartoons, being an intentional provocation, hurt and offended a great many Muslims who have nothing to do with the violent reaction to them and don’t condone it.
Gopher2b
@wilfred:
Killing journalists only affects the actual journalist? Your stupidity knows no bounds.
Bill
@wilfred: Do you feel the same way when an abortion doctor is killed after being warned that the Army Of God is bombing family planning clinics?
JPL
When Scalise was discovered to pander to the David Duke crowd, the right said but Obama and Rev. Wright as if to equate the two.
Although, the cartoons offended some, that is no reason to commit a violent attack. There are no excuses. What happened today was committed by fundamentalists and endangers Muslims as much as everyone else.
blueskies
@wilfred: Yet you continue to defend the murderers. Somehow I don’t think your brain is working correctly today.
Adam
@Mike J:
If they would even be able to get booked, I’m sure there objections would be treated fairly and respectfully, after all The French have always treated the grievances of the Muslim people seriously
lamh36
Sad news.
Mnemosyne
@Gopher2b:
France is already telling religious women how to dress:
France’s burqa ban: women are ‘effectively under house arrest’
And the ban was recently upheld by the European human rights court:
France’s burqa ban upheld by human rights court
There have been mosque burnings and desecrations of Muslim cemeteries in France. The 2005 Paris riots were because Muslims and people of color felt they were being discriminated against and abused by police. But, yeah, these killings came out of nowhere and no one had any clue that Muslims in France were pissed off.
Woodrowfan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree that there is a certain aspect of “FU!” in the cartoons. They were largely trolling. But I disagree that other avenues to complain were cut off.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: So killing people is going to win them new friends and get justice?
elmo
@Amir Khalid:
But that’s part of the issue here, isn’t it? What you’re describing ought to be a null set. If what we are talking about is purely moral offense, and no actual harm to any living creature, there should be NO level of outrage that results in murder. None. Ever. It is the purest savage barbarism to suggest otherwise.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
I agree.
Mnemosyne
@Nick:
So how did you feel about the protests in Ferguson? After all, it’s no excuse that people felt that they were being discriminated against and abused.
And since I have a feeling that I’m going to have to say this over and over again, I should probably make it a macro:
I am shocked and horrified by these murders and I think the killers need to be brought to justice as quickly as possible, but I am not surprised by them.
lamh36
Oh, and is it any wonder Romney lost with advisors like this:
Elizabelle
The New Yorker, September 28, 2012 , The Charlie Hebdo Affair: Laughing at Blasphemy
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Muslims are treated well in France.
Bex
Thank you Mr. Pierce. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Death_In_Paris
Violet
@lamh36: Just FYI, after leading with the Paris story, the NAACP bombing story was part of the general news roundup on the Today Show this morning. I made a point of checking. They had some video, talked about the white guy suspect, explained the bomb itself and how the gasoline canister didn’t explode. It wasn’t a lengthy piece but given everything else that was going on I was pleased they included it at all. Longer pieces were on the Paris shootings and the upcoming freezing weather.
Face
I think the problem is you’ve got a religion (Islam) that seemingly accepts no mockery or ribbing at all. As if the religion is infallable; Allah cannot be questioned/criticized in any manner.
Maybe if they eased up on the absurdity of those tenets, they’d see a cartoon for just being a damn cartoon and let it go without deep-sixing a bunch of artists.
Woodrowfan
@Mnemosyne:
Fair enough. I was surprised at the scale.
Mandalay
@wilfred:
I don’t much care for your tone, but you are onto something there.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): @Amir Khalid: Not disagreeing with either of you (deliberate provocation often results in predictably violent responses), but the idea of a tame, “civil” press seems to be a fairly recent and uniquely US concept, and one reason journalism has historically been well-respected (and conversely why the milquetoast MSM and sycophantic Beltway Punditry get so regularly pilloried today). Charlie Hebdo was following a far more age-old tradition of poking the monster than the US in particular has seen in a while, but which has a long and storied history in print. The reaction was tragically predictable – but that doesn’t mean that the material itself should be seen as somehow unworthy of print or that the folks at Charlie Hebdo were somehow guilty of their own assault: on the contrary, work like Charlie Hebdo’s should be celebrated – and continued – precisely because the alternative is for every editor to steer clear of anything offensive simply because Shut Up. No journalist, editor, cartoonist or other observer of the human condition should fear for his/her life: but that should be because society needs their candor and protects journalists, and not because journalism has been cowed into silence by thuggery. We need more people like the Charlie Hebdo team and fewer like Russert, Gregory et al, and we aren’t going to get that if we insist that every journalist plays nice in case somebody gets upset.
schrodinger's cat
@SatanicPanic: This incident is not going to improve the conditions for them either, if anything will make them much worse.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
How do you know they didn’t do that? Remember the Muhammad cartoon riots in Denmark? Muslims there did everything you say they should have done — they complained to the newspapers, they gave speeches, they made television appearances. And the only result was that more cartoons were published that were even more offensive than the first round. The famous riots happened almost a year after the original publication.
That’s why I keep saying that if you cut people off from peaceful avenues of protest and respectful dialogue, you should not be surprised when they lash out. You can be shocked and make sure the people who do it are brought to justice, but it’s hypocritical to be surprised.
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
What does Ferguson have to do with this? I’m fine with the protests there.
In case you’re confused, killing 12 cartoonists and journalists is not protesting, but murder.
Roger Moore
@Gopher2b:
Bullshit. You know who’s telling women how to dress in France? The French government banning Muslim headscarves in schools, that’s who. The point you, and many other commenters here, seem to miss is that Muslims are a marginalized minority in France who face all kinds of official and unofficial discrimination.
Cartoons lampooning Mohammed are not some kind of bold telling truth to power; they’re the European equivalent of cartoons making jokes about blacks eating fried chicken and watermelons. You can’t understand the reaction of militant Muslims to those cartoons without knowing about the broader social context of long-term political and social marginalization of Muslims in France, anymore than you can understand the response of black Americans to watermelon jokes without knowing something about Jim Crow.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
You seem to be conflating ability to protest with the success of a protest.
raven
@Nick: And cops but we have people here that like that idea.
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
So? You’re arguing that if you protest, and don’t get what you want, the next step is murder. However, it’s not. The next step is to keep protesting, or to sit down and shut up, or vote, or start your own newspaper, or stop reading things that make you angry.
Nick
@raven:
Huh? I don’t support killing cops.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’d love to see ONE SINGLE LINK to any media source characterizing the NAACP attack as a “lone wolf” attack. Damn it. I’m sick of the straw man wars and one upmanship I keep seeing more and more of.
Mandalay
@Face:
It’s mighty white of you to see it that way.
kc
@wilfred:
Asshole.
lamh36
@Violet: No I get it. No one died, lucky enough canister of gas next to the IED didn’t ignite, but explosion was enough for people inside to hear and knock things off the wall.
the suspect is still at large though, and if this is not just some random someone or someone trying to make a real statement, then no coverage means they are insignificant and maybe I watch too much Criminal MInds, but if you set off a bomb at a place like that, in the middle of the day when you know the place is open and people are there, then you are looking for attention. When/if you don’t get it, who knows you maybe try again? Next time making sure the bomb goes more boom than before.
Meh…at this point, I agree with Elon here:
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Given the purported connections of the killers to al-Qaeda, the hope is probably that their action will further divide non-Muslim French people from Muslim French people. Muslim French people are now going to be burdened with the responsibility to show that they’re not all like that, they didn’t commit the violence, etc. You know, kind of like how the anti-police protesters are now burdened with somehow proving that they’re not cop-killers because a crazy guy killed two cops in NYC.
Right now, my worry is that these murders are going to lead to yet another round of anti-Muslim violence in France. Hopefully, the government is being responsible and trying to make sure that more mosques aren’t burned or cemeteries vandalized.
(ETA: made a few edits because I was typing too fast)
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’m sorry, but I have a very difficult time with the idea of these attackers as being a minority group representatives. Yes, Islam is a minority religion in France. So what?
kc
@Amir Khalid:
“They share responsibility” – NO.
Death Panel Truck
@dedc79:
Yes, because al Qaeda is well known for their peaceful and nonviolent protests. Maybe they should have organized a sit-in or something.
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
The fuck you mean, “outlet for recourse?” These bastards were free to talk back, publish their own magazines and articles, make blogs, hold up posters. They didn’t. They massacred 12 people.
Villago Delenda Est
I strongly suspect that those who committed this attack are probably as not conversant with the teachings of Mohammed pretty much in the same way that a lot of “conservative” “Christians” ignore the teachings of Jesus. I’m familiar with Jesus’ teachings, but not Mohammed’s, having been brought up with attempts to recruit me into the cult all around me…and it’s plain that a lot of “conservative” “Christians” willfully ignore a lot of what Jesus was talking about…prefering the asshole deity of the Old Testament to that fuckin’ hippie guy from Nazareth.
kc
@Chet:
I am OVER it.
blueskies
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I missed all those instances of “black Americans” killing people who tell watermelon jokes. I blame my schooling. And Obama.
Please provide links so I can edumacate myself.
LanceThruster
I am an atheist and agree completely with Salman Rushdie, but this also smacks of a timely manipulation.
http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2015/01/paris-charlie-hebdo-attack-another.html
Amir Khalid
@elmo:
I like to think that, my harmless revenge fantasies aside, nothing could provoke me to murder. Certainly, nothing should provoke anyone to murder. But the magazines that published the cartoons weren’t dealing with me; they were dealing with people who will murder to defend their faith. They knew there were buttons to be pushed with these people, and they went out and pushed them. We might be disagreeing on whether this was brave, or reckless, journalism.
Tractarian
Stop picking on wilfred and Amir Khalid and Mnemosyne (Apple product)! They aren’t defending the terrorists! They are just saying that the cartoonists bear primary responsibility for their own grisly death!
Wait, they aren’t saying that, they’re saying we shouldn’t be surprised that angry Muslims murdered a dozen people because they were offended by a cartoon.
Wait, actually they are saying Muslims have no other option than to resort to violence because they get fined if they wear burqas.
Villago Delenda Est
@kc: The media has been pointedly ignoring domestic religious terrorists for years, or downplaying their activities. Doesn’t sell soap, apparently.
raven
@Nick: I didn’t say you did I?
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore:
Now we are getting somewhere. Because the cartoons were intentionally designed for that purpose, and they’re frequently juvenile, vulgar, and offensive.
However, they are protected free speech, and they poke fun at religious extremism. And they might serve a larger purpose, crude as they are.
Editor Charb pretty much said re Muslims and others who would be offended “if they don’t want to see, they don’t have to look.”
Violet
@lamh36: Agree. The media in general has a very different agenda from me. They work for and espouse the views of their corporate masters. They are not reporting news or views that those in charge don’t want reported or emphasized.
Glad Twitter was on the job. Also thank you for posting about it here. I was completely slammed yesterday and hadn’t seen any news and had I not seen your comments I wouldn’t have known.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Thank you. This is the point I was trying to make. And since I know I’m going to have to use my macro again:
I am shocked and horrified by these murders and I think the killers need to be brought to justice as quickly as possible, but I am not surprised by them.
dedc79
@Death Panel Truck: I was responding to the suggestion that France did not permit muslims who were offended by the cartoon a means to express their displeasure, such that the only recourse was violence. That struck me as an absurd statement. I gather you would agree.
lamh36
@kc: you won’t find any, because outside from the headline link from AP, no news outlet is giving the NAACP bombing any notice beyond that.
Out of sight, out of mind, no need to create a narrative if you just ignore the occurence anyway.
It’s the seemingly lack of interest that is causing the reaction from alot of quarters.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, sweet Jesus. Well, if they protested verbally and got no results, why then who can blame them for going straight to Plan B (mass murder)? Good God.
I mean, it’s like you’re saying fundamentalists have the right to silence speech they don’t like. Are you saying that?
Gopher2b
@Roger Moore:
Don’t care. If they don’t like it, they can leave.
SatanicPanic
@Tractarian: lol, yeah. I mean, let’s imagine if the day George Tiller was assassinated someone had said “well it’s a tragedy, but I’m not surprised, because lots of Christians don’t like abortion and you know, they’ve complained on the news, and tried to pass laws, but still he’s aborting fetuses. But still it’s terrible and his killer should be brought to justice. Just not surprised though”. Woulda gone over well I’m sure.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
There’s a lot of truth in this.
Elizabelle
@lamh36: I saw a very brief story in the NYTimes today; maybe even an AP piece. They were careful not to get ahead of the facts, because it seemed they couldn’t confirm whether the target of the bomb was the barber shop or the NAACP office. They reported a pickup was seen leaving the site.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
You can say the same thing about the Republicans who emailed pictures of Obama as a witch doctor or created pictures of watermelons growing on the White House lawn. Isn’t it wrong that those people lost their jobs and had to apologize since that was protected free speech? They should be just as able to tell African-Americans to eff off if they’re offended.
And I’ll probably need my macro again here:
I am shocked and horrified by these murders and I think the killers need to be brought to justice as quickly as possible, but I am not surprised by them.
Mike J
@Mnemosyne:
You seem to think that being able to speak means everybody should agree with you. There was no excuse for the riots, and no excuse for these murders. Just because you;’re offended doesn’t mean other people have to stop what they’re doing. You speak out against it, and if they continue, you speak out again.
In Denmark they were allowed to protest. That was proper. Only when they turned to violence where they stopped. That was right too.
Expressing your opinion doesn’t mean anybody is going to agree or care. You don’t get to silence other people because you don’t like what they say.
beltane
Interesting take by Juan Cole, who argues that al-Qaida commits attacks like this in order to provoke a backlash that will provide potential recruits for their organization: http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html
JoyfulA
@Chet: Amir didn’t say he was okay with it. He said provocateurs sometimes reap the whirlwind (my translation).
Mike in NC
Per MSNBC, the police in NYC are freaking out over the Paris attack. Maybe an excuse to kill some unarmed civilians before the day is out?
dmbeaster
Wilfred and ilk, you continue to piss me off with your wankery. Therefore, dont be upset that armed goons arrive to kill you, since, hey, its just what’s to be expected?
Just pure contrarianism pissing on us all from a great height and pretending it is wisdom.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Correction — no national news outlet. The LA Times had a story about the NAACP bombing pretty promptly yesterday (about 1:00 pm) and has been covering it ever since. I think part of the issue is that it happened in flyover country, and CNN and other national outlets don’t want to have to send reporters out to the wilds of Colorado. It’s racial bias, but also East Coast bias. If it had happened in New Jersey, I think it would be getting much bigger coverage.
Liberty60
@Roger Moore:
Likewise, when racially based riots occur, like LA in 92 or Watts in 65, there are always some who are shocked that the blood of innocents gets spilled along with the guilty.
As if violent reaction to oppression can so easily be properly directed at the guilty parties, whose guilt can be swiftly and accurately determined by a mob of enraged folk.
There’s a lot feeding into this sort of violence- some of it stemming from decades of military bullying by the West, some of it the tyrannical medievalism referenced by Rushdie, and these two sources feed off each other.
ETA- it flows the other way as well- 9-11 was the work of maybe a few dozen maybe a hundred active participants, planners, financers, and supporters; yet how many thousands of innocent Muslims were killed in the ensuing wars? Rage and reprisal never accurately hit the true target.
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore:
Oh Boo Hoo Hoo. And when some idiot in Florida decides to burn or Koran which leads to riots in Afghanistan, do we cry for those poor minority muslims in that country? Or when a bunch of school girls are taken away in Nigeria are we to cry for those poor put upon souls in that anti-Islamic country? If the reports are correct, and I’m not saying that they are because, well, no one has been caught yet, it very likely that this group is drawing on something that is not specifically Anti-French and the people who did it couldn’t give one rats ass about the condition of French Muslims. They are probably more concerned that some young Muslim male would see the offensive cartoon and laugh than they are with the state of the minority poor of France.
Valdivia
from a former Onion editor. Worth the read
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/former-onion-editor-freedom-speech-cannot-be-killed
eta: another good link, about blasphemy in theory and practice
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-and-the-right-to-commit-blasphemy.html
Mike in NC
Who’ll be the first Republican in Congress to call for declaring war on France now?
lamh36
@Elizabelle: Agreed, but I recall a time when a bomb near any important structure warranted more than just a linked blurb from AP.
BTW, on the same day when NAACP Legal Fund released a statement asking for a new prosecutor in Mike Brown case. And as Elon said, with all the current racial tension, you’d think it would warrant a bit more.
The other day 2 police officers were shot in NYC in the course of a robbery, no injuries were reported, yet, I recall it being all over twitter and even blurbs from major nets on twitter. The NAACP even released a statement about the bombing.
In this case:
trollhattan
@wilfred:
I breathlessly await your thoughts on the many ways that George Tiller mocked Scott Roeder until Mr. Roeder understandably “just couldn’t take it anymore.”
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I’ve actually been saying “National” news since last night, so didn’t really spell that out today.
Elizabelle
@lamh36: Here’s the NYTimes item in full, it’s from AP. Seems to have been printed on page A13.
raven
@Mike in NC: What the fuck are you babbling about?
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Eh. Don’t entirely agree, but I DO think there should be more coverage of the NAACP bombing. FFS, there’s a fuckin’ murderous bomber running around loose someplace – that should warrant a fair amount of attention.
Mnemosyne
@kc:
The right? No. But when the Los Angeles riots happened in 1992, I was not surprised, because people who feel they have no other recourse often turn to violence. That is why I am similarly unsurprised here.
As I said to schroedinger’s cat above, I suspect the actual purpose of this attack was to turn non-Muslims against French Muslims, even though every indication so far is that the attackers were foreigners. Looks like they’re accomplishing their purpose so far.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: Worked like a charm in 2001. The deserting coward and the Dark Lord were Osama bin Laden’s best recruiters.
SatanicPanic
@beltane: there is an interesting point.
Villago Delenda Est
@kc: Well, he didn’t target something IMPORTANT, like a J.P. Morgan branch or some Rethug campaign headquarters, or, heaven forfend, a Sinclair Broadcasting TV Studio, so naturally, it gets pretty much ignored.
dedc79
@JoyfulA: he said they “share responsibility” with their killers. People who were murdered just a few hours ago.
Gopher2b
@Suffern ACE:
It’s just three guys, remember. I’m sure the massive manhunt hasn’t found them yet because they forgot to check the Paris Westin.
Archon
@Mnemosyne:
I think you make an interesting point that we wouldn’t expect black people to shrug off printed racism they way many expect Muslims to shrug off blasphemous images.
Mnemosyne
@beltane:
That’s my suspicion as well. Like I said, I hope the French authorities are on the alert to clamp down on any anti-Muslim violence that gets started, because that’s when things would truly spin out of control.
ETA: Again IMO, the more I read about it, the more this attack has a whole hell of a lot more to do with politics than it does with religion.
Amir Khalid
@JoyfulA:
Yes, this is very much what I’m saying.
beltane
Also today, a likely al-Qaida suicide bomber killed at least 30 people at a police school in Yemen. It could be that today’s attack in Paris is not really about religion or free speech, but is simply a tactic used by a ruthless organization that seeks to gain power by any means necessary ala early 20th century Bolshivism.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/07/dozens-dead-and-injured-after-bomb-explodes-at-yemen-police-college
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
Beautifully put.
An additional point I’d add is that being a good Muslim entails far more than being a good Christian. For better or for worse, almost every aspect of your life is controlled by Islam. So comparing mocking Islam to mocking Christianity is comparing apples and oranges. Mocking Christianity is mocking my religion, but mocking Islam is mocking who I am. A satirical attack on Islam is inextricably an attack on Muslims, and will be taken personally by many.
gorram
Look. Charlie Hebdo has been putting not just anti-Muslim caricatures showing Mohammed posing naked for porn on their front page for years, but also dabbling in antisemitic and homophobic (guess who they call pedophiles practically every issue!) caricatures too. Oh right, and they basically called the sexual slaves of Boko Haram the French equivalent of welfare queens and pretty much only shade their cartoons with darker skin when they’re in chains.
I’ve been a regular reader here for a long time, but the fact that it was only a few voices in the comments here who were even remotely challenging the media narrative that Charlie Hebdo are martyrs for free speech is kind of giving me pause. Especially considering this is the morning after the NAACP’s offices in Colorado were almost blown up. I’ve been more focused on my family the past month than reading here but it’s making me wonder if I’m going to backread and find nothing but praise for The Interview or something from during Christmas and New Years.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: I do believe that Mike is commenting on the disjointed thought process that passes for “logic” amongst the Teahadis.
tybee
@Mnemosyne:
so, according to the belief of you, amir, wilfred and others, the attackers, by claiming to be of an islamic group, have or will provoke the population of france into further repressions of the islamic faith.
so islam and the believers of that religion bear at least some/all of the blame for the reaction that the islamic population is about to reap.
got it.
Gopher2b
@Mnemosyne:
“but I am not surprised by them”.
Was the firebombing the first clue.
Bill
@Villago Delenda Est:
“No Scotsman drinks bourbon.”
“But my Scottish father drinks bourbon.”
“Ah yes, but no true Scotsman drinks bourbon.”
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Whew, I knew there was something in there!
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay:
I don’t buy this.
dedc79
@Mandalay:
Umm, please elaborate….
Dave C
@Mandalay:
I have no idea if this is true or not, but assuming it is, it suggests some deeply disturbing things about your religion. As far as I’m concerned, the world needs more blasphemy (or all sorts), not less.
Gopher2b
@Mandalay:
Call me when a black American kills 12 people, including two cops, because of a watermelon cartoon. Are you saying Muslims inherently lack the self-control of African Americans?
There is no justification for this. Zero. Nothing. Zilch.
trollhattan
@SatanicPanic:
Doesn’t remotely begin to pass the reductio ad absurdum test.
Tractarian
@Roger Moore:
So the actual “reaction” or “response” doesn’t matter, is what you’re saying? Boycotts, protests, marches… mass murder… those are just different kinds of “reactions” to social and racial oppression which we must strive to “understand.”
Bullsh!t. I can “understand” the actions of these murderers just as well as you can, just as well as the Chairman of the Islamic Studies Center at the Sorbonne can. Which is to say, no amount of “social marginalization” – and certainly no mere words or pictures – can ever even begin to justify cold-blooded killing. It ain’t in the same ballpark, it ain’t the same league – it ain’t even the same sport. Murder is bad, m’kay?
Mnemosyne
@tybee:
I think that’s what they’re hoping will happen. I’m hoping they will be unsuccessful.
I thought you already knew that all Muslims everywhere were personally responsible for 9/11 and have to apologize for it at every turn. That’s why we couldn’t have an Islamic center built in an old retail store that was “within sight” of the WTC site.
Violet
@lamh36:
Is the Colorado Springs NAACP office an “important structure?” It’s not the Washington Monument or the St. Louis arch or the Golden Gate Bridge. From the video it’s a kind of nondescript building in a neighborhood. It’s an office of a national organization, but I’m not sure that makes it an “important structure.”
I do think the national media has dropped the ball on this. I think it’s a combination of east coast bias, no national reporters on scene, “doesn’t fit the narrative,” racial bias, nobody killed, white male suspect, and various other things.
Irony Abounds
Perhaps the solution would be for all the non-violent Muslims in France and elsewhere not to simply tsk tsk, what shame the brutal murders committed in the name of their religion, but rather actively take lead roles in rooting out the violent Muslims, the hateful Imams, the terrorist thugs who do far more to demonize their religion than some simple cartoonists. If the violent and the terrorist factions of Islam really are a small minority of Muslims, the vast majority of peace loving tolerant Muslims should have every incentive in the world to rid the world of those who are destroying their religion.
Tractarian
@Gopher2b:
They don’t mean to say it, but that is the clear implication.
There are “buttons to press” that will cause Muslims to automatically become enraged killing machines. They do not have any control over their impulses. Or so goes the theory.
mai naem mobile
@Roger Moore: I don’t remember the Black Panthers going to the National Review offices 32and mowing down their staff?
I am sick and tired of these religious excuses used for pulling this garbage. I don’t care if its the Muslim stuff, the Israeli.Jews using their religion or the Hindus and Shiv Sen.
Gator90
I think jokes denigrating African-Americans are highly distasteful, even despicable. Nevertheless, if an African-American murdered a white person for telling such a joke, I would be, well, surprised.
Mnemosyne
@Gopher2b:
Does it have to be specifically because of a watermelon cartoon, or can it just be a black man killing 12 people for still unknown reasons? Do we get to count John Allen Muhammad, who “only” killed 10 people? I’m leaving out Colin Ferguson because he only killed 8 people and I can’t add any additional links.
Frankly, given what black people are subjected to in this country, I’m surprised that they only seem to snap and start killing people in proportion to their overall numbers in the population.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
I was speaking of the publications, not necessarily the individual victims themselves.
mai naem mobile
Apparently according to these nuts, Prophet Mohammed had absolutely no sense of humor.
schrodinger's cat
@mai naem mobile: Imagine if some one were to translate the Koran into Lolcat, like the lolcat bible?
Violet
@Mandalay:
Do you not know any evangelical Christians? There are plenty who live and breathe what they think they read in the Bible and every aspect of their lives, from what they eat, what they wear, who they associate with, who they shun, etc. is justified by their Christianity.
Also, too, Mormons. Every aspect of their lives is governed by the Church. They claim they are Christians. Mormons have an entire hit musical by the highly irreverent South Park guys about their religion and so far no one has murdered anyone over it.
dedc79
@Tractarian: And as a point of contrast to some of the victim-blaming going on in this thread, here’s what Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, one of the largest in France, had to say:
chopper
dude, if you go out and kill 12 people because a magazine’s cartoons pissed you off, both you and your personal philosophy are completely and utterly indefensible.
Mnemosyne
@Gator90:
To continue my macro … I would be shocked if that happened, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
gorram
@Irony Abounds: Why are you so certain they aren’t already doing that? This reminds me of the whole “Muslims aren’t addressing Darfur” comments that were everywhere c. 2006 while CAIR was arguably leading the discussion on that IIRC.
I think the follow up to that question is asking yourself what you’re doing. What have you done for the Muslims locked up in Gitmo? What have you done for the Muslims subject to military occupation by non-Muslim White Western powers? What have you done for the Muslims subject to military state surveillance in the non-Muslim White West?
Your entire presentation of this situation is one that casts this as an attack and ignores any perspective that sees it as a response. Do you actually want these conflicts to be avoided, or do you want Muslims to be deferential to you and other non-Muslims?
Amir Khalid
@Tractarian:
I used that phrase to refer to a very small subset of Muslims, not the faith community in general.
bjacques
@LanceThruster:
The original cartoon doesn’t have the Star of David or “YHWH Akbar!” There’s a Dutch Green-left politician who tweeted that she thought it could be a false flag attack, too. There are always a few.
Western laws generally protect freedom of speech, aside from hate speech (e.g., intimidation of a target and their group), sowing of panic and incitement to riot by enjoining governments from censoring you and by punishing those who would forcibly muzzle you before, during or after. What the law doesn’t do is insure you against the risk of someone taking a swing at you or worse before the cops arrive, and it never has. In the West, this is a small risk, even among people who go out of their way to insult Muslims by publishing the most insulting cartoons of Muhammad imaginable (an equivalent for non-Muslims might be someone posting online nude pictures of your mother or children, particularly if they died badly). Enough people have posted hateful shit on Facebook that if anyone wanted to hunt them down they could easily do so.
That’s the risk the staff of Charlie Hebdo and Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh took. The law doesn’t assign any responsibility to them and nor should it. But the risk is there. Actually it was greater for van Gogh, since he continually picked fights with the Muslim community. As far as I know the staff of Charlie Hebdo last published the cartoons in 2011, shortly after which they were firebombed. Their point made, at least to their satisfaction, they moved on. In the two years since, they’ve had plenty of time to anger other people, or just to become a symbol of the decadent West.
I hope the killers are captured alive, tried and sent to jail long enough for them and their cause to be forgotten, rather than have them die like martyrs by holing up in an apartment like the 3/11 Madrid bombers did. It’s how civilization deals with people like them. I’d also like to hear from them, because their justification might be different from 2-year-old cartoons. It’s telling that this is the first thing everybody thinks of first, because those cartoons were a dick move. It’s one thing to stand by something you’ve already published that offended someone, but another to go even further out of one’s way to offend further, as a taunt. It may be legal, but it’s not social. I think more people realize that than care to admit it.
Adam
@Tractarian:
Nobody saying this is justified, for the 100 fucking time. What they are saying is that when you have a persecuted minority population whose grievances aren’t being addressed by the state no matter how much they try to bring them up with legitimate means, it’s not a stretch to imagine them resorting to more violent means. Those who make peaceful changes impossible will make violent revolution inevitable and all that.
Tractarian
@Mnemosyne:
Once again, we seem to be missing something very important. Being forced to apologize and even getting fired from your job are categorically different than having your head blown off by an automatic rifle.
@Archon:
If “shrug off” means “refrain from murdering people” then yes, I would expect black people to “shrug off” printed racism just like I expect Muslims to “shrug off” blasphemous cartoons.
How hard is this to understand?
beltane
@gorram: I wonder how many Roman Catholics felt compelled to seek out and confront IRA supporters back in the day.
gorram
@Violet: Because they feel respected and represented by a musical that presents them as well-intentioned people? And not caricatured by a group that has spent years reinforcing the imagery of them as a group that has led to hate crimes in France? This is such an incredible false equivalency it’s amazing.
Chet
@Gopher2b:
The soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again.
Bill
@Mnemosyne:
There are instances when violent reaction is understandable if not condoned. When a group of people are abused by the state through the police, eventually they will turn to violence. And I think most people can look at that and say, at some point, such behavior becomes unsurprising.
But let’s not pretend what happened in Paris rises to anything close to such abuse. We are talking about people who murdered 12 journalists over some cartoons. I don’t care if the cartoon is of someone’s grandmother fellating a goat, murdering the cartoonist in response is “surprising.”
Gopher2b
@Adam:
Um, no. It’s a thinly-veiled justification asserted by cowards too afraid to come out and say it explicitly.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
To be clear (as an atheist), I’m not claiming that a good Muslim is a better person than a good Christian. I’m saying that in order to be a good Muslim, Islam must permeate your life, and you are governed by many rules and obligations that are far more onerous than simply following the Ten Commandments.
Start out with the Five Pillars of Islam, and then add in the the social obligations of being a Muslim.
Islam is far more prescriptive and far more proscriptive than Christianity, to the extent that it completely controls your life.
Valdivia
with all the talk of provoking over-reaction–go to the french sites or France24 and look at all the french people together in quiet massive demonstrations in the horror of this. It is quite moving to see people just coming together instead of bombing the shit out of something in revenge.
Mnemosyne
@Tractarian:
What implication? Right now, for the most part, African-Americans have a lot of avenues to peacefully make their outrage known. As I pointed out above, Republican operatives who were caught distributing racist caricatures and cartoons of President Obama were swiftly punished in the court of public opinion and forced to apologize.
Actually, the theory is that they feel that their peaceful avenues of protest are blocked to them, so they turn to violence. Or, as the Juan Cole article above is postulating, they use “religious” violence to political ends. Again, the riots over the Muhammad cartoons were not an automatic “button” that caused violence as soon as it was pressed. It built over the course of over a year.
Tractarian
@Adam:
1) Still waiting for the explanation on how France made “peaceful changes impossible” (no, uniformly outlawing certain religious clothing through a democratic process doesn’t count)
2) If you’re saying that violence was inevitable because of the cartoons then you are blaming the cartoonists for their own death. Full stop. You’ve also gone pretty far beyond “it’s not a stretch to imagine them” becoming violent.
Oh, but you’re not saying the murders are “justified”, I’ll give you that.
Dave C
@Adam:
This is absolutely ridiculous. Today’s attack had nothing whatsoever to do with fighting oppression.
Liberty60
I think there’s a few things going on here that make it difficult to get an understanding of this.
One, stripping this out of its context- as if the attack is strictly about vulgar cartoons, nothing else- as if , were it not for the cartoons being published, the attackers would be happy, peaceful members of society?
That seems absurd. It seems more reasonable to suggest that the attackers were already enraged at issues far larger than cartoons; but the cartoonists provided a handy target and focal point.
Second, we tend to view things through our own cultural lenses- we grasp at metaphor and comparisons- the attackers were like abortion clinic shooters; or psychopathic spree killers; or politically motivated militia members; all of which coat the attack with a tint that it maybe doesn’t warrant, and point us to solutions that aren’t wise.
It seems reasonable to me that this attack be seen in context with the larger long running low level war between extremist Muslims and the West, and particularly the cultural battle going on in France between its immigrants and natives.
No, of course nothing justifies this, ever. But failing to understand the source of the rage , and blindly lashing out at a convenient target seems remarkably like an echo of the attack itself.
gorram
@beltane: I mean, I’d argue that’s really complicated because “Catholic” in the IRA’s context meant “Irish and unwilling to kowtow to English colonial power”* but at the same time, I don’t feel qualified to write off any Muslim extremist group as not having similar dynamics going on in terms of how they use globally widespread identities to stand in for local political terms.
*The ignorance people outside of that cultural context have is astounding. Remember that the English blockaded Ireland during the famine in order to make sure that Protestant charities (that required conversion before feeding people) had a near monopoly on food supplies on the island. The English monarchy literally turned away Native American and Moroccan mass donations on our behalf. That is also why non-Irish White people using us as prop in discussions about Whiteness and racism need to stop.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
I see your words, but I do not understand them.
Gopher2b
@Mnemosyne:
I’m confused. Was this an attack carried out by just three individuals who (presumably) happen to be Muslim or as part of a religious community provoked by endless racism. The answer seems to depend on the point you guys are trying to make at any given moment.
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Who is denying the ability of the ridiculed minority to SPEAK?
dedc79
@LanceThruster: I was wondering when someone would get around to blaming the jews for this. You’re the big winner!
gorram
@Tractarian: “uniformly outlawing certain religious clothing through a democratic process doesn’t count” Why doesn’t that count? Also the debate was really horrifyingly obviously racist, with French people saying that its effect on Jewish people (that they couldn’t wear yarmulkes) as great because it’ll make them blend in better so they won’t get bullied. And remember the broader context here: in the 50s and 60s, the French were militarily occupying Algeria, killing people in the streets, and trying to coercively Christianize that and a sizable chunk of the Muslim world as well.
Mandalay
@Adam:
Well said. The number of fucking dimwits on this thread who choose to interpret “the reaction is understandable” as “I heartily support the slaughter” is astounding.
beltane
@Adam: This attack was carried out by individuals, most likely affiliated with some organization, and not a generic “they”. This attack does not appear to be the result of spontaneous outrage, but instead has all the hallmarks of being carefully planned out. There was a method to the madness here. Just as it was found that many white Americans subconsciously believe that black men are endowed with superpowers, many Westerners believe that all Muslims are an amorphous mass of crazy people who are blowing things up in our cities 24/7. Let us hope the perpetrators are apprehended soon so that the plot and its backers can be revealed.
wilfred
Some people are shocked when they hear people say things they disagree with, qed. They were threatened with death, and they carried on. To some people that’s noble; to others, it’s simply stupid.
In the end, no one can protect anyone. They provoked violent people. What on earth could they possibly expect?
Everything is violence, state-sponsored or otherwise.
Suzanne
@Mandalay: You don’t have a deep enough understanding of Christianity if you honestly think that checking off the Ten Commandments is all it takes to be a good Christian. The truly Christian life is dedicated to selfless service and prayer—at almost every waking moment. Some Christians are vegan because they believe the Bible tells them they should be, some sleep on the floor without blankets (including Pope John Paul II at times), some go to Christian schools and universities, some quit their jobs and spend years doing volunteer work with their only support coming from churches. Don’t confuse American supermarket evangelicalism with Christianity as a whole.
I am horrified by these killings, though not surprised. But I don’t care how offended anyone is. Murder is absolutely never, ever justified.
Bobby Thomson
@wilfred:
Oh, fuck the hell off. Rot in hell with your brothers-in-arms Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder.
kc
@Adam:
What a load of shit.
SatanicPanic
@Gopher2b: THIS
Bobby Thomson
@wilfred:
You, asshole.
dedc79
@Mandalay: Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve also got a problem with “the reaction is understandable.”
I think it’s actually the French who have the saying “to understand all is to forgive all.”
Interrobang
@trollhattan: Seriously, she said that she wasn’t surprised by it, not that she agrees with it. Fuck, is anybody ever actually surprised when some anti-abortion terrorist shoots a doctor, particularly if, as in the case of George Tiller, the media (in the person of Bill O’Reilly) wound up anti-abortion loons — by referring to Tiller repeatedly as “Tiller the Baby-Killer”? Surprising? No. Practically predictable? Yes.
The analogy falls apart some, admittedly, because O’Reilly almost certainly wanted someone to go after Tiller, and the Charlie Hebdo folks were just being offensive for the sake of being offensive and not actually trying to provoke someone into doing anything.
Seriously. If you’re surprised when this kind of thing happens, I worry about your naivete.
You wind up violent lunatics, sometimes you get crazy violence. That’s about as immutable a law as anything you studied in high school physics. That doesn’t mean it’s right or that you perforce have to condone what they did, just that in the real world in which we live and to which facts and history apply, violent people often find excuses for violence.
beltane
There are indications the perpetrators had military training: http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/07/shooting-paris-satirical-magazine-charlie-hebdo#block-54ad7da9e4b0c9505d7d9a6b
J R in WV
@wilfred:
We are telling ISIS in Syria that they can’t enslave young girls as sex puppets, they can’t execute people for refusing to belong to their perverted excuse for a religion, and they can’t kill people for refusing to fight for their insane perverted religious war.
You have a problem with these positions? Then go join ISIS and help them reap what they have sown. Go away and die, butt-head! But civilized and educated people will reject these sick substitutes for morality, and prevent them from continuing to enslave people into their death cult.
For the first time I wish I had installed the pie filter, does it work with Firefox on Linux?
Gator90
@Mnemosyne: Perhaps it would help some of us understand you better if you explained your understanding of the distinction between shock and surprise. Because when you say that a black American committing murder over a joke would not surprise you, you seem to exhibit a shockingly low opinion of black Americans.
Mnemosyne
@Tractarian:
It sounds as though you missed reading my macro the first few times I included it:
I am shocked and horrified by these murders and I think the killers need to be brought to justice as quickly as possible, but I am not surprised by them.
Saying that I am not surprised does not imply that I think the journalists were responsible for their own murders in any way, shape, or form. I also was not surprised by the murder of Dr. Tiller, not because I thought he was responsible for his own murder or deserved to be killed, but because I knew murderous people were interested in trying to kill him and I was pretty sure one of them would eventually catch up with him.
Tractarian
@wilfred:
You talk about “violent people” as if it is some immutable characteristic. They had no choice but to become violent. They were born into it, raised on it, oppressed to the point where they simply had no choice. That’s where the “implication” that Muslims lack self-control comes from. And it’s complete BS.
Liberty60
If the father of a child blown up by a drone strike were to charge into Dick Cheney’s compound with a machine gun, we could probably all agree there would be some righteous justice.
But it never works like that, ever. They kill one of ours, we kill one of theirs. ANY one of theirs, it doesn’t matter who.
The question we as voters and citizens need to ask, is what next? What do we do now?
Because there will be the inevitable cries to bomb someone, anyone, just to avenge blood with blood.
And I really don’t think that is helpful. We’ve been bombing for over a decade now, without measurable results.
Mandalay
@Suzanne:
Maybe so, but it’s optional. Prayer is not optional in Islam. In order to be a Muslim you must pray five times daily. And you have a load of other obligations beyond prayer that completely control your behavior.
You really don’t see the qualitative difference between living life as a Muslim and living life as a Christian?
AFAIK, nobody in this thread has come anywhere close to justifying what happened in Paris.
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne:
People exercised their constitutional right to assemble and OH YEAH DIDN’T FUCKING MURDER ANYONE.
kc
@Interrobang:
Yeah. The big fat difference is, we on the left would, I presume, say that abortion clinic bombings are not surprising because anti-abortionists are violent fanatics, not because abortion doctors are “provoking” them.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Said it far better than I could have.
Mnemosyne
@Gator90:
Really? I think it exhibits a very high opinion of black Americans that they put up with the hundreds of tons of shit that get dumped on them every single fucking day in this country and only a few of them commit murder over it.
I can probably best illustrate my distinction between “shock” and “surprise” with the Boston Marathon bombings. I was shocked and horrified that anyone would try to kill and injure people at the Boston Marathon. I was surprised that it turned out to be two wanna-be jihadists who had been raised in the US, because I was one of those people who thought it would probably be someone on the right wing.
Another example: I was shocked that a white supremacist would go on a shooting spree at a holocaust museum, but I was not surprised, because that seems like a natural place for a white supremacist to try and kill the people he hates.
Similarly, I am shocked at the attempt to bomb the NAACP office in Colorado, but if it turns out to be perpetrated by someone with white supremacist beliefs or ties, I will not be surprised. If it turns out to be someone who tried to bomb it because his ex-wife works there, then I will be surprised. Is that clear enough?
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne: The right to speech =/= the right to agreement.
Peale
@beltane: I do believe it was the Pope himself who said that attacks against Catholics in Northern Ireland were attacks against Roman Catholics everywhere and decided to reignite the 40 years war over the issue.
beltane
@Liberty60:
I don’t know. Prior to 2003, Iraq existed and ISIL didn’t so you can’t say bombing didn’t produce measurable results..
Tractarian
@Mnemosyne:
I read your macro every time you posted it.
As far as I can tell, it does not explain how France prohibited Muslims from expressing their disapproval of the cartoons in a non-murderous fashion.
trollhattan
@Interrobang: @kc:
One thing I ain’t, is naive. Anybody who thinks there’s no analogue to virtually everything published by Charlie Hebdo, aimed at every other of the world’s religion is not only naive, they’re willfully ignorant. At things are I stand by the Tiller comparison, even as it makes you uncomfortable.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
Go to Saudi Arabia, try walking around without a godamned burka.
Howard Beale IV
@LanceThruster: Holy Alex Jones, Batman!
Mnemosyne
@Liberty60:
This, too. It’s difficult to apply US free speech norms and US racial/ethnic politics to what’s going on in France. It’s not going to be a perfect fit. However, to act as though this attack comes out of the blue and has nothing at all to do with the ongoing ethnic/religious politics in France seems more than a little blindered to me. This attack has a context, even if it’s not a context we’re familiar with.
kc
@trollhattan:
It doesn’t make me “uncomfortable.” It’s just stupid.
ETA, to be clear, particularly stupid in that you offer it in the context of defending the “not surprising” comments of someone who’s been focusing on the acts of the victims, not the murderers.
wilfred
@Tractarian:
Well, I happen to be a Muslim so that far from what I am saying. I have been repeating the same thing for a while: these three men were violent people who felt provoked enough to commit murder. At what point did I say a word about Muslims?
That’s all that anyone can read into this. Anything else is rhetorical grandstanding, of which there is plenty going on in this thread
dedc79
@trollhattan: We don’t even need to look that far. Some of their cartoons mocked jews as well – particularly the orthodox. The French have a long history of persecuting jews, culiminating in the Vichy govt’s collaboration with the Nazis to systematically murder tens of thousands of French jews. In recent years, French jews have been assaulted and even murdered in racist attacks. If anyone has a right to be sensitive to religious mockery/persecution, surely the jews of france qualify. The french government has failed to protect its jews from these attacks, and they are now emigrating in high numbers. But if a bunch of French jews had gone on a killing spree and shot up all these cartoonists, nobody would be claiming that their reaction was understandable. Nor would they claim the cartoonists shared responsibility for their own deaths.
Peale
@Liberty60: I doubt there will be any reprisals at all. Nor any backlash that looks any different than usual to anyone. France will still create cultural images that offend people. If everything is the same, is its just the same. I doubt we’ll get one substantiated case of “backlash” over this that will look any different than the actions of any random Wednesday.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: As a former Catholic, there are lots of mandatory things- attendance at Church (or GO TO HELL), going to confession (and do your assigned prayers) for what to most people would seem like minor things (noticed a woman’s breasts? GOING TO HELL IF YOU DIE… unless you confess it first). I’m sure there are more I just consciously forgot them. Those things kind of guide your life. Shit, I’d take daily prayers over constant fear of eternal damnation.
Tractarian
@Mnemosyne:
Uh, yeah, that would be a high opinion. Unfortunately, you exhibited surprise at the fact that “only a few of them commit murder” so it would appear that you do not share that high opinion.
@wilfred:
I think that comes pretty close to “justification”, don’t you?
By the way wilfred, he’s a very clearly delineated line for you: if you reply to this post, I will become very upset. I might even come to your house, rape your children and personally massacre your entire family.
You can’t say you weren’t warned!
Mnemosyne
@Gopher2b:
Given the new information that has come out about possible al-Qaeda ties of the killers, it is starting to appear as though the attack was politically motivated, not specifically religiously motivated. The argument has changed direction because the facts are becoming more clear.
Since my distinctions sometimes seem to be confusing, I would say that this attack in France now appears to be a political attack by a foreign group. In contrast, the murder of Theo van Gogh was a religiously-motivated attack since the murderer didn’t have any specific ties to a particular political group — he hated van Gogh because of van Gogh’s attacks on Islam.
It’s sometimes difficult to separate the political aims and the religious beliefs of al-Qaeda, but I would say that they are a political terrorist group with ties to religion rather than a religious terrorist group. They have specific political aims that they want to achieve that are informed by but not the same as their religious beliefs.
Marc
@Mnemosyne: Let’s look at the specific words that you used:
“FWIW, I tend to feel the same way — you can’t provoke people over and over again, give them no outlet for recourse, and then be shocked that they lash out at you. Yes, this was a horrifying overreaction, but it’s hard for me to agree with the Free Speech Uber Alles folks that it’s A-OK to bash a minority group and not allow them to have any speech in return. Once you cut off peaceful avenues for protest and dialogue and say that people have to put up with being insulted over and over again, this is the result. ”
—————————————
To me and others, it’s extremely clear that you’re engaging in victim blaming. If people adopt similar language on feminist issues you are not tolerant at all; yet someone drawing anti-religious cartoons in a nation with a long militant secular history (France) becomes transmuted into a bigot (bashing a minority group). When they demand that you stop and you don’t, you’re “not allowing them to have any speech at all” and you’re “cutting off peaceful avenues”. And because you’ve not accepted their censorhip, well, what did you expect anyhow?
You have an extreme blind spot here, where some classes of people get magical get out of jail cards and others get zero tolerance. The fact that people are reacting so angrily to these words is not a misinterpretation; it’s because you folded a series of excuses and victim-blaming assumptions into what you wrote. It’s damn hard to be on the other side of an angry comment swarm, and I don’t want to be part of one. But sometimes it’s better just to step back and think about what others are saying.
kc
@Mandalay:
What is your point? I’m not interested in arguing with you about who is more devout. But it looks like you’re saying Islam is different from Christianity in the way that it’s practiced, and therefore deserves special treatment.
Amir Khalid
@Tractarian:
The vast majority of French Muslims who disapprove of those cartoons have indeed expressed it in a non-murderous fashion. They are not the problem here.
chopper
@dedc79:
yeah, me too. what’s ‘understandable’ about murdering 12 people because cartoons?
chopper
@LanceThruster:
in all seriousness, what the fuck is that shit and why did you just shit that out on this thread?
Marc
@gorram: There was strong advocacy for the French veil law within the Muslim community – because many girls are forced to wear them by peer pressure. There are also good public safety reasons for prohibiting people from hiding their faces in public – reasons that preceded the arrival of large populations of ultra-religious Muslim women. Are you aware, by the way, that these bans were common in the early 20th century as an anti-KKK tool?
kc
@chopper:
Is that a version of “the Jews all called in sick on 9/11!” ?
wilfred
@Tractarian:
But that would be my choice, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’d kill you first if you tried it – would that be an attack or defense of the Republic in either outcome?
I think what people are missing here, discounting the ones wallowing in emotion, is that people actually think differently and don’t value the things they do. If there’s any irony here, that’s it. You seem to be suggesting that the killers should have realized that they have no right to be violent when they are offended by what they read in the papers (discounting a great deal of French history) and that I think this is a justification.
Let me be clear: what I think has fuck all to do with what happened and everything to do with the people involved. The killers surely thought they had the right to do it. Ask yourself: if the dead knew they’d be killed would they still have done it? Not thought it was a possibility, but knew.
Would you? That should answer your hypothetical.
Mnemosyne
@kc:
Yes, France should follow in the steps of a repressive theocracy and determine by law what religious garb people can and cannot wear!
Want to try again?
@Tractarian:
Only if you’re assuming that I’m saying that only black people commit murder. Will you feel better if I clarify that I’m also not surprised that white people, Asian-American people, Latino people, Native American people, and mixed-race/ethnicity people also commit murder, generally in proportion to their numbers in the population?
Not every estranged ex-husband murders his ex-wife, but I’m not surprised when it happens. Does that mean that I don’t have a high opinion of divorced men since I recognize the fact that some of them are murderers?
beltane
@dedc79: In recent years, France has made valiant efforts to crack down on anti-Semitic speech, including forcing the firing of a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist for making an anti-Semitic joke at the expense of Nicholas Sarkozy’s daughter-in-law http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/2798250/Sarkozys-son-weds-amid-controversy.html.
Really? My nice, NPR listening Jewish relatives would kinda-sorta justify something like this, just as they were kinda-sorta wishy-washy in their feelings towards Anders Breivik. There is an unlimited supply of hatred in this world, a lifetime supply for everyone. To pretend it’s only limited to one group or another is just dishonest.
Gopher2b
@Mnemosyne:
Distinction without a difference, and you are attempting to engage in an (obvious) sleight of hand. You want to support the terrorists’ motivations without supporting the terrorists. Fine, but those motivations are antithesis to the western civilization principles. There is no quarter to give. There is no freedom from offense. There is no justification for murdering journalists.
Gator90
@Mnemosyne:
Black Americans, as you correctly observe, generally do refrain from murder as a response to the injustices visited upon them. Yet you say you wouldn’t be surprised if one committed murder over a mere joke. Weird.
Adam
@Marc:
But they’re women who wanted to wear them of there own free will, and weren’t allowed to do that. How that’s not just a straight up persecution, and the opposite of what a pluralistic liberal society should want?
Mandalay
@kc:
No, I’m saying that there are far more rules and rigid obligations associated with being a Muslim, to the extent that your behavior is far more controlled compared to the way most Christians live their lives. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, and I’m not saying that Muslims are better or worse than Christians. I’m just presenting it as a fact.
But the extent to which Islam permeates one’s life is also relevant in understanding (but not condoning) the murders in Paris. Maybe “explaining” would be a better choice of word than “understanding”? I didn’t call for special treatment for anyone.
Suzanne
@Mandalay: I don’t see any difference between Islam and Christianity specifically w/r/t how demanding the faiths can be of their followers. I think there is a qualitative difference between those who are observant vs those who are less so, but that is true of both faiths. Many Christians pray over every meal, as well as morning and night. Christianity is an older faith and may have more different types of practice than Islam (though I am not sure of this), but I think you have it exactly wrong if you think that Christian faith means you just follow the Ten Commandments and then call it a day. People who feel their faith deeply, and this is true of almost any faith, will tell you that it affects every facet of their lives.
W/r/t surprise vs. shock, I think the important distinction is that if something surprised you, it’s something that you never thought would happen, something you never dreamed of, something that unexpected. Something shocking can be expected, but is typically deeply upsetting and unsettling, and threatening. These killings shock but do not surprise me. For example, someone being diagnosed with cancer shocks but does not surprise me, as does a car wreck. I think that this clarifies some of these comments being made today.
dedc79
@beltane: Yeah, after I pressed submit, I realized that word “nobody” might get me in trouble. I should have said “none of the commenters who are victim-blaming here,” which was what I was trying to get at.
Mnemosyne
@Marc:
I am not sure what you mean here. Do you not realize that Muslims are a minority group in France that has has violence directed at them recently?
So I will pose the same question to you that I posed to others: when Republican operatives were caught sending out racist cartoons of the Obamas and were fired, wasn’t that censorship? Shouldn’t they have been allowed to flip the bird to everyone and keep their jobs regardless of what they said?
I’ll try and clarify a bit: here in the US, though we still have an enormous problem with racism, we do have venues where people can peacefully express their disgust with the speech of others and there are social mechanisms to punish speech that the broader population finds unacceptable, like cartoons of the White House lawn planted with watermelons. If an American magazine published these kinds of anti-Muslim cartoons, I would expect the head of CAIR and other Muslim-American organizations to denounce them and for there to be a firestorm of controversy and then — most likely — the magazine would apologize for offending people.
There does not seem to be a similar social mechanism in a lot of Europe right now. Because there does not seem to be a similar social mechanism, I can understand that some people would start to feel as though they’re being constantly attacked and bullied with no recourse or even social disapproval. In fact, they might be the objects of social disapproval themselves for complaining because they can’t take a joke or take themselves too seriously.
If you look back at what I’ve said when I fly to the defense of feminism, it’s actually not too far off from this, because when people make sexist jokes or remarks, I similarly do not accept an excuse that it’s just a joke and that women need to learn to laugh at jokes that dehumanize them. I think women have a right to speak up when they’re offended and expect to be listened to … just like I think Muslims have a right to speak up when they’re offended and expect to be listened to.
Gopher2b
No!! They were still free to send out anything they wanted to. They just weren’t entitled to have that particular job anymore. I would say these terrorists have pretty much permanently deprived these cartoonists of their right to publish cartoons, no?
Gopher2b
@Mandalay:
Congratulations on forcing yourself to follow a rigid set of made up rules, I guess.
Mnemosyne
@Gopher2b:
Yes, changing my opinion based on new information is slight-of-hand.
/headdesk
Please point to anywhere that I said that these murders were in any way “justified.” Saying that I understand the motive of a white supremacist who decided to go on a shooting spree at a Holocaust museum says in no way, shape, or form that I think he was justified in doing it. It only says that it is a comprehensible reason to me.
Mnemosyne
@Gopher2b:
So would you have supported the magazine firing the cartoonists who did anti-Islam cartoons, or would that have been unacceptable kowtowing to a bunch of whiners who can’t stand to see their sacred cow poked?
Let me run my macro for you again since you seem to think I in any way, shape, or form support the murder of these journalists:
I am shocked and horrified by these murders and I think the killers need to be brought to justice as quickly as possible, but I am not surprised by them.
Peale
My great aunt Pearl died last night. She was 104. She died in the arms of her secret 21 year-old lover who is now set to inherit her house.
Surprise or shock?
Mnemosyne
@Gator90:
A man in Florida decapitated his mother on Christmas Eve for nagging him. So, no, I’m not surprised when people murder each other for stupid or irrational reasons.
Tractarian
@Mnemosyne:
What do you mean “also”? Earlier, you said “Frankly, given what black people are subjected to in this country, I’m surprised that they only seem to snap and start killing people in proportion to their overall numbers in the population.” Are you retracting that? (If you are, good for you! It shows that you are keeping an open mind despite the risk of looking foolish. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’d make me “feel better” though)
@Amir Khalid:
Agreed, they are not the problem. (I was replying to the suggestion that groups naturally resort to violence if they are not permitted to dissent peacefully. The point is that French Muslims are permitted to dissent peacefully, so this
justificationexcusereasonunderstanding is invalid anyway)Gopher2b
@Mnemosyne:
If truly the only point you are trying to make when you say you’re not “surprised” that violent terrorists act violently, then please elucidate for me the color of the sky on a clear day, Captain Obvious. I’m really interested in your insights there too.
Btw, How can you simultaneously “understand” their motivations for the attack and distance them from the people who were treated badly (e.g, had their feelings were hurt by a drawing).
RobinDC
@Mnemosyne: It shocks and surprises me the knots of imbecility you’ve twisted yourself into by this point to justify your initial idiotic statement. It’s trite to the point of banality to say “well some people under some circumstances will kill”. Address the actual situation you asshole and give us an actual conclusion about your thoughts on this instead of constantly backpedaling from your initial statements. If you genuinely believe that violence is warranted to ameliorate the oppression the Muslim populace of France suffers speak clearly as to that topic. If not then shut the fuck up and stop telling us about your lack of surprise (but you are “shocked”) that some bad apples killed people because they were provoked. That adds absolutely nothing to the conversation, its a statement that the sky is blue.
And to be clear on just what it means to add something to the conversation: I do not believe that the current state of oppression Muslim people experience in France warrants any type of violence at all. Full stop. Furthermore I agree that the house of Islam as it currently exists is a deeply flawed ideology that is dangerous to the entire world in its totality. This not a statement about all Muslims its a statement about a belief system that is genuinely different from every other religion currently being practiced in the world. It is certainly true that Christianity at one point exhibited many of the same problems that Islam does today. I do not believe those problems stemmed from the belief system formed by Christianity and think they were instead rooted in a human culture that remained untouched by enlightenment and liberal thought and culture. Islam cannot use that as an excuse. While Islam is not, by and far, the most dangerous ideology currently practiced by humanity today (that would be the various strains of nationalism and/or authoritarianism which are adhered to by the most well armed organizations in the entire history of the human, who have much greater capacities for violence than even the most powerful Islamic extremist organizations, and have exercised that power to inflict casualties well, well beyond anything the entire sum of Islamic terrorism has achieved) it certainly the most dangerous religion.
I am of the firm belief that dealing with the problem child of Islam in the world will require enormous economic outreach to lift the most vulnerable of its adherents out of the abject poverty they exist in which enables their worst natures and makes them vulnerable to indoctrination by the worst elements of the religion. Specifically to France and this current situation, better work at integrating the Muslim community economically and culturally may have prevented this situation (or maybe not if this really is a cell a genuine Al Queda in Yemen cell conducting de facto psy-ops to trigger further French resentment/drum up recruitment). But I do not discount the possible necessity of outright military intervention if necessary, because I am not a suicidal idealist. At some points in the future we may see them or us situations (as ISIS might become should they take control of the entirety of Mesopotamia), if we have become so wretchedly spineless that we can longer justify doing violence to preserve our own existence I fear humanity is in for a long, long backslide.
Gopher2b
@Mnemosyne:
I wouldn’t have remotely cared, and assuming I even noticed, I would have thought that was a weird thing for a satirical private publication to make.
Elizabelle
@Valdivia: Thank you for the link. Terrific essay by Joe Randazzo, former editor of The Onion.
Mandalay
@Suzanne:
No doubt, but that is OPTIONAL with Christianity.
But with Islam you must tithe, you can’t drink, you can’t gamble, you must visit Mecca, you must fast during Ramadan, you must pray five times a day, you can’t be a dancer or musician, you can’t estrange family members, etc. These rules aren’t optional – you must follow them, and there are plenty more of them. Even how you should greet fellow Muslims is defined.
Again, I’m not saying that religion one is better than the other; I am saying that they are qualitatively different, and Islam necessarily permeates every aspect of a Muslim’s life. That is certainly less true of Christianity which places more onus on the free will of the individual. (As an example, the Catholic Church used to prohibit eating meat on Friday, but relaxed the prohibition to make it optional, cleverly arguing that it should now become even more difficult to eat meat on Fridays.)
Yes, a distinction worth making since some here are conflating the two terms (and also equating “understanding” with “condoning”).
Tractarian
@Mnemosyne:
Your whole argument rests on this one premise, and I still haven’t seen any evidence of it. How, exactly, are European Muslims deprived of the ability to have their grievances heard peacefully?
Great, you’re not surprised when people murder each other for rational reasons, and you’re not surprised when people murder each other for irrational reasons. Presumably you wouldn’t be surprised if someone got murdered for no reason at all; or maybe you’d just be shocked.
Anyway, you’ve now successfully whittled down your original position (that is: violence is an understandable consequence of social marginalization and oppression) to anodyne nothingness. Pretty impressive backtracking!
Elizabelle
@Peale: Your aunt is Sarah Proud and Tall? Oh noooes!!!
Mandalay
@Elizabelle:
Sadly, I’m sure there are.
Gopher2b
@Tractarian:
Don’t hold your breath.
elmo
@Mnemosyne:
For myself, I would consider it a business decision by the magazine, that their continued employment would be damaging to the magazine’s reputation. But since this particular magazine’s reputation is exactly in line with the work of these cartoonists, I would be surprised if that were to happen.
It would be like when National Review fired Derbyshire. I was surprised at that, and so were a lot of other people, including a lot of their readers. But that was their business decision.
wilfred
@Elizabelle:
No sacred cows at the Onion? Or anywhere else, for that matter? People can say whatever they want about any ethnic or racial group or any gender and there are zero consequences? No lines, is it?
What country is that?
Bill
@Mnemosyne:
Tractarian
@wilfred:
Close! Here’s my interpretation:
People should be able to say whatever they want about any ethnic or racial group or any gender without getting murdered.
elmo
@Bill:
wilfred
@Tractarian:
Ok, but losing your job, your livelihood, everything you have short of your life is fair game to be taken if you insult or mock or otherwise poke fun of sacred cows?
Hm.
Mnemosyne
@Tractarian:
You seem to be accusing me of thinking that African-American people are more violent than others, which is why I would not be surprised if one of them murdered someone over a racist joke. I’m actually saying that they’re probably less violent as a group than other people, or else we would see people being murdered over racist jokes every single day given the sheer number of those “jokes” they’re subjected to every goddamned day.
I’m really not sure what’s confusing about saying that.
kc
This whole not “not surprised” thing has turned into a massive derail from the topic of murderous extremists slaughtering journalists.
dedc79
@wilfred: Person A: Murder is wrong.
Person B: Oh, so you think everything short of murder is alright? I’ve got you now!
(Hint: you’re Person B)
Mandalay
@elmo:
Somewhat O/T, but he wrote a great mathematics book.
I had no clue about his alter ego when I read it. How can someone so incredibly smart be so incredibly dumb?
kc
@Mandalay:
Well, then, it sounds like you’re saying that gunning down 12 journalists is a logical consequence of Islam.
I mean, that can’t be what YOU are trying to say, or is it?
Gopher2b
@wilfred:
No. You still have the right to draw cartoons, send racists emails, publish inflammatory things on Facebook. You just don’t get to have a certain job because the person who pays you doesn’t want to anymore. You have to be pretty obtuse to miss the difference here.
Mnemosyne
@Bill:
It was certainly predictable that a white supremacist would pick a Holocaust museum to go on a shooting spree. Does that automatically mean that Holocaust museums should not be built because they will be targets of white supremacists? Should the museum be torn down because it was predictable that it would be targeted by white supremacists?
Again, saying that something is predictable doesn’t mean that it’s right or good. You do your best to mitigate the problem (which is why only one person was killed at the Holocaust museum in DC — they were prepared for the possibility of an attack) but that doesn’t put any responsibility on the person or people who were attacked.
I used to live fairly close to the Holocaust museum here in Los Angeles (the Museum of Tolerance). They got bomb threats every few months. Would you say that it would be predictable that eventually there would be a successful attack at that museum? And if there was, would you say that the museum was to blame for the attack?
kc
@Peale:
LOL.
wilfred
@dedc79:
Who said murder was right? Is there some endemic illiteracy around here. I don’t remember it being this fucking stupid or ant-dialectical.
To suggest that anything approaching free speech is present in France, or in the US – forget the UK – is silly. Speech that offends people with power is always punished, in one way or the another. This is what Western people didn’t get about Khomeini taking the piss out of Rushdie and the sacred cow of free speech.
kc
@wilfred:
One where Internet commenters have the Constitutional right to slaughter straw men at will.
dedc79
@wilfred: You inverted Gopher2B’s argument and tried to hold him to it – that was my objection.
Mnemosyne
@Tractarian:
@kc:
Here’s a question, though: now that information is coming out that this was most likely an attack by foreign terrorists sponsored by al-Qaeda, does that change the “free speech” calculation at all? For me, it changes just about everything — it means it was not about the domestic politics of France, or about the limits of free speech in a civil society. It means that it was a political attack, not a religious one, that has more to do with international politics and the ongoing wars in the Middle East than it does with anything these cartoonists were doing or saying. The cartoonists were murdered because they were symbolic of the current ongoing wars and the various twists and turns of those, not because someone hated their free speech.
ETA: Or to be more clear — they were murdered for political reasons, not because someone was religiously insulted by their Mohammed cartoons.
kc
@wilfred:
Look, you thread-derailing goober, if someone’s private employer wants to fire them for saying something offensive, I might agree or disagree with the employer’s action, but it has jackshit to do with religious fanatics mass-murdering people.
Cut it out.
schrodinger's cat
@Peale: All I can say for your aunt is, you go girl!
wilfred
@Gopher2b:
Noted. So there are consequences, which was the point at hand. And the civil service – is there complete freedom of speech there, in regard to offending people based on their race, ethnicity or gender/ Or do consequences exist? I ask out of curiosity because I really don’t know.
Suzanne
@Mandalay: I don’t really get what you’re saying. Christians who are observant would probably tell you that that is NOT optional. Christians who don’t care would say that it is optional. Just as Muslims do. There are plenty of Muslims who are less observant or devoted to their faith. I think you’re contrasting very religious Muslims with not-very-observant Christians and calling that a difference within the faiths, rather than the degree of devotion. My LDS friends can tell you that their career choices and who they can associate with are certainly strictly proscribed. As can my friends raised in strict Christian homes. Or the Amish.
dedc79
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t follow the leap from this:
to this:
This could have been al Qaeda and still be about free speech. This could have been al Qaeda and still be about religion, not politics (not even sure what politics means here). And if this was about ongoing wars in the middle east, then why france, and why these cartoonists?
Bill
@Mnemosyne:
Raising that predictability just a few hours after the shooting happens sounds an awful lot like: “Well what did they expect, obviously racist murderers are going to target that kind of place.” Either you’re tone deaf or being willfully difficult about this.
Again, if you’re intent is simply to say: “I see the world as a violent place so I’m not surprised when violence happens,” I’m not sure I disagree as a general principal. I also don’t see how that’s relevant to the discussion that was happening here today, and that’s not how your comments came across.
I think we may be having a discussion about semantics though, and the definition of “surprise” may not be all that useful. Suffice it to say, even though we live in a violent world, I am surprised that people would commit murder over something as trivial as a cartoon.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know what you mean by “‘free speech’ calculation” but it wouldn’t change my opinion that journalists and cartoonists and ordinary slobs should not be murdered for making fun of any religion.
Anyway, that magazine was targeted because of what it printed. You’d have to be an idiot not to see that. Whether the murderers were affiliated with Al Qaeda or Isis or some particular extremist cleric, they picked this magazine because of what it published.
ETA to clarify: “my opinion [is] that journalists and cartoonists and ordinary slobs should not be murdered for making fun of any religion or for anything else they print. “
J R in WV
@Mandalay:
After hearing you say
I am surprised to notice that I have dozens of CDs of music intended for dance from strictly Muslim nations all over the world. I will point out that many Christian sects also follow most of the rules you list, including tithing (which is an English word for the practice, showing that it is a common obligation among English-speaking Christians.
You are obviously more aware of the obligations of your sect of Islam than of the many different sects of Christianity, but I’m surprised that you are so unaware (or posing as such) that there are many differences between Islamic practices from Morocco to the Pacific islands.
There are Christian sects that handle snakes because they read the Bible as requiring then to show that they believe their god will protect them from poisonous vipers. They do sometimes die after church services, because they tend to reject medical treatment.
They evidently don’t take very good care of their snakes, which may tend to limit the snakes’ ability to make a serious strike against the handlers. These services are not quiet, either, because they also believe in singing their praise of the lord and speaking in tongues, loudly.
I personally know some devout Muslims, and they don’t follow all the practices you list – most of them, but not all, and probably differ some in how they fulfill the requirements they do follow. You might not think they were devout Muslims, but I am sure they do.
The fact that many Christians follow many different lists of different requirements than Muslims do doesn’t give you any room to take the high ground you are attempting to monopolize in this discussion.
Between all the different sects of Christians nearly all the requirements of Muslims are followed by someone, perhaps excepting the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. I will point out that Catholics who are capable often visit the Vatican in Rome, and even schedule a meeting with the Pope, which is pretty close if you ask me.
Get over it. As a non-believer in religion all these tests of faith (or whatever they can be called collectively) seem like fraternity initiation tricks to me, but you guys do whatever turns your crank. Just leave me out of the game, thanks. Oh, wait, you’re required to kill me if I don’t join the party, depending on your particular sect… or torture me until I confess that I serve Satan, or something. . . .
Or am I being unkind?
Mnemosyne
@dedc79:
I disagree. I think that free speech is not something that crosses borders. Every country has their own standards, and to me, there’s a difference between someone inside a country protesting what someone says and someone outside of that country protesting it. The conversation within France about how French Muslims and Islam are portrayed is different than, say, the conversation within the US about Germany’s free speech restrictions. I’ve seen Americans argue against Germany’s anti-Nazi speech laws and, frankly, I think it’s kind of dickish to try and dictate to another country what their free speech should be while ignoring the history that caused those laws to be put into place.
Also, it may be about religious conflict between the West and the Middle East, but to me that’s not the same thing as being about religion per se. Al-Qaeda doesn’t attack because their feelings are hurt by offensive cartoons — they attack to make a political point about being able to strike out at the West whenever they want. The cartoons are an excuse, not a motivator.
Dave C
I’ve got to say that I find it somewhat disturbing that some people seem to equate cartoons mocking Mohammed (or even simply depicting him) with racism. It seems to me that religious notions–especially highly ideological ones–can be lampooned without bigotry. Virtually all my relatives are conservative evangelical christians. I think that their religion (which I was raised in) is deeply strange and, in some ways, harmful (though in other ways helpful), but I love my family and don’t think badly about them because of their beliefs.
Mnemosyne
Though now I may have spoken too soon — if Babelfish is translating right, the suspects are all French-born Muslims:
http://www.metronews.fr/info/attentat-a-charlie-hebdo-les-trois-suspects-ont-ete-identifies/moag!6R1qjYdgLbxjQ/
So, never mind, we may be back to discussing free speech, civil society, and feelings of alienation after all.
Mandalay
@kc:
Not quite, but the centrality of Islam in the lives of radical Muslims it is certainly a factor, to be considered alongside several others, including:
– The overall plight for Muslims in France.
– The worldwide rise of radical Islam in recent years, especially in Europe.
– Western behavior towards Arab nations in general, (and non-nations in the case of Palestine).
– As pointed out in post #12, “Some people don’t care about the State”. Traditional allegiances were my country vs. your country, but not any more. For some it has become Muslim vs. non-Muslim.
Throw all that in the mix and what happened today isn’t entirely surprising.
Bill
@Mnemosyne:
The cartoonists were murdered because they represent western ideals of free speech, and particularly the use of that speech in a way that offends the religious sensibilities of the terrorists. You’re splitting a hair that doesn’t exist. The cartoonists were chosen because of their work. If this were strictly a political attack, an attack on the Arc De Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower makes much more sense.
Mnemosyne
@Dave C:
I think people have been trying to point out that in France (and much of Europe), there is often a racial aspect to the mocking of Islam that ties in with a lot of fears people have about being “invaded” etc. That does not mean that there is necessarily a racial aspect to similar mocking in the US.
It’s similar to anti-immigrant sentiment in the US. Immigration opponents here say that they’re not opposed to immigration because of bigotry, but the bigotry keeps coming out all over. You can be honestly opposed to letting in more immigrants without being a racist, but most of your allies are going to be racists. Similar thing with the anti-Mohammed cartoons in Europe.
ETA: Also, if you think there’s no racial aspect to a large part of the anti-Muslim sentiment in the US, I’m assuming you’ve never been around people who refer to “hajjis” or “sand n*ggers.”
Mandalay
@J R in WV:
And even more don’t, and they are mostly optional choices for Christians. But they are rigid obligations that cannot be waived for observant Muslims.
If you can’t understand that simple clear distinction I can’t help you, and I doubt if anyone else can either.
Mnemosyne
Interesting quote from the Guardian live coverage of a vigil in London (at 15:37, for people checking things out late):
Bill
In 1983 religious extremist Jerry Falwell opened up his copy of Hustler magazine and found a satirical ad for Campari. It included a mock interview with the minister which said he and his mom got drunk before having sex in their outhouse. Jerry was SHOCKED! Know what that religious zealot did? He sued Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine. In the process he created some great case law for those of us who support a broad interpretation of the first amendment, but even a fanatical piece of shit like Falwell knew that murdering a dozen people at the magazines headquarters was too far over the line.
MomSense
First, I strongly condemn the violent murders that took place in Paris today. They are inexcusable and tragic.
Having looked at some of the cartoons, I wonder if anyone else thinks that some of what they publish is more like hate speech than satire.
I also think there are real problems in Europe right now with a resurgence of right wing bigotry–not just in France but Greece, Germany, etc. on top of long standing problems with integrating new immigrants and cultures into society.
Dave C
@MomSense:
Care to share examples? I’ve seen cartoons satirizing Islam, Catholicism and other religions as well as various aspects of French society. I didn’t understand all of them (I don’t speak French nor are am I intimately familiar with details of French culture), but certainly nothing I saw rose anywhere near the level of hate speech.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I do, but I appear to be distinctly in the minority here.
Betty Cracker
From what I’ve read about the cartoonists who were murdered by religious fanatics today, they sound like highly committed free speech absolutists, not bigots or bullies. Certainly creeps like the Atlas Shrugged wretch will attempt to attach themselves to the cartoonists’ legacy since this atrocity fits their hate-filled narrative about the world.
But it doesn’t sound like the murdered cartoonists would have welcomed their company. It appears the cartoonists heaped derision on extremists of all faiths.
I’ve got about as much use for religion as my dogs have for a calculus textbook, but I try not to insult other people’s faith. I don’t always succeed, but it seems, well, rude, and not in a good way, so I try. But I do think it’s healthy for a society to protect people’s right to be rude, crass and insulting about any topic. I don’t approve of Larry Flynt’s publications, but I’m glad he sues people who try to suppress them.
Keith G
It sucks that Islamic extremism may be adopting a much more chaotically viscous plan of spreading violence (small tactical groups obtaining whatever weaponry is available striking soft, or softer, targets). This time it was a French publication that got a a kick out of insulting their make believe god-messenger. Next time….
Just wait for the fun when one of these units hits a US shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon.
Is there an answer to this? How can groups of interested countries reduce these threats? Or are we just going to have to learn that there are some things we never will be able to prevent and learn how to deal stoically with the pain ? (Fat chance)
Other than that…much of the arguing above this comment seems a mite pointless.
Mandalay
@Violet:
You make a good point citing Mormons; they also have rigid rules of behavior, including towards their fellow Mormons, and the parallels with Islam are interesting, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to tag them as Christians.
I’m less persuaded by Evangelicals. No doubt many hold deep sincere beliefs, but their lives can still be based on choices they make, and personal interpretations of the Bible, and they can still move the goal posts when they feel like it. And more generally, Catholics and Protestants are pretty free to live their daily lives as they see fit within the teachings of Christianity. (I’d note that the Pope’s views on birth control are widely ignored by Catholics.)
Muslims…not so much.
Marc
@MomSense: They mock religion and have no respect for it. A religious person (of many different beliefs) looking at PZ Meyers or Richard Dawkins would have pretty much the same reaction to their writings as you did to the cartoons in question, for what it’s worth.
In context, this is actually a left-wing publication and not a reactionary one. Not that murder is OK in either case, but if you’re trying to put the target on an ideological spectrum it helps to know that.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: Good questions. I’m actually surprised no fanatics have stolen a page from the DC sniper’s playbook or, like you said, attacked a crowded mall. I don’t know what the answer is, but I can imagine the ensuing shit-storm all too well.
Dave C
@Mnemosyne:
I get all that, and I agree that muslims (and other immigrants) are treated in a deplorable fashion in various parts of the Western world. That said, I see no bigotry in these cartoons. Scorn against a particularly ideological brand of fundamentalist Islam, yes, but not bigotry. As far as I am concerned, a belief that could motivate a person to commit violence (or even threaten violence) over the depiction of their Prophet in a cartoon is a belief worthy of mockery.
Violet
@Mandalay: I personally know two separate Muslim families–one from Egypt and one from Iran–who drink alcohol, dance, play music, have not visited Mecca, do not pray five times a day and will tell you they are Muslims. If you ask they will tell you they are Muslim and they do not hedge with a “lapsed” or “cultural” or “not very observant” modifier. If they say they are Muslim, who am I to argue with them? Are you going to hold out your list of requirements and tell them they are not Muslim when they tell you they are?
As for the Mormons, they say they are Christian. Other Christian sects may say the Mormons are not Christian. Why is it that you say:
? A stretch from what or how? If Mormons say they are Christians, who are you to say otherwise?
Irony Abounds
@Mandalay: Frankly, I don’t give a shit about how many rigid obligations Muslims may or may not have. The logical result of your argument is that the more steadfast and onerous a religion may be in its practices, the farther over backward a country must bend in order to accommodate that religion’s practices. Where do you draw the line and when does accommodation to one religion begin impinging on the rights of others, such as the right to free speech? Why should any society have to tolerate Imams or anyone else preaching violence against those who do not observe those rigid obligations you cite.
Bill
@MomSense:
I looked at the cartoons, I don’t see anything all that offensive let alone hate speech.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a fan of hate speech laws.
Mnemosyne
Okay, I need to wander off to do some work now and probably won’t be able to reply to anything more on this thread. Good night, all.
Mandalay
@MomSense:
Any depiction of Muhammad is inherently blasphemous. While western art is full of images of Christ, but you won’t find any of Muhammad in the Islamic world.
So the very depiction of Muhammad in a cartoon is enough to enrage some Muslims, even if the cartoon is not remotely disrespectful of Islam, or Muhammad.
The Western world mostly doesn’t seem to find that relevant; the right to free speech is all that matters to them.
Calouste
@Mandalay: I’ve read your comments about Muslims on this thread and I highly doubt you have ever met one. Some of the ones I have met are strict in their observance, some aren’t.
Mandalay
@Violet:
My apologies for treating your original comments with respect. I won’t make the same mistake again.
Violet
@Mandalay: What does that mean and what does it have to do with the issue? Mormons say they are Christians. Why do you say that’s “a stretch?” Why do you–a non-Mormon I’m going to guess, but please correct me if I’m wrong–get to say whether they are or are not Christian, when they themselves claim they are Christian? On what basis are you saying their claims are wrong? And are you correct? How do you know? How do you decide who is or isn’t Christian if they say they are?
Bill
@Mandalay:
Because it’s not. I don’t have to live by the archaic and arbitrary rules of someone else’s religion. If Muslims find depictions of Muhammed offensive they can feel free to look away.
Another Holocene Human
Salman Rushdie is not a Catholic so he doesn’t realize that for the majority of France’s faithful, respecting religion is not a code for fearing religion, it’s an article of faith.
Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love God, but in the Catholic Act of Contrition, the penitent affirms hir fear of God.
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for
having offended you, and I detest
all my sins, because of Your just
punishments, but most of all because
they offend You, my God, who are
all-good and deserving of all my love.”
Note how love is also equivocated with fear of physical? punishment. In the catechism Catholic children are instructed to meditate on their fear of God in reference to the sacrament of Penance and the Act of Contrition.
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay:
This is bullshit. Please cease and desist in pontificating in these matters. You bring rotten eggs upon the face of this entire blog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
Deliberating inflaming others’ sensibilities does have that sweet tinge of sadism and cruelty, no matter the response, does it not? For all Americans’ failings we have mostly avoided the Muslim baiting disease. Until now.
Mandalay
@Bill:
Heh – I think that was exactly the argument of the NRA when BJ was having a meltdown about open carry.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: that’s a fair question, isn’t it?
dedc79
@Mandalay: Seriously? Need us to explain the difference between guns and cartoons? Can’t murder someone using a cartoon, but you sure as hell can murder someone with a gun. As we were reminded of…..this morning.
Bill
@Mandalay: Yes, a loaded firearm is exactly the same as a cartoon. How could I have missed the obvious similarities.
kc
@MomSense:
I haven’t seen them, but I don’t care right now. Twelve people got gunned down.
That’s considerable more hateful than on obnoxious cartoon.
kc
@Violet:
Please don’t encourage him; I for one don’t want to hear any more half-informed gasbaggery about who and who doesn’t meet Mandalay’s standards for the religions of the world.
wasabi gasp
Muhammad had a bad day today. {{{hugs}}}
MomSense
@Bill:
The 2012 M cartoon has the prophet on all fours bending over. There is a gold star covering the anus. Hairy testicles and a dripping pen1s are visible (just BTW word press won’t even let me spell pen1s). The caption is “Une etoile est nee” which translates to A star is born. The star is clearly coming out of his ass.
I don’t find that humorous or ironic in the least. It just seems to be derogatory. And again I am not condoning violence or killing in any way. I do think it is possible to simultaneously condemn the murders and the murderers and disapprove of such derogatory depictions of the prophet of one of the world’s major religions.
Dream On
In the hot days immediately after the fatwa, with Salman himself on the run and the TV screens filled with images of burning books and writhing mustaches, I was stopped by a female Muslim interviewer and her camera crew and asked an ancient question: “Is nothing sacred?” I can’t remember quite what I answered then, but I know what I would say now. “No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn’t be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.
– Christopher Hitchens
Howard Beale IV
@wasabi gasp: No shit.
And the editorial cartoonists respond back.
MomSense
@Dave C:
Sorry, see my comment at 313. I had a crappy, busy day today that started with a near death experience driving. I only have a 2 mile commute to work so it was an unusual day.
MomSense
@kc:
Of course it is considerably more hateful. It is appalling, horrific, tragic. I am not trying to find them equivalent actions at all.
tybee
@Mandalay:
LOL
mighty broad brush you paint with. and violet was right: you are you to define who is a christian and who isn’t. while i’m at it, who are you to say who’s a muslim and who isn’t?
you might want to note that not all people who consider themselves to be muslin abstain from alcohol or pray 5 times a day.
Bobby Thomson
@Violet: sounds like a Baptist. They’re the ones who usually insist Mormons aren’t Christians.
ETA: TBU.
Howard Beale IV
@Bobby Thomson: They also don’t believe that Catholics are Christians either.
Dave C
@MomSense:
I can see how some people would find that to be offensive, but I don’t see how it could possibly be considered to rise to the level of “hate speech”.
Dave C
@Bobby Thomson:
That’s true of many evangelicals, not just Baptists.
Bill
@MomSense:
And I think religious figures shouldn’t be entitled to special protection just because they’re religious. “Derogatory” (your word not mine) depictions of those figures, regardless of what religion they come from, are an important part of free speech. Particularly in showing that the “sacred” is not entitled to special protections.
If you’re offended look away.
MomSense
@Dave C:
Hate speech is considered speech that threatens, insults, etc on the basis of disability, race, religion, sexual orientation (not everywhere even in the US), gender, etc.
@Bill:
I’m not in favor of regulating speech even speech that is hateful.
Howard Beale IV
@MomSense:
There’s a big difference between threats and insults. A threat should be actionable, but an insult? Ehh…..
BubbaDave
@Violet:
And I posted in the previous thread in response to your comment:
If I call a Black stranger a ni-CLANG, and he punches me right in my pasty white nose, legally he is solely responsible for his assault on me– but morally I think most of the people here would agree that I am an asshole and bear a significant part of the responsibility. Were the situations reversed– were he to call me a cracker, for instance– I think most people would expect me to demonstrate more restraint. I think that’s a reflection of the fact that in America anti-Black prejudice has had financial, social, legal, and far too often fatal effects on Black Americans, while anti-white prejudice has not.
Similarly, someone insulting my religion is not going to provoke a violent reaction from me. I’m a Christian; people professing my faith dominate the nation in every way; my people haven’t been persecuted in the West for generations. (Heck, I’m an Episcopalian; my church was the Established Church in Great Britain and a majority of the colonies that had established churches.) On the other hand, I am going to be significantly more understanding if a Jew or a Muslim or a member of another minority religion reacts more strongly against such a slur.
None of this is meant to defend the heinous murders in Paris. But if the murdered artists had instead been punched in the nose, my response would be complete indifference to what would in fact be a violent attack on free speech, because I recognize that when you have a group that is marginalized, oppressed, and feels threatened (and remember, France legally prohibits Sikhs from wearing turbans and Muslims from wearing headscarves in school, both of which are considered obligations of their faith by many, at the same time it prohibits the wearing of a cross, which is not considered a Christian obligation by any denomination. The majestic equality of the law…) taunting them and mocking their political weakness is going to provoke a reaction.
TL; DR version: Kicking down is different from punching up; kicking down is bad, though certainly not as bad as murder; and taunting the disempowered will often leave to disproportionate response because human beings have a breaking point and the default human failure mode is violence.
Betty Cracker
@BubbaDave: It’s a lot more complicated than that. If religious fanatics hadn’t tried to impose their values on people who don’t share them via threats, the cartoonists wouldn’t have mocked them. The cartoonists weren’t “kicking down” to be mean to a marginalized minority group; they were responding to attempts to make subject matter off limits.
BubbaDave
@Betty Cracker:
So… if the New Black Panthers threatened violent reprisals against the creators of a racist cartoon, an appropriate response would be for The Onion to go full Rastus ‘n Liza/fried chicken and watermelon jokes to make it clear that no subject matter should be off limits?
Marc
@BubbaDave:
Enough excuse-making bullshit. The paper in question mocked all religions (it is not Stormfront); if they bothered to read it, the same people who did this attack would cheerfully target a militant atheist like PZ Meyers too. My reaction to defenses like yours – and, make no mistake about it, you’re rationalizing what these killers did – is that not everything fits into some narrow political shoebox. They get to mock the editors back. If they’re really pissed off, they get to boycott or try and get them fired. Murdering them? Nope. No excuses, no rationalizations, no bullshit. And I wouldn’t want to see someone who wrote a KKK pamphlet murdered for it either.
Bobby Thomson
@RobinDC:
True, but Obama still has the veto power to moderate their behavior.
Oh, really?
Betty Cracker
@BubbaDave: The “New Black Panthers” could fit in a restroom stall and are not a credible threat to anyone. Your analogy fails because the activities and goals of the murdered cartoonists weren’t the same as those of people who create racist cartoons to insult and demean marginalized groups, as I explained above.
gorram
@Marc: Ah yes, the French KKK.
BubbaDave
@Marc:
1) Read the bolded part of my reply at 326. I’m not defending the murders, I’m suggesting that the canonization of a bunch of professional assholes whose distinguishing characteristic was trolling religious believers in an aggressively secular society — hence, kicking down vs punching up — might be a tad hasty. They did not deserve to be murdered, but neither were they the good guys. As far as I can tell, this was a fight between bigoted assholes and murderous assholes. Murderous assholes are worse, but neither group is the good guys.
2) That paper mocked all religions, granted. They had anti-Semitic cartoons, they had anti-Catholic cartoons, they had anti-Muslim cartoons. One of these things is not like the others, in that Catholics are not a minority in their country with a history of being the punching bag for various right-wing political parties. Hence, kicking down vs punching up; hence, assholes who nonetheless did not deserve to be murdered.
3) I wouldn’t want to see somebody who wrote a KKK pamphlet being murdered either. On the other hand, I’d be hesitant to call that hypothetical dead Klansman a martyr for free speech, or start throwing #WeAreAllBillyBob hashtags around. You can wish that a murderous asshole had not murdered a bigoted asshole — and you should, because my being an asshole does not justify murdering me — but that doesn’t turn the murder victim into the patron saint of speaking truth to power.
BubbaDave
@Betty Cracker:
You didn’t explain above, you asserted above. And from what I’ve read, they sure loved them some kicking down at Jews and at Muslims. The fact that they also kicked at Catholics in a country where indifferent-to-nominal-to-vocally-lapsed Catholics are a majority does not, in my opinion, change the fact that they spent a lot more time kicking down than punching up. The fact that they appear to have been bigoted trolls does not justify their murders, but I think people are too quick to assume that these were some innocent victims instead of assholes who did not deserve to be murdered but very well might have deserved a punch in the face.
Betty Cracker
@BubbaDave: I explained their motives as I understand them from having read the words of the murdered cartoonists themselves, which are widely available online. You can look it up for yourself, or you can continue to dismiss the murdered cartoonists as “bigoted trolls.” But it’s clear FROM THEIR OWN WORDS that the murder victims saw their role as thumbing their noses at would-be authoritarians rather than mocking marginalized immigrants. ETA: As for “punching up,” it appears the publication spent a lot of time mocking politicians, so you’re wrong about that too.
Dave C
@MomSense:
Is that a legal definition (if such a thing exists)? It seems so broad as to be almost meaningless. Personally, I try to refrain from criticizing individual people, but making fun of ideas and long-dead prophets/deities certainly seem like fair game to me.
BubbaDave
@Betty Cracker:
Dunno about you, but I’ve heard a lot of racist blather from people who from their own words saw their role as thumbing their noses at would-be politically correct authoritarians rather than mocking marginalized people of color, or people who claimed to be all about “ethics in gaming journalism” instead of chasing women out of their hobby. In many of those cases I have no idea whether they were lying about their motivations or just so supremely oblivious that they didn’t realize they were kicking down, and I really don’t think it matters either way; intent isn’t magic.
If you look at images like this and see an attempt to target would-be authoritarians instead of an attempt to crap all over a religious minority, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
None of which means anybody should have been murdered over these cartoons.
Betty Cracker
@BubbaDave: I guess we will have to agree to disagree; intent matters a great deal, IMO. The image you linked is in very poor taste — intentionally so — but it wasn’t created in a vacuum. Religious fanatics have murdered and terrorized artists, writers and journalists for decades in an attempt to silence them. That cartoon was a big “fuck you” to the would-be censors. It’s not the way I’d choose to articulate that “fuck you,” but I agree with the sentiment.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
When the would-be authoritarians are in the same ethnic group as the marginalized immigrants, how do you realistically separate them out and target only the authoritarians?
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
The mosque burnings, anti-Muslim riots, banning of religious headgear, and desecration of Muslim cemeteries didn’t happen in a vacuum, either.
mclaren
I hadn’t heard about it until just now. This is a non-issue, great for provoking hysteria and getting “if it bleeds, it leads” news coverage, but utterly irrelevant to any of the serious issues confronting America or the world right now.
Issues like:
Runaway global warming;
The soft coup by the military/police/security forces in America that have removed control of the budget and of government from civilian hands and placed in the hands of unelected military and police;
The collapse of democracy and its replacement by a totalitarian panopticon surveillence society;
The conversion of capitalism into a crony kleptocracy where the votes of the 99% count for nothing, and giant corporations like Citibank write the legislation that gets passed;
Disappearance of the middle class because of massive income inequality due to theft and pillage by the top 0.01%, and the consequent disappearance of democracy (which cannot exist without a functioniong middle class);
Massive species die-offs in a sixth Great Extinction, this time caused by homo sapiens;
Looming peak oil.
Compared to these real issues, this Paris attack is absolutely unimportant, and, like the trivial and completely inconsequential 9/11 attack, not even worth paying attention to since it distracts from the real issues facing us.