In the thread below my post of yesterday on the shootings in Paris, a … lively … discussion broke out around various forms of the question of provocation. No one, I think, suggested that the murders were anything but grotesque, an expression of evil. But several people noted that they weren’t surprised that the atrocity occurred, given the known impact of the sort of satire in which Charlie Hebdu traded.
That evoked discussion — and sharp disagreement — about the duty of respect, especially to minority views or senses of identity. (I’m paraphrasing and drastically shrinking the discussion here. Feel free to correct, demur, dismiss in the comments.)
My view is pretty simple. The price to pay for living in an open society is suffering the existence and the independence of those who drive you crazy. Sort of like being the parent of a teenager.
But I digress.
Bluntly: the appropriate response to speech that pisses you off is speech. Nothing else. I am a cultural relativist in my daily work. (What is a historian, even or especially a popular historian like myself, but someone who tries to grasp that foreign country, the past, in its own terms as well as in our own time’s?)
But that relativism has limits. It commands empathy, sympathy, the effort to understand; it does not require, or even permit any veto on thought or behavior based on the cultural demands of one group over another.
That’s why anti-abortion groups become terrorists when they shoot clinic workers. That’s why those who provide public accommodations — bakers, for example — no more get to choose to deny a gay couple a wedding cake than they would an African American one. And so on.
So, no. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the contextualization of the murder of foul mouthed, blasphemous satirists as an extreme (and — everyone agreed on this — utterly unacceptable) extension of genuine grievances. Even if it is true that France treats its former-colonial Muslim population culpably wretchedly. Speech is speech. Murder is murder. The former never ameliorates, much less excuses guilt for the latter. It doesn’t, really, even make it comprehensible. Those who kill over cartoons (or use a cartoon as a pretext for a killing for other ends) are neither sembables or frères
That thought is what, earlier today, led me back to one of the monuments of 2oth century American jurisprudence. It’s only surprising that the William Rehnquist wrote the opinion in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell in light of the current debasement of the Supreme Court. I can actually remember when the party identification of the appointing President was not a wholly reliable guide to where opinions would land.
The issue in dispute in Hustler v. Falwell was whether or not the egregious preacher was entitled to damages for emotional suffering imposed by Hustler’s publication of a mock advertisement that showed a drunken Falwell having sex with his mother in an outhouse.
As Rehnquist wrote,
There is no doubt that the caricature of respondent and his mother published in Hustler is at best a distant cousin of the political cartoons described above [works by Thomas Nast and others], and a rather poor relation at that.
Nonetheless, crappy, nasty, or downright mean political speech is still vital, Rehnquist and a unanimous Supreme Court (Fat Tony included!) agreed, to the point that the no-doubt sincerely pissed off Falwell had to suck it up:
If it were possible by laying down a principled standard to separate the one from the other, public discourse would probably suffer little or no harm. But we doubt that there is any such standard, and we are quite sure that the pejorative description “outrageous” does not supply one. “Outrageousness” in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression. An “outrageousness” standard thus runs afoul of our longstanding refusal to allow damages to be awarded because the speech in question may have an adverse emotional impact on the audience.
Rehnquist was hardly my beau-ideal of a jurist. But he was always strong on the first amendment. And in this opinion, he nailed the essence of what freedom of speech means and requires from a society that values and trusts itself:
France isn’t the US. I can imagine a different view of what might constitute shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater if one were in Lebanon, say, rather than the Bronx — or the Marais. But the underlying theme in the Hustler v. Falwell opinion talllies with the way I believe free societies would choose to live.
It remains vital to have enough sympathy to be able to recognize genuine pain evoked carelessly or deliberately by speech. It’s an important part of living well to model the best definition I’ve heard for what it means to be a gentleman: someone who never insults another person unintentionally.
But granting the reality of grievance in the face of either deliberate or ignorant disdain, still Rehnquist had it right:
“[T]he fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection.
Amen and amen.
The full text of the opinion follows below the jump.
Image: Thomas Nast, Boss Tweed, before 1871.
HUSTLER MAGAZINE v. FALWELL, 485 U.S. 46 (1988)
485 U.S. 46
HUSTLER MAGAZINE, INC., ET AL. v. FALWELL
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 86-1278.
Argued December 2, 1987
Decided February 24, 1988
Respondent, a nationally known minister and commentator on politics and public affairs, filed a diversity action in Federal District Court against petitioners, a nationally circulated magazine and its publisher, to recover damages for, inter alia, libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from the publication of an advertisement “parody” which, among other things, portrayed respondent as having engaged in a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother in an outhouse. The jury found against respondent on the libel claim, specifically finding that the parody could not “reasonably be understood as describing actual facts . . . or events,” but ruled in his favor on the emotional distress claim, stating that he should be awarded compensatory and punitive damages. The Court of Appeals affirmed, rejecting petitioners’ contention that the “actual malice” standard of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 , must be met before respondent can recover for emotional distress. Rejecting as irrelevant the contention that, because the jury found that the parody did not describe actual facts, the ad was an opinion protected by the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, the court ruled that the issue was whether the ad’s publication was sufficiently outrageous to constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Held:
In order to protect the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with “actual malice,” i. e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true. The State’s interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is not sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. Here, respondent is clearly a “public figure” for First Amendment purposes, and the lower courts’ finding that the ad parody was not reasonably believable must be [485 U.S. 46, 47] accepted. “Outrageousness” in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression, and cannot, consistently with the First Amendment, form a basis for the award of damages for conduct such as that involved here. Pp. 50-57.
797 F.2d 1270, reversed.
REHNQUIST, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, STEVENS, O’CONNOR, and SCALIA, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 57. KENNEDY, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Alan L. Isaacman argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs was David O. Carson.
Norman Roy Grutman argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Jeffrey H. Daichman and Thomas V. Marino. *
[ Footnote * ] Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation et al. by Harriette K. Dorsen, John A. Powell, and Steven R. Shapiro; for the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists et al. by Roslyn A. Mazer and George Kaufmann; for the Association of American Publishers, Inc., by R. Bruce Rich; for Home Box Office, Inc., by P. Cameron DeVore and Daniel M. Waggoner; for the Law & Humanities Institute by Edward de Grazia; for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press et al. by Jane E. Kirtley, Richard M. Schmidt, David Barr, and J. Laurent Scharff; for Richmond Newspapers, Inc., et al. by Alexander Wellford, David C. Kohler, Rodney A. Smolla, William A. Niese, Jeffrey S. Klein, W. Terry Maguire, and Slade R. Metcalf; and for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Inc., by Irwin Karp and I. Fred Koenigsberg.CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Hustler Magazine, Inc., is a magazine of nationwide circulation. Respondent Jerry Falwell, a nationally known minister who has been active as a commentator on politics and public affairs, sued petitioner and its publisher, petitioner Larry Flynt, to recover damages for invasion of [485 U.S. 46, 48] privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The District Court directed a verdict against respondent on the privacy claim, and submitted the other two claims to a jury. The jury found for petitioners on the defamation claim, but found for respondent on the claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress and awarded damages. We now consider whether this award is consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.
The inside front cover of the November 1983 issue of Hustler Magazine featured a “parody” of an advertisement for Campari Liqueur that contained the name and picture of respondent and was entitled “Jerry Falwell talks about his first time.” This parody was modeled after actual Campari ads that included interviews with various celebrities about their “first times.” Although it was apparent by the end of each interview that this meant the first time they sampled Campari, the ads clearly played on the sexual double entendre of the general subject of “first times.” Copying the form and layout of these Campari ads, Hustler’s editors chose respondent as the featured celebrity and drafted an alleged “interview” with him in which he states that his “first time” was during a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother in an outhouse. The Hustler parody portrays respondent and his mother as drunk and immoral, and suggests that respondent is a hypocrite who preaches only when he is drunk. In small print at the bottom of the page, the ad contains the disclaimer, “ad parody – not to be taken seriously.” The magazine’s table of contents also lists the ad as “Fiction; Ad and Personality Parody.”
Soon after the November issue of Hustler became available to the public, respondent brought this diversity action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia against Hustler Magazine, Inc., Larry C. Flynt, and Flynt Distributing Co., Inc. Respondent stated in his complaint that publication of the ad parody in Hustler entitled [485 U.S. 46, 49] him to recover damages for libel, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The case proceeded to trial. 1 At the close of the evidence, the District Court granted a directed verdict for petitioners on the invasion of privacy claim. The jury then found against respondent on the libel claim, specifically finding that the ad parody could not “reasonably be understood as describing actual facts about [respondent] or actual events in which [he] participated.” App. to Pet. for Cert. C1. The jury ruled for respondent on the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, however, and stated that he should be awarded $100,000 in compensatory damages, as well as $50,000 each in punitive damages from petitioners. 2 Petitioners’ motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict was denied.
On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the judgment against petitioners. Falwell v. Flynt, 797 F.2d 1270 (1986). The court rejected petitioners’ argument that the “actual malice” standard of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), must be met before respondent can recover for emotional distress. The court agreed that because respondent is concededly a public figure, petitioners are “entitled to the same level of first amendment protection in the claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress that they received in [respondent’s] claim for libel.” 797 F.2d, at 1274. But this does not mean that a literal application of the actual malice rule is appropriate in the context of an emotional distress claim. In the court’s view, the New York Times decision emphasized the constitutional importance not of the falsity of the statement or the defendant’s disregard for the truth, but of the heightened level of culpability embodied in the requirement of “knowing . . . or reckless” conduct. Here, the New York [485 U.S. 46, 50] Times standard is satisfied by the state-law requirement, and the jury’s finding, that the defendants have acted intentionally or recklessly. 3 The Court of Appeals then went on to reject the contention that because the jury found that the ad parody did not describe actual facts about respondent, the ad was an opinion that is protected by the First Amendment. As the court put it, this was “irrelevant,” as the issue is “whether [the ad’s] publication was sufficiently outrageous to constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Id., at 1276. 4 Petitioners then filed a petition for rehearing en banc, but this was denied by a divided court. Given the importance of the constitutional issues involved, we granted certiorari. 480 U.S. 945 (1987).
This case presents us with a novel question involving First Amendment limitations upon a State’s authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress. We must decide whether a public figure may recover damages for emotional harm caused by the publication of an ad parody offensive to him, and doubtless gross and repugnant in the eyes of most. Respondent would have us find that a State’s interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury, even when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. This we decline to do.
At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. “[T]he [485 U.S. 46, 51] freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole.” Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485, 503 -504 (1984). We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions. The First Amendment recognizes no such thing as a “false” idea. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 339 (1974). As Justice Holmes wrote, “when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market . . . .” Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (dissenting opinion).
The sort of robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those who hold public office or those public figures who are “intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large.” Associated Press v. Walker, decided with Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 164 (1967) (Warren, C. J., concurring in result). Justice Frankfurter put it succinctly in Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U.S. 665, 673 -674 (1944), when he said that “[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures.” Such criticism, inevitably, will not always be reasoned or moderate; public figures as well as public officials will be subject to “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks,” New York Times, supra, at 270. “[T]he candidate who vaunts his spotless record and sterling integrity cannot convincingly cry `Foul!’ when an opponent or an industrious reporter attempts [485 U.S. 46, 52] to demonstrate the contrary.” Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 274 (1971).
Of course, this does not mean that any speech about a public figure is immune from sanction in the form of damages. Since New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), we have consistently ruled that a public figure may hold a speaker liable for the damage to reputation caused by publication of a defamatory falsehood, but only if the statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Id., at 279-280. False statements of fact are particularly valueless; they interfere with the truth-seeking function of the marketplace of ideas, and they cause damage to an individual’s reputation that cannot easily be repaired by counterspeech, however persuasive or effective. See Gertz, 418 U.S., at 340 , 344, n. 9. But even though falsehoods have little value in and of themselves, they are “nevertheless inevitable in free debate,” id., at 340, and a rule that would impose strict liability on a publisher for false factual assertions would have an undoubted “chilling” effect on speech relating to public figures that does have constitutional value. “Freedoms of expression require “`breathing space.'” Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U.S. 767, 772 (1986) (quoting New York Times, supra, at 272). This breathing space is provided by a constitutional rule that allows public figures to recover for libel or defamation only when they can prove both that the statement was false and that the statement was made with the requisite level of culpability.
Respondent argues, however, that a different standard should apply in this case because here the State seeks to prevent not reputational damage, but the severe emotional distress suffered by the person who is the subject of an offensive publication. Cf. Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562 (1977) (ruling that the “actual malice” standard does not apply to the tort of appropriation of a right of publicity). In respondent’s view, and in the view of the [485 U.S. 46, 53] Court of Appeals, so long as the utterance was intended to inflict emotional distress, was outrageous, and did in fact inflict serious emotional distress, it is of no constitutional import whether the statement was a fact or an opinion, or whether it was true or false. It is the intent to cause injury that is the gravamen of the tort, and the State’s interest in preventing emotional harm simply outweighs whatever interest a speaker may have in speech of this type.
Generally speaking the law does not regard the intent to inflict emotional distress as one which should receive much solicitude, and it is quite understandable that most if not all jurisdictions have chosen to make it civilly culpable where the conduct in question is sufficiently “outrageous.” But in the world of debate about public affairs, many things done with motives that are less than admirable are protected by the First Amendment. In Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964), we held that even when a speaker or writer is motivated by hatred or ill will his expression was protected by the First Amendment:
- “Debate on public issues will not be uninhibited if the speaker must run the risk that it will be proved in court that he spoke out of hatred; even if he did speak out of hatred, utterances honestly believed contribute to the free interchange of ideas and the ascertainment of truth.” Id., at 73.
Thus while such a bad motive may be deemed controlling for purposes of tort liability in other areas of the law, we think the First Amendment prohibits such a result in the area of public debate about public figures.
Were we to hold otherwise, there can be little doubt that political cartoonists and satirists would be subjected to damages awards without any showing that their work falsely defamed its subject. Webster’s defines a caricature as “the deliberately distorted picturing or imitating of a person, literary style, etc. by exaggerating features or mannerisms for satirical effect.” Webster’s New Unabridged Twentieth [485 U.S. 46, 54] Century Dictionary of the English Language 275 (2d ed. 1979). The appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploitation of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events – an exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the portrayal. The art of the cartoonist is often not reasoned or evenhanded, but slashing and one-sided. One cartoonist expressed the nature of the art in these words:
- “The political cartoon is a weapon of attack, of scorn and ridicule and satire; it is least effective when it tries to pat some politician on the back. It is usually as welcome as a bee sting and is always controversial in some quarters.” Long, The Political Cartoon: Journalism’s Strongest Weapon, The Quill 56, 57 (Nov. 1962).
Several famous examples of this type of intentionally injurious speech were drawn by Thomas Nast, probably the greatest American cartoonist to date, who was associated for many years during the post-Civil War era with Harper’s Weekly. In the pages of that publication Nast conducted a graphic vendetta against William M. “Boss” Tweed and his corrupt associates in New York City’s “Tweed Ring.” It has been described by one historian of the subject as “a sustained attack which in its passion and effectiveness stands alone in the history of American graphic art.” M. Keller, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast 177 (1968). Another writer explains that the success of the Nast cartoon was achieved “because of the emotional impact of its presentation. It continuously goes beyond the bounds of good taste and conventional manners.” C. Press, The Political Cartoon 251 (1981).
Despite their sometimes caustic nature, from the early cartoon portraying George Washington as an ass down to the present day, graphic depictions and satirical cartoons have played a prominent role in public and political debate. Nast’s castigation of the Tweed Ring, Walt McDougall’s characterization of Presidential candidate James G. Blaine’s banquet with the millionaires at Delmonico’s as “The Royal [485 U.S. 46, 55] Feast of Belshazzar,” and numerous other efforts have undoubtedly had an effect on the course and outcome of contemporaneous debate. Lincoln’s tall, gangling posture, Teddy Roosevelt’s glasses and teeth, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s jutting jaw and cigarette holder have been memorialized by political cartoons with an effect that could not have been obtained by the photographer or the portrait artist. From the viewpoint of history it is clear that our political discourse would have been considerably poorer without them.
Respondent contends, however, that the caricature in question here was so “outrageous” as to distinguish it from more traditional political cartoons. There is no doubt that the caricature of respondent and his mother published in Hustler is at best a distant cousin of the political cartoons described above, and a rather poor relation at that. If it were possible by laying down a principled standard to separate the one from the other, public discourse would probably suffer little or no harm. But we doubt that there is any such standard, and we are quite sure that the pejorative description “outrageous” does not supply one. “Outrageousness” in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression. An “outrageousness” standard thus runs afoul of our longstanding refusal to allow damages to be awarded because the speech in question may have an adverse emotional impact on the audience. See NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 910 (1982) (“Speech does not lose its protected character . . . simply because it may embarrass others or coerce them into action”). And, as we stated in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978):
- “[T]he fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection.
- For it is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the government must remain neutral in the marketplace of ideas.” Id., at 745-746.
See also Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576, 592 (1969) (“It is firmly settled that . . . the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers”).
Admittedly, these oft-repeated First Amendment principles, like other principles, are subject to limitations. We recognized in Pacifica Foundation, that speech that is “`vulgar,’ `offensive,’ and `shocking'” is “not entitled to absolute constitutional protection under all circumstances.” 438 U.S., at 747 . In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), we held that a State could lawfully punish an individual for the use of insulting “`fighting’ words – those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” Id., at 571-572. These limitations are but recognition of the observation in Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749, 758 (1985), that this Court has “long recognized that not all speech is of equal First Amendment importance.” But the sort of expression involved in this case does not seem to us to be governed by any exception to the general First Amendment principles stated above.
We conclude that public figures and public officials may not recover for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of publications such as the one here at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with “actual malice,” i. e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true. This is not merely a “blind application” of the New York Times standard, see Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 390 (1967), it reflects our considered judgment that such a standard is necessary to give adequate “breathing space” to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. [485 U.S. 46, 57]
Here it is clear that respondent Falwell is a “public figure” for purposes of First Amendment law. 5 The jury found against respondent on his libel claim when it decided that the Hustler ad parody could not “reasonably be understood as describing actual facts about [respondent] or actual events in which [he] participated.” App. to Pet. for Cert. C1. The Court of Appeals interpreted the jury’s finding to be that the ad parody “was not reasonably believable,” 797 F.2d, at 1278, and in accordance with our custom we accept this finding. Respondent is thus relegated to his claim for damages awarded by the jury for the intentional infliction of emotional distress by “outrageous” conduct. But for reasons heretofore stated this claim cannot, consistently with the First Amendment, form a basis for the award of damages when the conduct in question is the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody involved here. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly
- Reversed.
JUSTICE KENNEDY took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Footnotes
[ Footnote 1 ] While the case was pending, the ad parody was published in Hustler Magazine a second time. [ Footnote 2 ] The jury found no liability on the part of Flynt Distributing Co., Inc. It is consequently not a party to this appeal. [ Footnote 3 ] Under Virginia law, in an action for intentional infliction of emotional distress a plaintiff must show that the defendant’s conduct (1) is intentional or reckless; (2) offends generally accepted standards of decency or morality; (3) is causally connected with the plaintiff’s emotional distress; and (4) caused emotional distress that was severe. 797 F.2d, at 1275, n. 4 (citing Womack v. Eldridge, 215 Va. 338, 210 S. E. 2d 145 (1974)). [ Footnote 4 ] The court below also rejected several other contentions that petitioners do not raise in this appeal. [ Footnote 5 ] Neither party disputes this conclusion. Respondent is the host of a nationally syndicated television show and was the founder and president of a political organization formerly known as the Moral Majority. He is also the founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and is the author of several books and publications. Who’s Who in America 849 (44th ed. 1986-1987).JUSTICE WHITE, concurring in the judgment.
As I see it, the decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), has little to do with this case, for here the jury found that the ad contained no assertion of fact. But I agree with the Court that the judgment below, which penalized the publication of the parody, cannot be squared with the First Amendment. [485 U.S. 46, 58]
Omnes Omnibus
Well said.
Botsplainer
There’s a reason denazification included prohibitions on Nazi symbolism and print themes – to undo the effect of reinforcing propaganda.
I took some time looking at Charlie Hebdo imagery and reading translations (my French sucks).
My take is that the work of those cartoonists as a whole is puerile and not even close to good satire. There seems a complete disconnect between the images and dialogue and anything remotely touching the life and philosophy of persons depicted. This wasn’t The Satanic Verses or The Last Temptation of Christ – the stuff drawn appeared to me to be offensive merely to be offensive.
It isn’t persuasive or thought provoking – it is propaganda designed to confirm and harden negative opinions, not unlike the Nazi propaganda against Jews and other untermensch. In fact, the only people I can imagine buying it are older far rightists of Le Pen the Elder leanings.
The killings are wrong, but off-topic demonization can provoke strange reactions.
lonesomerobot
The most dangerous intersection is where religion and authoritarianism meet.
NotMax
Let us also note that there are undoubtedly, indeed certainly, Muslims who did not take personal or direct offense at the cartoons in Charlie. Lumping Muslims together as some cohesive, single-minded group is no more justified or correct than doing so with any set of people who share an attribute.
elmo
Thanks, Tom. I particularly appreciate your presumption of good faith on the part of all parties below – it got ugly there for a while.
Bobby Thomson
D’accord.
lol
If I have to see yet another lame iteration of that “broken pencil sharpened into two” cartoon, I can’t be held responsible for my actions. Jesus Christ people, show some fucking originality if you want to “honor the dead”.
lonesomerobot
@lol: But Bansky is the most important artist since that guy who drew Family Circus
Belafon
@Botsplainer: If you were to draw a picture of Reagan sitting on a toilet labeled USA and painted red, white, and blue, part of us would agree, and the rest of us would say it’s offenseive for no reason. “Offensive for being offensive” is pretty much in the eye of the beholder.
Another example: The guy who did the portrait of Jesus with shit smeared on it. Offensive? Or a description of the way modern Christianity treats their savior?
Botsplainer
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m reminded of the sorts of smug white collar fraudsters who (when confronted by their victims with a desire for some physical confrontation) proclaim “it was just a business decision” and “let’s be civilized about it”.
In an asymmetric power relationship, the guy with barrels of ink, teams of paper and a press has nothing to lose by continuing to be an asshole and telling his victim “your answer is more speech”.
NotMax
Forget who it was (possibly Harlan Ellison?) who pointed out that we build great libraries to celebrate and disseminate works in print and great museums to display and offer access to works of art, but when drawing is melded with words, the work is deemed as somehow lesser, unworthy, ephemeral or juvenile.
Belafon
@
: In an asymmetric power relationship, the guy with barrels of ink, teams of paper and a press has nothing to lose by continuing to be an asshole and telling his victim “your answer is more speech”.
Yep, because in this asymmetric power relationship, the guys with the ink drowned the other guys, killing them.
lonesomerobot
What I never get is how in this most difficult world people choose a path of faith that allows for no sense of humor. Granted, I firmly rejected the Christianity that was pushed my way, but especially the version that presented God as a scornful asshole. I just don’t have time for that.
Botsplainer
@Belafon:
Context is everything. In your cited examples, the first is contextually whole, because it includes the action. Your second is completely unmoored, much like Serrano’s Piss Christ. Without the action, I get no context.
Pogonip
Has it been determined yet where the murderers got their weapons and ammo? I’d been under the impression that all the EU nations had very strict gun control.
Botsplainer
@Belafon:
In the real world, words can have consequences. If you are trying to provoke reaction, don’t be surprised when there is one.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: You’re not the first person in this discussion to insinuate that the murdered cartoonists aimed to foment bigotry against all Muslims. I’d never heard of Charlie Hebdo until yesterday, but everything I’ve read since, including clear explanations from the now-dead cartoonists of their motivations, indicates they were intentionally offensive free speech absolutists who relentlessly mocked politicians and religions of all stripes.
Some of the cartoons were offensive as hell, others were thought-provoking. But lumping the cartoonists in with the Pam Gellers of the world seems really wrong to me. I wouldn’t choose Charlie Hebdo’s tactics to tell religious fanatics to fuck off (I prefer to just say, “Fuck off, religious fanatics!”), but I do recognize what they were doing and agree with the objective, if not the methods to reach it.
GregB
@Pogonip:
Mail order direct from Wayne LaPierre.
Valdivia
thank you Tom for this. Nuanced and precisely on point.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t see it as anything different than the video that sparked the riots affiliated with the Benghazi attack. Asshole, thoughtless moves taken from a position of power, yet legal. You can recognize the consequences of those words while condemning the violence, all while encouraging pulling back from propagandistic invective.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Did you see the way they portrayed the Justice Minister?
Valdivia
@lonesomerobot:
and it wasn’t even Banksy! It was a female cartoonist who has now been identified.
Anabasis
People should not bully Mohammed.
Valdivia
@Betty Cracker:
exactly. Their political cartoons are also quite biting. Also their portrayal of jews and catholics. I read today that the Catholic Church sued them 18 times.
Botsplainer
@MomSense:
https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/553028659888807936/photo/1
Clearly just courageous free speech absolutists…
Lee
Stupid Balloon-Juice. Making me think so early in the morning!
Keith G
The discussions about the content of the Paris magazine is a bit of a sideshow if not a large distraction. These extremists were going to attack someone somewhere no matter what. They had been active before and it’s highly likely they went back to Paris for the sole purpose of attacking French society.
The problem is not how Islamic extremism reacts to satire, but the problem is Islamic extremism.
Any other focus seems beside the point.
Valdivia
@Keith G: I agree that they would have attacked something else. The more I read about the brothers in this case the more it reminds me of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston bombing
wonkie
Thank you.
I don’t want to blame the victim. I think you are right: the only appropriate response to irresponsible speech is more speech, hopefully of the responsible kind. Even Glenn Beck and Rush Limbuagh should not be shot.
If I was an editor I would not publish a cartoon that attacked someone else’s religion. But that would be my choice. Charile hebdo apparently specialized in stuff that upset people. So my choice would be to not work there and not read it. None of that makes it remotely the fault of the Charlie Hebdo staff that they got killed.
People should not live in fear that they will be killed for saying something that is offensive to someone else. Period.
wilfred
I had a proposal accepted for a journal collection (organized by a French university, no less) on Authority. My paper examines Muslim resistance to cultural and political authority, somewhat along the lines of what Foucault did in his work on the Iranian Revolution, and the anti-modern in general. I was working on it when the attacks happened, hence my participation in that thread.
The question “How does one stand up to authority” is usually answered by authority, which determines the appropriate level of response or, and more importantly, resistance, to the imposition of that authority. The murders yesterday were not an assault on free speech, in my opinion, but a revenge killing on the people who the killers felt had insulted and denigrated someone precious to them. In other words, this is not an act of resistance to cultural authority, i.e. that which maintains absolute free speech and determines the level and nature of resistance to that authority. It was personal, not political.
I took the liberty on another thread to point out some of the horrors inflicted by Republican France in the colonial period. Several people on the BBC world service pointed out the Leftist origins of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and their coming of age in May 1968. To my knowledge they had not critiqued French abuse of Arab/Black/Muslim youth, which makes Ferguson pale in comparison, a curious omission for a Leftist periodical. I suspect they, too, were more personal than political.
The nature of resistance is never clearly defined except in the breach. Some people strongly oppose the BDS movement regarding the Israeli occupation of violence, despite its inherently non-violent nature. Other people support sanctions against North Korea for hacking Sony, presented as an assault on free speech, even though the only people who will ultimately suffer are those who can least afford or tolerate sanctions.
Fanon was first loved, then criticized, for his defense of violence in resisting colonialism. Times change, so do values.
MomSense
@Keith G: @Keith G:
I thought Juan Cole made an important point in his piece yesterday. http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: Are you aware of the context of that cover? The point was to lampoon a far-right caricature of the justice minister. Again, it’s not the way I’d choose to go about it. But Charlie Hebdo wasn’t St0rmfr0nt.
MomSense
@Valdivia:
I think they are murderous, horrible people. Murderous people can justify why they kill in all kinds of ways but that doesn’t make it legitimate. Maybe they would have attacked something else. Maybe they would have attacked for some other reason. Who knows. Breivik was trying to market his xenophobic, islamophobic manifesto by committing a horrific massacre. Murderous assholes are murderous whether they are religious or not.
larrybob
1) a cartoon of Boko Haram victims as welfare queens, provocative or just down right racist–you make the call! CB’s heavy handed satire was less funny mostly because it spent a lot of time punching down.
2) a friend had a good analogy that sort of gets to my ambivalence. say, a KKK march is happening and someone attacks them. can we all denounce the attack without hashtagging “i am the kkk”?
3) ot, but how does a magazine with a circulation of 30,000 afford offices off the place de bastille?
Lavocat
Glenn Greenwald in a nutshell:
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I think the murders are horrible. It was a terrible, terrible thing that happened. I hope the murderers are punished to the full extent of the law.
I consider many of these cartoons to just be derogatory and offensive. I defend their right to free speech even though I don’t find it satirical or biting or effective.
Fox news says that they are fair and balanced and I’m sure some people agree. If they thought that cartoon of the Justice Minister was somehow lampooning the far right, that is their right. I don’t agree.
Lavocat
@lonesomerobot: That’s why it’s got a 4-way stop sign.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I agree. I don’t think the magazine was trying to foment bigotry, but to spur a change in fundamentalism. They were holding up a mirror to a society.
JPL
Tom, thank you.
@wilfred: Does it matter though? Those that commit murders against doctors who perform a perfectly legal procedure that some disagree with, are they doing it because they personally disagree with it? There are some who think Eric Rudolph was justified.
dedc79
@larrybob:
Allow me a counter-analogy.
Say, a kkk march is happening and a bunch of blacks and jews organize a small counter-protest right along side it. What do you know, but a bunch of the KKKers break off and beat the living crap out of the small group of blacks and jews.
Can we condemn that violence without having to explain that the blacks and jews should’ve known not to provoke those vile fundamentalists?
Face
Yes, until you reach that point. Then a punch in the nose is in order. I tell the kid to ignore bullies, ignore ignore ignore. But if it continues for a long time, I’m not going to be surprised (nor upset) if she clocks a bully to shut him up. People can only take so much ribbing for so long.
Botsplainer
@Lavocat:
Shorter Greenwald: “I love me some far rightist whiteys. That’s what my early career was about.”
Pogonip
Up until very recently, blasphemy has been pretty much taboo everywhere. And who decides what constitutes blasphemy? Until very recently, the standards of the majority have been the deciding factor. An interesting aspect of this case is that a small minority, perhaps as small as 3 guys, feels it can successfully impose its standards on the majority. Has this ever happened before?
squid
On a more personal level, as someone who grew up in France yesterday felt like being punched in the gut. I read those cartoonists when I was a kid, and their art (especially stuff like Fluide Glacial, another dark and anti-authoritarian strip) really began my political upbringing. That said…
@Botsplainer:
This is really hard for Americans to understand, but I think you are completely wrong about Charlie Hebdo, its place in French political discourse, and what it meant to people. A lot of the commentary I’ve seen has been guilty of just transposing it into an American context.
Its origins are in the student uprisings of 1968, and it is virulently leftist — anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, and yes, anti-religion. Charlie Hebdo and its brand of humor were a reaction to the heavy censorship of the de Gaulle era (and you can probably make an argument that, like much of French politics it goes back to the undercurrents of Republicans vs. Royalits) No one from the FN pseudo-Nazi brigades (who are, incidentally, also very “Catholic”) would be reading it.
There is a long tradition in France of irreverent and offensive political cartoons being used to thumb at those in power or those who would be in power — in this case extremists and fundamentalists of all stripes. As a French person, I don’t think I can read those cartoons as anything other than being attacks on fundamentalism by pointing out its absurdity. A lot of French humor is explicitly political and extremely dark, and I really don’t think you can understand the Charlie cartoons apart from that. Hell, the Canard Enchaine, its sister publication (that publishes cartoons that are pretty similar…) does really good investigative journalism that would set the US MSM’s hair on fire.
That said, France’s treatment of its immigrant community has been a total disgrace (and even there, it’s dangerous to just use our American political reflexes to try and understand the situation). And I don’t disagree that a lot of the cartoons are offensive. Charlie Hebdo’s motto, after all, was “stupide et mechant”, or “dumb and mean”. And they sure provided a lot of both. Humor is funniest when you aren’t punching down.
I think part of the problem is the debate we very pointedly aren’t having, and in a sense are avoiding by resorting to platitudes like “murder is bad” and “free speech is good” and splitting hairs over just how offensive a drawing is or isn’t. How do we build a more inclusive, multicultural society? How do we stop this from happening again? Extremism doesn’t come from a vacuum — it comes from people feeling marginalized, from people being feeling like they lack a voice. Islamophobia is very very real and toxic, especially in France. The solution can’t be to censor ourselves, or lash out and lock in another round in the circle of violence.
I think as liberals we need to be better about empowering the oppressed and giving them their own voice and listening to them when they speak. As we fracture our society into ever smaller echo chambers, we need to listen to as many voices without appropriating their anger for our own ends. We are witnessing the fracturing of the white and western hegemony on power, and our goal should be a a more just world. We all need to ask ourselves how to get there from today. But we also need to actually stand for something, or otherwise all of this is worth less than nothing. And I might as well rally behind Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity.
debbie
@lol:
Pity for you because it’s the best visual analogy there is.
GregB
The French obviously invited this upon themselves by being cheese eating surrender monkeys.
My sympathies are with those men of conviction who used their Second Amendment remedies to great effect by sticking it to the liberal media.
My friend Ann Coulter is just sad that they didn’t also set off a truck-bomb at the New York Times too.(Snark off)
debbie
@Pogonip:
The Puritans? The Vatican?
dedc79
I thought Chait put it decently here (although I had a few issues with other parts of his post):
I don’t understand the interest in conducting some kind of purity test of the motives/content of the cartoonists/cartons. It’s no coincidence that when these types of debates arise – the speech in question is always considered “controversial.” It will always be considered controversial to someone.
PaulW
I fully agree.
wilfred
@JPL:
Just as free speech is a right bestowed by the State, its protections (and limits) are also determined by the State. Murder is punished for the crime that it is; it doesn’t matter whether it was motivated to suppress someone’s right to free speech or the theft or happened by chance in the commission of a crime.
Don’t forget that the country that gave us the Rights of Man condoned dueling well into the 19th century, usually preceded by some physical affront if a mere challenge was not sufficient. It’s only recently that the right to make violence has been exclusively abrogated by the State, which makes violence all over the world as it sees fit. A much better political position would be to denounce violence in all its forms, especially State sponsored violence – something that France has been extremely adept at over the years – rather than breaking out the fainting couches whenever individual or small groups resort to it.
Comrade Dread
Speaking as a Christian, it’s offensive, but overall, Jesus advocated non-violence with the only recorded act of violence being against those that commericalized and monetized religion.
Now speaking as an American, you have a right to be offensive about things I show reverence and vice versa, and I’d rather deal with being mildly offended from time to time than have someone’s views forced upon me by law or threat of violence.
Amir Khalid
I agree with everything that has been said here about freedom of speech. In yesterday’s, um, lively discussion, I never suggested (nor would I ever suggest) that Charlie Hebdo should have censored its cartoons, as intentionally offensive as they were. Censorship is never the answer; I say that as someone living in a country where a lot of people think it’s a good thing. I just noted that trolling violent people, though one’s right to do so is beyond dispute, has consequences.
The actor, in this case the magazine Charlie Hebdo, is responsible for the predictable consequences of his action, n’est-ce pas? I drew the conclusion, logical to me, that Charlie Hebdo — the organisation that published its offensive cartoons, rather than the individuals who got killed — had some part of the responsibility for yesterday’s killings. Another commenter paraphrased me as saying that provocateurs sometimes reap the whirlwind, although in this case some of it came down on innocent bystanders.
I wasn’t blaming the victims for contributing to their own deaths, since I don’t believe they did. In retrospect, I may not have made that clear.
Should Charlie Hebdo have published cartoons offensive to Muslims, knowing that some murderous ones are just itching for such a provocation? Arguing from free-speech principles, no. Should it have held back and not published them, thus betraying its principles but possibly protecting its people? I swear to you all, I don’t know.
Bystander
wilfred, unless you are clearly professing expertise in the entire contents of the 50 year existence of Charlie hebdo, “to my knowledge” does nothing to bolster an argument predicated on your expertise.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I think many of the cartoons are offensive and puerile too; they are that way on purpose. I just think it’s important to note that the Charlie Hebdo people don’t belong in the same box as Le Pen. Their goals and motivations were entirely different — the opposite, even.
Valdivia
@MomSense: totally agreed. I wasn’t justifying it at all. Just that there is for me a strong resemblance between these cases. Radicalized by the same things, similar pasts, etc.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
I have to fix a horrible typo:
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I’m probably on the minority here but I’ve never regarded an intent to offend as an effective communication strategy in any context. In some contexts, however, it can be a “team building” strategy for a political organization. That’s generally how authoritarians operate.
geg6
@Botsplainer:
Not very familiar with French satire, are you?
Fuck being respectful to people so their hurt fee fees won’t force them to gun you down in cold blood. I’m not comfortable with laws governing hate speech. I prefer to fight these assholes the same way Charlie Hebdo did. Disdain and ridicule.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
No, I don’t think they are the same as Le Pen. I really don’t know what their goals were though. I can’t tell from their work and I haven’t seen enough of it to have a more informed opinion.
I do think France has to do some serious reflection about how to proceed. I have been concerned for a long time about intolerance when it comes to freedom of religious expression.
beergoggles
I really don’t see the big deal about this. We have daily shootings and monthly massacres in the US and it’s not even front page news. We are used to it by now right? After all it’s not like we’re advancing solutions to our shooting problem. I guess it’s easier to try to solve other countries problems than our own.
MomSense
@Valdivia:
No, I didn’t think you were justifying it. I agree with you.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
I just can’t get over how a drawing can be so much more offensive than words.
geg6
@Belafon:
Yup, that comment there by Botsplainer may well be the stupidest commentary on this, barring that asshole from the Catholic League.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I’m going to stay out of the fray today because I have an oh-so-fun root canal later this morning, but I will repeat my main question in a hopefully less inflammatory way:
When two sides of an issue have unequal megaphones, how does “more speech” fix the problem of one side being drowned out?
chopper
and never the twain shall meet.
this. thank you.
Gator90
@Amir Khalid:
I’m afraid you still haven’t. The distinction between blaming the organization and blaming the individuals (some of them now deceased) who comprised it is awfully fine.
wilfred
@debbie:
There’s a great story about this. During WWI, when the British were anxious to keep their Arab colonial possessions on their side and foment revolt against the Ottomans, think T.E. Lawrence, they had a poster made up of a Tommie sharing a beer with an Arab sheik in some Cairo back street. There was no caption just the camaraderie of two guys. On the table is a copy of the Quran.
Something similar happened recently with the use of Quranic phrases on haute couture. I don’t remember the designer.
debbie
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I missed all the excitement yesterday and don’t have the time to read it now, but I think the problem isn’t “more speech” but the attitude that too many people think they have the right to say anything they want even while they think no one has the right to say anything negative about them. The real problem is “do as I say, not as I do.”
Incitatus for Senate
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Even here in the not-exactly-cosmopolitan USA the dissatisfaction of muslims in France is common knowledge. How are they “drowned out”? Charlie Hebdo hardly made any money, went out of business recently. If French muslims wanted to start their own satirical rag literally no one was stopping them.
dedc79
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Let’s take this one step at a time.
1) Who are the “two sides” and who gets stuck on the side with the nuts who committed these murders?
2) To what do you attribute the unequal megaphones? Had we handed al qaeda followers larger megaphones you think they wouldn’t be killing people? Do you really want to give al qaeda a bigger megaphone?
3) Re: one side being drowned out being a “problem” – there is such a thing as a right to free speech, but there’s no right for your side to win.
4) The people who committed this act and others have no interest in free speech. They have no interest in tolerance.
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: @Gator90: there is no distinction.
debbie
@dedc79:
I gotta get to work, but I think if they’d gotten their megaphone earlier, they wouldn’t have had to resort to this violence.
Bobby Thomson
@dedc79: this
Emma
CH seems to specialize in personal attacks, with very little thought behind it other than “who can we piss off today?”. They aren’t holding a mirror to society, at least I can’t find an attack on the many, many French government’s failure to address its dismal rights record when it comes to their minority populations. Or their overseas adventurism. Having said that, their puerile entertainment falls squarely under free speech.
I think, though, that we’re going to find that these psychopaths would have gone on a spree no matter what. CH just gave them a high profile target.
Mandalay
A highly flawed analogy. No teenagers living with their parents have real freedom, or real independence, and most are very well aware of the lines they cannot cross. And if they do cross those lines the parent(s) will show who is in control. Most teenagers live under benign dictatorships, not open societies.
Valdivia
@dedc79: yes I had a lot of issues with his piece but thought that part of it was a good insight. The reality is never as ideal as the theory of a right in action.
Bobby Thomson
@debbie: oh bullshit. They didn’t have to do anything. Jesus fucking Christ on a stick.
chopper
@dedc79:
Exactly. The people who performed this act have no interest in the megaphone of speech. They care about the megaphone of violence.
Marc
The “intent to offend” angle is completely wrong. CH were saying that violent extremists don’t get to decide what other people can do or say. That’s an important principle; absent the lunatics threatening to kill blasphemers they wouldn’t have bothered to draw the cartoons in the first place.
I virtually never agree with him, but Ross Douhat (!) actually had an insightful post on this:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/
“In this sense, many of the Western voices criticizing the editors of Hebdo have had things exactly backward: Whether it’s the Obama White House or Time Magazine in the past or the Financial Times and (God help us) the Catholic League today, they’ve criticized the paper for provoking violence by being needlessly offensive and “inflammatory” (Jay Carney’s phrase), when the reality is that it’s precisely the violence that justifies the inflammatory content.”
You don’t want to live in a society where fanatics get to suppress speech that they don’t like with murders and murder threats. For one thing, these things don’t stop at the offensive. The line will get moved once you’ve established it to immodest dress; atheism of any kind; you name it. Once the thugs get to decide what you can and can’t say they don’t stop at cartoons of their prophet.
And all of this talk about marginalized people utterly misses the context utterly. CH was founded by militantly secular student radicals from the revolt of 1968. They were directly attacking threats about what others were allowed to say; not writing cartoons about filthy Muslims.
Sometimes the old saying about liberals being unwilling to take their own goddamn side in an argument rings true. When a rightwing religious columnist has a better sense of the virtues of blasphemy (yes, including against his own religion) than a lot of leftwing folks it should give some pause for thought.
dedc79
@chopper: Here, it’s illustrative to see what France’s canaries in the coal mine – aka the jews – have been experiencing of late, courtesy of fundamentalists who some on this blog appear to think would behave if they just had a bigger microphone:
Botsplainer
I’m intrigued by this notion that a call for introspection on published puerile work somehow is a giant threat to freedom.
Are we now sliding backward into the year of Freedom Fries?
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: If you’re curious, this 2011 interview with the editor who was murdered yesterday sheds some light on how the magazine’s employees perceived their role. An excerpt from the BBC article:
@debbie: And if bitches would just shut up, there would be no domestic violence.
Botsplainer
@Marc:
And David Horowitz was a militantly secular student radical then as well.
kc
@Botsplainer:
I’m intrigued by gun-control advocates caping for machine gun-armed mass murderers.
Bill
@Botsplainer:
Mocking the sacred and powerful through offense – and thereby questioning deference to those concepts – is the whole point. Being offensive is the point, and it’s a good one.
I hope we can all agree that the proper response to something deemed offensive by a reader is somewhere shy of murder. In my opinion continuing to focus the conversation on whether the cartoons were offensive smacks of victim blaming. It’s just not that far off from “She was wearing a short skirt, what did she expect would happen.”
A right that can’t be exercised because of threats of violence is no right at all.
I raised the Hustler v. Falwell case in yesterday’s thread, to make the point that if a religious extremist like Falwell can understand that the courthouse is the right place to address these issues, we should expect others to do the same. Even after he lost that case Falwell never picked up a molotov cocktail and headed over to Larry’s porn palace for some revenge.
wilfred
@Marc:
So that preacher who burned Qurans, or those soldiers who desecrated them, actions that resulted in injury and death to lots of people, were within their rights of exercising free speech. Was it wise to do so?
Nobody believes in unfettered free speech for the simple reason it doesn’t exist. Can anyone imagine saying certain words – they can’t even be hinted at – and then expecting the targets of those words to answer free speech with free speech? Give me a fucking break. There would be lawsuits and attempts to silence people immediately. Violence takes many forms.
ruemara
@beergoggles: it’s more that white males of a certain class and education, were gunned down by brown males of a certain class and culture.
After all, people are.calling this the “worst terrorist attack in Europe since 05” despite Anders Brevik.
Socrates
Jonathan Chait:
“The Muslim radical argues that the ban on blasphemy is morally right and should be followed; the Western liberal insists it is morally wrong but should be followed. Theoretical distinctions aside, both positions yield an identical outcome.
The right to blaspheme religion is one of the most elemental exercises of political liberalism. One cannot defend the right without defending the practice.”
J R in WV
@wilfred:
I was first exposed to Fanon’s writings back in 1968-69 in political science classes. I spent the first gulf war on a boat, where our main source of news was Radio France shortwave. Our host was a Frenchman who was a veteran of the war in Algeria, so I learned about French hostility to Arabs first hand, Fanon not-with-standing. France has a long background with Islam.
I strongly disagree with your supposition that the murderers were operating from a “personal” perspective because the person you assume they were defending is (most likely) an archetype who lived and died centuries ago, having founded a strange religion based upon other religions which existed at the time, swirled together with his own mental constructions.
Allowing historical constructions to become “personal” means that everything political is personal, and so the distinction becomes meaningless. So I disagree with your construction of this attack as a personal action for this reason.
Another reason I disagree is that three different actors participated, and so your personal reasons for the attack is now attributed to three persons in your construction of the attack… how many people must share this “personal” view of a murderous attack before the description as personal becomes inoperative or meaningless? 50? 1,000? Surely it breaks down somewhere, and I believe that is much closer to 2 or 3 than it is to 1,000.
You tell us today that you are a writer and imply that you are an academic, do I recall correctly that you are a Muslim? Did you grow up in a western country of Muslim parents or are you a convert to Islam as a result of your studies, or some other combination of events? All these things inform our understanding of what you write here, which is why I ask…
Mnemosyne
@dedc79:
Please present your link showing that these crimes were perpetrated by “fundamentalists” (I’m assuming you mean Islamic fundamentalists and not some other kind) and not by white French people. It’s not like France had a stellar record towards Jews before Muslim immigration began.
larrybob
@dedc79: ah, the limits of such threads. i wasn’t victim blaming; nothing justifies these brutal murders. just trying to distance from this identification with CH. the irony is that if these brutal murders occurred to another magazine, CH would probably have been the first to mock such a hashtag, such was the nature of their iconoclasm. Arthur Goldhammer does a much better job than me: http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/1/charlie-hebdo-gouaillesatireislamjournalism.html
kc
@Amir Khalid:
You say:
But in the paragraph above you say:
It certainly sounds like you ARE blaming them.
Botsplainer
@wilfred:
Thank you.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Bill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Again, please provide some evidence backing up this concept of “uneven megaphones.” In this age of electronic media, blogs etc… I can’t get my head around the idea that Muslims in France are restricted from getting out – what may be entirely truthful – grievances.
Now if those grievances are “the whole world should live by our religious rules” getting out the message may not have the effect they hope for. But nobody has a right to be agreed with.
dmbeaster
@Amir Khalid:
The fact that non-violent conduct can be seen as causing a violent response does not merit its promotion from causation to responsibility. That is what is so wrong about your position.
It makes the Selma marchers responsible for their beatings. It makes rape victims responsible if they dressed provacatively. It would make Muslims peacefully protesting the offensive CH cartoons responsible for a murderous response.
Resposibility is a moral judgment and just has no place when speaking about a victim of crime whose conduct played a role in motivating the criminal.
Pogonip
@debbie: No, the Puritans left England precisely because they were a small minority, and the Vatican, likewise, would like everybody to be Christian but they’re not trying to force it, so I don’t think they count. These 3 guys may be unique in the history of blasphemy and responses thereto.
Mnemosyne
Okay, one last bomb before I go for the day, because I’ve gotta be me:
Why is is okay for non-Muslims to tell Muslims that this cartoon (NSFW) is not offensive, but it’s not okay for white Americans to tell black Americans that this cartoon is not offensive?
I would be a whole lot more comfortable with the dialogue here if the argument by some of the free speech advocates was Yes, the cartoons are really offensive, but no one deserves to die over a fucking cartoon and not Muslims just need to get a sense of humor and not be so easily offended.
Mandalay
@Bill:
Presumably you are offended by the fact that France has a law against Holocaust denial? Or is that limit on free speech perfectly acceptable?
dedc79
@Mnemosyne: Got them all through Tablet magazine and if you follow the links back, the perpetrators in nearly every instance (i think one was described only as “european”) were described as north africans or arabs. In some of the incidents, they were even captured on video.
larrybob
@Bill: yet someone did shoot Larry. also, a better analogy is needed: Falwell was a wealthy white man from the dominant religion with access to power unknown to people from the banlieues.
Marc
Well said, Tom.
Elizabelle
@squid:
Comment of the day. Insightful and honest.
smintheus
*Falsely* shouting fire in a crowded theater.
That word always seems to drop out in allusions to Holmes’ specious opinion. The reason that opinion is infamous is that Holmes assumed readers would overlook the pivotal term ‘falsely’. The case in question involved the jailing of a man for expressing opinions about the war, not in any way involving factual issues. There was no legal justification for that jailing, which Holmes nevertheless wished to uphold, so he made a travesty of the issues by invoking the false-fire-alarm non-parallel.
Nobody, not even the state, gets to coerce people for the expression of opinion…a principle that Holmes’ opinion turned upside down.
C.V. Danes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): The typical responses would be by expressing their opinion individually, joining in civil disobedience (peaceful protest), radicalism (non-peaceful protest), and revolution, in that order.
Mnemosyne
@Bill:
Here in the good old US of A, we had many complaints over the past week about the lack of coverage of the (fortunately unsuccessful) bombing of an NAACP office in Colorado. The national news pretty much ignored the story until it was pushed by Twitter and other social media.
So the fact that the national media eventually gave the story five minutes after being massively pushed on Twitter excuses them from neglecting it in the first place?
SatanicPanic
@debbie:
I have a problem with this. Never having been on the right, I can’t speak for that side, but the history of the left is full of people who are taking legitimate grievances and pretending to fight them for their own ends. How many communist leaders rode the movement to wealth and power? I don’t think it’s fair to say “Muslims in France are mistreated, therefore these guys were just standing up for Muslims.”
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: Who said the cartoons aren’t offensive and that Muslims just need to get a sense of humor? You’re straying into BiP territory again.
kc
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
It really is unfair. One side had a megaphone and all the other side had was a bunch of machine guns.
Mnemosyne
@dedc79:
Do you have any links from sources that don’t have a specific slant? I started following some of the links within the links and they also went to Jewish magazines like Forward and not to original news sources and I really have to leave for work now.
TriassicSands
Yeah, but if Fat Tony had been the one depicted in the cartoon, first he would have refused to recuse himself, then he would have ruled against Hustler.
Mandalay
@squid:
Well said. Yet as soon as others here make these points they get flamed, and are accused of condoning the murders.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
It’s in the first thread from yesterday, not last night’s thread. Go back and re-read it, I’ve got to leave for work.
wilfred
Years ago, in the early 70’s, there was a magazine called the National Lampoon, which was pretty funny but certainly offensive to blacks, Jews, and especially women and gays, as I remember. It wasn’t just that, of course, but there was enough. It was politically incorrect as you can imagine, although in those days speech really was freer and much, much less self-conscious than it is today. Most people were like me – raised on the sticks and stones rule.
Nowadays, we have the verbal panopticon, where people police themselves. A magazine like the National Lampoon would never exist today because an entire generation has been conditioned to not offend, to not poke fun, malicious or otherwise, at anybody. You don’t have to enforce free speech because no one exercises the more problematic varieties.
Bill
@Mandalay:
I am offended by that law, just as I’m deeply offended by holocaust denial itself. But the way to handle my offense is by loudly speaking about why holocaust denial is factually wrong.
Ironically, you’ve cited a great example of why the right response to hateful speech is more speech. Very few people believe holocaust deniers are right, and that’s because truthful speech has effectively countered their message.
squid
@larrybob:
I think that article expresses best how I feel about the whole thing. To quote:
“The whole point of Charlie’s satire was to be tasteless and obscene, to respect no proprieties, to make its point by being untameable and incorrigible and therefore unpublishable anywhere else. The speech it exemplified was not free to express itself anywhere but in its pages. Its spirit was insurrectionist and anti-idealist, and its creators would be dumbfounded to find themselves memorialized as exemplars of a freedom that they always insisted was perpetually in danger and in need of a defense that only offensiveness could provide. To transform the shock of Charlie’s obscenities into veneration of its martyrdom is to turn the magazine into the kind of icon against which its irrepressible iconoclasm was directed. […] In mourning the tragedy, let us not forget that Charlie Hebdo was shocking, obscene and offensive because the world is — as today’s shocking, obscene and offensive tragedy makes clear.”
dedc79
@Mnemosyne: If what you’re trying to suggest is that these are jewish fabrications, then no, i’m not interested in doing your research for you.
And i even forgot to include the french jihadist who drove over to Belgium so he could shoot up their holocaust museum. Clearly, the holocaust museum was provoking him and if he’d only had a bigger megaphone he wouldn’t have killed anyone.
Bobby Thomson
@dedc79: The two countries ripest for a resurgence of fascism (outside of the United States, of course) are France and Russia.
Tom Levenson
@Mnemosyne: Gotta run myself, but your question answers itself: it’s perfectly acceptable in both cases to tell someone that these cartoons are offensive. It’s not OK to murder the cartoonists to punctuate your point.
To that point, AFAIK, the watermelon-white-house “artist” is still looking at the grass from the top down.
Bobby Thomson
@Botsplainer:
I’m intrigued by your illiteracy.
Tom Levenson
@Mandalay: So sorry to hear of your humorectomy. I hope you recover function in time.
Bill
@Mnemosyne:
Mandalay
@Tom Levenson: Understood, but this just doesn’t seem to be the time or place for humor.
Bobby Thomson
@kc: Well, see, it’s free speech unless people disagree with you or you don’t get a spot on cable news, and then you get to start shooting people. I think that sums it up. So by that logic the NAACP should start shooting up media organizations for failing to report on Colorado.
Gator90
@Mnemosyne: Well, we certainly don’t want our minds polluted by “Jewish magazines,” do we now. Your lazy, bigoted-sounding shorthand offends me, but don’t worry, you are safe. Now run off to work before you say something stupid.
squid
@Mandalay:
That’s unfortunate. But let’s also not ignore that the left has issues with freedom of speech and censorship, and I see an increasingly nasty flirtation with authoritarianism, especially on the internet (again with the continuing and dangerous Balkanization of our “culture”, and the question of what culture means to POC in a dominant white narrative).
I think that if we really believe in our liberal/progressive/whatever values, we need to fucking shout them from the rooftops and fight for them in the streets. But we should never silence ourselves or others. That was the point of Charlie Hebdo, and if nothing else comes of that shitty, shitty day and barbaric slaughter, I hope that it drives more people to fight for a different and better world.
Original Lee
Falwell should have been thrilled that the idea he lost his virginity to his mother was considered unbelievable.
Probably not an original thought, but it seems to me that many of the people who are so upset that alleged Muslims took extreme umbrage at the satirical cartoons of a major figure in their religion, are also the same people who get so upset about Political Correctness interfering with their free speech rights. Murder is never an OK response to satire or blasphemy, regardless of which end of the political spectrum you stand. I think it likely that the anti-PC crowd already know down in their tiny dark troglodite-infested hearts that this kind of fear is what they want to inspire in Those Others to keep them in their places.
dedc79
@Gator90: At least now I know there’s no point trying to argue with her. I probably should’ve realized that three threads ago.
dubo
And what about when you are deprived of speech, as in French bans on pro-Palestinian protests, or the massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt? (Both atrocities SUPPORTED by “free speech champions” Charlie Hebdo, I might add)
Does the NYT bear NO responsibility for the deaths in Iraq? Do Beck and O’Reilly bear no responsibility for right wing extremist attacks? Should Goebbels have merely been punished with a stern counterargument?
As people have been saying, obviously speech has power and impact or else these kinds of attacks wouldn’t happen. It’s not as simple as a “this is only a war of words so people must only use words”
Corner Stone
@dedc79:
She is a real treat, that’s for sure.
dedc79
@dubo: I believe the ban on palestinian protests (which is definitely problematic) was prompted by the fact that one of the protests ended up marching right up to a french synagogue and trying to storm inside.
Hey, look, I found a sufficiently non-jewish source such that even Mnemosyne should be able to vouch for its accuracy.
It wasn’t the speech that was problematic, it was the violence.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
So, a large part of your comments here are some form of comedic art, am I right?
Because otherwise you simply can’t be the same person who has repeatedly called for the “offing of some pigs” right here on this very blog. And taken great masturbatory-esque joy in the thought of a terrified Greenwald waiting for a Hellfire missile to be rammed up his ass.
To then go on and critique political dissent as peurile and not worthy of protection from armed assassins seems to me to be a very rich stance, indeed.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: The problem is, they don’t think in those terms.
Their reaction to “blasphemy” is to kill. The person who was outrageous should be put to death. They don’t believe that the response to outrageous speech is to counter it with more speech.
In our cultural context, this is a disproportionate response. In their cultural context, they must react in to end the blasphemy by any means available to them.
I do not know how one bridges a gap this wide.
SatanicPanic
@dubo: The NYT, Goebbels and Glenn Beck aren’t victims, they’re abettors.
Bill
@larrybob: I think the analogy is pretty good. Both are religious extremists in western countries with access to courts for redress of their grievances. One chose to use those courts, and the other chose violence.
As to the Flynt shooting, it was committed by a white supremacist who was offended by an interracial photos shoot he published. Entirely unrelated to the Falwell incident. (Although the shooting is another example of why counter speech is a better weapon than a bullet.) Ironically, Falwell and Flynt became kind of friends later in life. They debated first amendment and morality issues at colleges around the country, and developed a respect for each other.
In other words – despite the fact that they are both kind of deplorable people – the used free speech to get out their messages and eventually it became a foundation of their somewhat strange friendship.
Villago Delenda Est
@Original Lee: The “anti-PC” crowd, as usual, is projecting like the Octoplex down at the mall over Memorial Day weekend.
“Political Correctness” was originally a leftist satirical take on rigid thinkers in their own ranks. Now it’s used as a way to shout down attempts to be polite to others in everyday life contexts…100% of the time by the right.
Mandalay
@Bill:
But many European countries, including France, have decided that it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. That did not happen shortly after WWII, but only in the past 30 years, due to the rise of extremists groups.
Those countries decided that free speech in that area was not permissible. We do the same here with threats against the president – the stakes are just too high to permit free speech. In both cases the suppression is a practical solution to a potentially very serious situation.
I suspect that over time in some countries the stakes will also become too high to mock Muhammad, either through self-censorship, or explicit laws.
Marc
@Betty Cracker: There are some liberals who will make absolutely any excuse for certain offenses. It’s quite clear that she is one of them. Fox News isn’t just making stereotypes up, after all; there really are a few people who live up to them. The key word there is “few”, by the way…
Marc
@Mandalay: Or we’ll outlaw calls for violent censorship and shut down the lunatic preachers who enable this. My bet is on door #2.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
What the?? No one said that, except you.
I like your movie and cat commentary, but I swear, some of the exchanges in the last fee threads are pure Twilight Zone.
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: I would say by separating the parties with irreconcilable ideals. I would rather see it done by agreement than by force.
wehappyfew
Botsplainer:
“In the real world, words can have consequences. If you are trying to provoke reaction, don’t be surprised when there is one.”
Botsplainer logic expanded to other topics:
In the real world, women dressing in a way that does not completely disguise their sexual attributes shouldn’t be surprise when they are raped. Even though rape is unacceptable, and not at all justified by a short skirt, there are a few people who’s understandable reaction to a short skirt or exposed skin is uncontrollable.
In the real world, men driving or walking with high melanin concentration should realize there are a few racists cops or vigilantes who might shoot them dead on occasion. Such shootings are not justified, but darker skinned men should be mindful of the consequences of existing in public places where white people with guns might see them.
Doctors who perform legal medical procedures should be aware that a small, active minority disagrees with the legality of those procedures. Best not do that at all, ever.
eemom
Just copying this here so I can look at it and sigh.
Great post, Professor L.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
Heh. A couple of regulars here regularly call for violence, pain, suffering and death to be inflicted on those they disapprove of. One very small but good thing arising from the murders in Paris is that it appears to have made them take a good hard look at themselves. Let’s be thankful for small mercies.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmbeaster:
“Non-violent” here is in the eye of the beholder.
The gunmen, in this case, saw those cartoons as a form of violence against their faith.
So they responded in a way THEY (not the rest of us) consider to be appropriate.
How do you deal with that frame of reference? When a cartoon will provoke others to communicate their displeasure by firing off rounds?
Violence IS a form of communication. It’s one we do not give sanction to, for the most part…it’s why Jerry Falwell sought redress in the courts for Larry Flynt’s cartoon. But the gunmen don’t buy into that aspect of “western” culture.
When you’re dealing with people who have a totally different outlook on these things, you’re going to have disagreements on responses that may very well result in violence being used to communicate.
wasabi gasp
Sign up now for a trial damnation and receive a handsome pencil case to keep it in…and it’s yours to keep free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0ITXBWpHE
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t think it’s society’s responsibility to deal with it any other way than we deal with other kinds of crime. If they act on it, they go to jail.
schrodinger's cat
To those who have been in arguing in this thread and others on the same topic, that yesterday’s murderous violence is understandable if one takes into account the treatment of religious minorities in France, especially Muslims. I have one thing to say, you seem to be implying yesterday’s attackers are acting on the behalf of the aggrieved Muslim minority of France. Implying that all of France’s Muslim population thinks exactly the same way. That is condescending.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip: If one of the parties is totally uninterested in compromise…to them, there cannot be a compromise on the point…how do you go about doing this without resorting to force?
We’re dealing with people who go lizard brain as the first option.
Barring the miraculous invention of some magical technology that freezes such people in place without harming them until they simmer down, we’re stuck with the use of force.
kc
@kc:
Few, not “fee”
kc
@eemom:
Yep, nice turn of phrase there. And sadly true.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Who said that? No one did.
Bill
@dubo:
Whether they bear responsibility depends on what they say. Participating in a larger political debate about the Iraq war is undoubtedly protected speech. Inciting people to commit acts of violence may not be protected, but it really depends on how its done.
The point really is that even if those speakers do bear responsibility for those acts the punishment isn’t death.
Marc
@schrodinger’s cat: I think that some people get completely stuck in a certain framework. They know who they sympathize with in the US; they see an analogous population in France; thus they cram their assumptions into a place where they make no sense. CH must be right wing and their work must be interpreted as an attack on a minority population. This is roughly the equivalent of someone calling Micheal Moore a reactionary – anyone who puts him on the right wing doesn’t understand the the US political spectrum at all. But the people talking the “blame the victim” line don’t need context. This same logic, of course, would also imply that any attack on Catholicism is an attack on Catholics. But when confronted with this we get pretzel logic (it’s different if “a class of people with power” are the target) and a bunch of things that they would recognize as victim blaming if they actually sympathized with the victims, which they clearly do not. The idea that they’ve been caught in a fundamental logical fallacy – where they’re excusing some behaviors because of reflexive tribalism – doesn’t enter into the calculus at all.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t think it’s ALL Muslims any more than I think it’s ALL Christians…which is why I take pains to distinguish between subgroups.
The instant response by many in the US of course is that the gunmen represent Islam as a whole. No, they represent themselves and their own personal interpretation of Islam. The fact is, Charlie Hebdu pissed them off and they were going to DO something about it, and that something involved firearms. They were communicating their displeasure with the staff of Charlie Hebdu in a way that most of us find to be totally inappropriate, in fact criminal. Islam does have this nasty feature of considering it appropriate to put the apostate to death. It’s a pretty medieval approach that Chistianity is certainly not innocent of, but that’s pretty much in Christianity’s somewhat distant, outside of living memory past…which is one of the reasons for the First Amendment itself. The US Founders were much closer in time to the great religious wars of the early modern era than we are.
SatanicPanic
@schrodinger’s cat: Exactly! This, to me, is like arguing that FARC acts on behalf of poor Columbians… no they don’t. They act on their own behalf and claim to be acting for poor Columbians. That’s what terror groups do. They might start out with some sort of idealistic stance, but eventually they become institutionalized and only pay lip service to their original goal. Giving these people legitimacy doesn’t improve things for Muslims in France.
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: Which party was uninterested in compromise? To me it looked like both sides could have stood down a little before it got to this point; each side was saying “My way or the highway.”. The cartoonists could have stopped specializing in blasphemy and the jihadists could have acknowledged that they were living in a society that tolerated blasphemy and either learned to grit their teeth and live with it or moved someplace where the majority also frown on blasphemy.
Mandalay
@Marc: Well the self-censorship is in progress: No more Piss Christ images from AP…
Keith G
Three hours later and I return to find that there is still an argument going on as as if this massacre was about the intersection of free speech rights and the publication of offensive material.
The massacre was about the ideals, values, and twisted logic of violent Islamic extremism.
When Islamic extremists machine gun a shopping mall in Mid America, it won’t be because they object to Build A Bear or Cinnabon
Liberty60
I would call into question the myth that there is such a thing as a perfectly secular, objective culture which doesn’t favor one religious or sacred idea over another.
Its a bit like the “free market” which is perfectly accessible, perfectly transparent, favoring no one and having no distortions or favoritism.
For instance, in our secular culture we have our own sacred taboos which Must Not Be Violated.
We legally observe the birth and death of Jesus, but not the Prophet or Buddha. Legally you can say Ni**er, but you will be punished in a myriad of ways, starting with losing your job.
I’m not disagreeing with any of these, by the way. I’m pointing out that scoffing at other people’s sacred cows is not productive. Its better to acknowledge them, and find ways in which we can reach accord.
What parts of our culture do we want Muslims to embrace and obey, and which parts of their culture are we willing to honor and respect?
Pogonip
@kc: Hey, I’d go along with “fee threads.”. Maybe Cole would be able to afford a better platform than FYWP!
beergoggles
@ruemara: Good point. At the rate white people do their crazed lone gunman massacres they should be locking themselves up any time now.
And why have I not seen any reports about how there should be more guns and that the cartoonists should have been armed?
Bill
@Mandalay:
Yes, those countries did decide that. I think that’s a dangerous precedent, but I don’t get to decide the law in other countries. Here in the US, there are very few limitations on speech though. If you’re interested read through the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision in Snyder v. Phleps, which involved everyone’s favorite religious idiots; Westboro Baptist. In that case the Court said even “outrageous” and offensive speech like picketing a soldier’s funeral is protected and permissible.
I think that’s the right approach. Non-offensive speech rarely needs protecting
As a side note, people offended by the Westboro speech don’t get to whip out a hand gun and blow away the Phelps clan. No matter how deeply, and righteously, they are offended. We simply don’t have a right to not be offended. And we certainly don’t have a right to deal with offense through violence.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip: Well, both of them were basically yelling at each other “my way or the highway”. If Charlie Hebdu were published in Paris of say 1700 and the object of their mockery were the King, I guaranfuckingtee that a violent response from the Royal government would follow.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill: In Germany, because of their history, some speech is absolutely not free.
You can’t just exhibit Triumph of the Will in Germany.
You can’t express your “free speech rights” by flying the Hackenkreuz. Unlike in this country where you can display a flag that represents racism, slavery, segregation, and rebellion against the Constitution of the United States.
Bill
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, other countries have different free speech laws than we do. This is one area where I think we get things right though.
My understanding is that the cartoons that led to these murders were protected speech under French law.
Larrybob
@Bill: @Bill: access to courts the same? Let’s just agree to disagree.
Marc
@Liberty60: What things are you willing to allow fanatics to prohibit you from doing under penalty of death?
Bill
@Larrybob: Are you arguing that the French legal system does not allow Muslims to file suit?
Calouste
@Pogonip:
Illegally of course, how hard to grasp is that? You can’t buy a semi-automatic legally in Western Europe. But it’s not like those things can’t get smuggled in from the Balkan or the former USSR for the right amount of money. There were hundreds of thousands if not millions of them in use during the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, they haven’t all gone up in smoke.
Mandalay
@Bill:
And they may be getting it right as well. German society surely benefits from holocaust denial being illegal. Free speech doesn’t trump everything.
I know that you weren’t remotely suggesting it, but the notion that every country should have the same free speech laws is absurd.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill: They may have been protected speech under French law, but that fact didn’t even cross the lizard brains of the gunmen. They don’t give a flying fuck about French law, they’re operating under the tenets of God’s Law as interpreted by them.
To them, what they did is absolutely righteous and proper. The blasphemers must pay, with their lives, for their blasphemy.
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, exactly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Liberty60:
Such a thing only exists in ivory towers. Out in the real world, things get messy. Sometimes, as yesterday in Paris, bloody.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
Just as the bombing of the Murrow Federal building was about the ideals, values, and twisted logic of violent Christianist extremism.
dubo
@beergoggles: guns guns guns guns GUNS GUNS GUNS
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/395864/just-how-safe-are-we-paris-style-attacks-jim-geraghty
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/07/fox-news-exploits-tragedy-in-france-to-attack-n/202037
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/07/after-paris-attack-fox-anchor-suggests-skin-col/202039
https://mobile.twitter.com/KatiePavlich/status/552879323901079552
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Win.
Dave C
This Op-ed from a cleric (who I wasn’t familiar with before now) seems apropos:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/
I don’t know what percentage of muslims would agree with the sentiments in this article, but I fear that the number may be higher than many of us would like to believe.
Pogonip
@Calouste: That’s what I was wondering, from whence the weapons and ammo came to France. I had managed to figure out that they arrived illegally, thank you.
Villago Delenda Est
I would say that the Muslim concept is that peace is the natural result of submission to God, which is why Islam is peace. By saying “the commands of Allah alone” the writer is playing to the ridiculous notion that “Allah” is some strange alien deity like Zeus or Vishnu, not the God of Abraham, the same invisible sky buddy that Christians worship, who, by an amazing coincidence, goes by names unfamiliar to most Americans in other languages.
And the writer is a Muslim cleric who only reinforces what the most rabid Islamophobe already is thinking. Brilliant!
Bill
@Villago Delenda Est: Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but it sounds to me like you are advocating that “we” (in a broad sense) should tailor our speech to account for “lizard brained” murderers.
If that is what you’re saying, I can’t possibly see how our free speech rights can be meaningful.
Marc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Let me put two ideas out there:
1) Crimes commited by adherents of a religion are religious crimes;
2) Crimes commited on the basis of religion are religious crimes.
It’s bad faith to pretend that people making point #2 are making point #1. Someone murdering an abortion doctor is a religious fanatics; an anti-government loon blowing up a building is not.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill: Not at all. I’m calling for understanding of the inherent problem. You can’t reason with those who reject it. We’re dealing with those who reject it as we interpret “reason”.
Our concept of “free speech” is alien to these types. We need to accept that they reject it and they will react violently to it, and we then to formulate a strategy to counter their actions. We can’t just sit back and lecture them that the “correct” response is more speech. They don’t buy into that meme, and expecting them to do so will not improve matters.
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc: Ah, but the conspirators in the case of the Murrow bombing are firmly in category 2, by their own admission. Their anti-government rhetoric is directly tied to their religious beliefs.
Bill
@Villago Delenda Est: So tell me what you think the right response is.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est: Precisely.
There are of course differences in history, infrastructure, and depth and scope of cultural support.
chopper
@Marc:
Likewise, it’s not like these pissed-off guys felt they weren’t being ‘listened to’. It’s that they weren’t being obeyed. These guys made it clear that they felt depiction of mohammed was blasphemy and worthy of death threats. The French press heard that, considered it, and said ‘we’re a free and critical press, so go fuck yourselves’.
Marc
@Bill: To self-censor to the whims of religious fanatics, apparently. After all, they apparently get to decide what other people are allowed to say and do – and if people get killed when they disagree, they apparently shouldn’t have provoked the killers.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill: If force is all they understand…well, then they need to understand.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@dedc79:
I know, it’s so weird that I want news from actual news sources. Strangely, when the Grio posts a story about police brutality or discrimination, I also want a link to the actual news story and not a second essay about the news story with no original sources. But obviously that’s because I hate black people as well as Jews.
Thank you for the link — I will read it when I have a screen more than 3 inches wide to read it on.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
What the hell are you talking about? Who has argued that the CH cartoons aren’t offensive?
You’re inventing straw men again.
Bill
@Villago Delenda Est: Seriously? You’re advocating more violence? Against whom? Toward what end?
Cervantes
@squid:
Thanks for your recollections and commentary. I will keep my personal feelings out of this note but trust that I know how shaken and sorrowful you must be.
About the big questions:
You can say that again.
The problem arises from ideals that conflict with one another. Just to take one example: to build “a more inclusive, multicultural society,” one must also — or first? — build a political system in which appeals to fear and bigotry are difficult and disadvantaged (rather than the opposite). Building such a political system requires that we think through hard cases where our (ostensible) principles conflict with one another. So at one level of analysis it may be fine to proudly be a “free speech absolutist”; while at another level of analysis it may not be fine.
That last point is important. Care to elaborate?
More generally, I agree that it would be nice if everyone could find more ways to stop collaborating in oppression. (How’s that for a platitude?)
Again, and I am sure you agree, citoyen(ne), those are three revered ideas that are not always in mutual harmony.
So much about the big ideas; a few words now about the magazine and the cartoons:
I think that’s about right. Charlie Hebdo was originally Hara-Kiri, founded circa 1960 and even banned a few times before the student uprisings of ’68.
Bête et méchant was Hara-Kiri‘s sub-title.
When Hara-Kiri was finally shut down for making fun of de Gaulle’s death, the same cartoonists, without skipping a beat, appropriated the General’s first name and kept right on publishing. (You may recall the monthly Charlie magazine upon which they hinged their joke.)
One reason those cartoons were pretty similar: Le Canard Enchaîné bought many of them from the folks at Charlie Hebdo.
Which reminds me: someone above asked how Cabu et al. could afford an office in the 11th. Two reasons: (1) Cabu, and (2) the changing nature of the 11th, where roughly one in five residents is now an immigrant.
And on that note, thanks again for your comments.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill: ENDING THE VIOLENCE.
They’ve stated the terms they’re operating under. How are you going to counter them? You have to prevent them from committing violence in the first place. That may require violence on our part to do so.
Cervantes
@dedc79:
There may be some context in which this comment is witty or humorous but, not having read the thread, I missed it and cannot imagine it.
dubo
@Marc: The point is that when you ask 100 [insert religion here] how to practice that religion and get 102 answers, as is the case with every religion, even the phrase “crimes committed on the basis of religion” is uselessly reductionist.
Religion is a social construct, used by extremists as a justifier, not a motivator. It’s just as silly as saying “greed committed on the basis of capitalism” – the capitalism follows from the greed, not the other way around!
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: France, since the late unpleasantness of 1789, has had a serious problem with religion being intertwined with the state. Because for a long time under the Ancien Régime they were joined at the hip.
So, naturally, the reaction to any religion is going to be, um, unfriendly.
Vanya
The idea that this attack was even a little bit justified because “France treats its former-colonial Muslim population culpably wretchedly” is one that has to be put to rest. First of all, “France” does not treat Muslims badly. Individual Frenchmen and Frenchwomen may discriminate against North African Muslims, but the political entity of France has made many accomodations to North Africans, and to other immigrants. Most immigrants do quite well in France. North Africans tend not to do as well, but if discrimination against Islam is the issue I don’t understand how my Muslim French friends of Iranian ancestry seem to do pretty well. Lebanese Muslims seem to do just fine as well. French citizens of North African descent, especially Algerians, have a right to be bitter about France’s colonial legacy, but somehow they need to understand that viciously attacking French civilians for percieved slights is not the route towards regaining self respect.
dedc79
@Cervantes: wasnt tring to be amusing. Mnemosyne challenged the reliability of reports of Muslim violence against jews in France bc the news sources were Jewish publications and therefore, in HER mind, “slanted.”
Vanya
@squid: France’s treatment of its immigrant community has been a total disgrace
How exactly? And don’t you mean “North African immigrant community”? I know plenty of French people of Iranian, Hungarian, and Portuguese descent, and they don’t seem to have been treated badly. If North Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans are treated badly then we are really talking about straight out racism, nothing to do with religion at all, correct?
dubo
@Vanya: what
Oh, so it WASN’T the “political entity of France” that banned the burqa and pro-Palestine demonstrations?
Pull the other one
Marc
The French temporarily banned demonstrations after they degenerated into a mob trapping worshipers in a synagogue. Are you aware of the minor unpleasantness in the 1930s and 1940s, and why this might just be a problem? Are you aware of the support for the law on the veil within the French Muslim community, and why there is that support?
Keith G
@Bill:
Down the road, perhaps the most effective way to reduce the number of future terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalist is to drain the swamp. By that officials mean to reduce those things in society that either stimulate or induce young men, and now women, to a consideration of extreme behavior.
Unfortunately, that does nothing for the many thousands of young men and who have already committed (or will soon commit) their lives to extremist action.
Some will have a change of heart. Some will be captured in process. Others will just simply have to be killed.
Cervantes
@dedc79:
OK, thanks.
Re slanting of those news reports, you wrote:
Here’s something the AP reported at the time:
So if pro-Palestinian protests had to be banned temporarily in response, you can see that an obvious question arises.
Bill
@Villago Delenda Est: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
The way to end a cycle of violence is not to engage in more violence. We can do our best to protect ourselves (within the bounds of reason), and get on with living our lives. Fully. Including exercising or right to speech by saying “offensive” things about people who believe in imaginary friends.
PJ
@Botsplainer: The threat to freedom is that the complaint of any asshole, no matter how ludicrous, should rule how others think or speak.
Lavocat
@Botsplainer: Outright bullshit. And you know it.
Gravenstone
@debbie: I would suggest that is because a drawing is often left open to the interpretation of the viewer. With words, the interpretation intended by the author is often much clearer and the reader has less to infer.
squid
@Cervantes:
Thank you for your kind words. I’ve been a long-time BJ lurker, and decided to jump in since this seemed like a place where one could have civil and educational discussions (with a few exceptions, of course…) about this sort of thing that rise beyond the usual online cesspool. So thank you to everyone in this thread for sharing your perspectives. We learn best when others make us see things in a new way.
I completely agree, and I think that this is the sort of discussion we as progressives should be having, as it is much more productive than endless arguments about ideals. Few survive contact with people and real life. In some sense I don’t think those tensions will go away, and the challenge we face is to channel them into becoming productive tensions. Those are the lifeblood of democracy (or at least the kind of democracy I want), which should be one that is continually evolving. I am reminded of something I think I read in Milosz’ The Captive Mind [as an aside, should be required reading for those liberals who forget too easily the sins of the past]… I forget the exact wording, but an old communist is asked if he hopes for the realization of the communist utopia and replies “I hope not, it will be so boring”.
In this way I feel that free speech is fundamental, because it is the manner in which we change our systems of governance. But as they change so should we, and so I see no conflict with being a ‘free speech absolutist’ while also condemning speech as misguided or worse. But please note, to condemn is not to ban! Or to quote Camus: “Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.”
Indeed. And again, I believe that the tensions between all three is what is fruitful. We should not forget that the revolution begat the Terror. And I am always saddened to see so many of my fellow-travellers on the left eager to become their own little Robespierres.
This in some sense is what I mean by the appropriation of minority anger… at least for me as a relatively affluent young-ish white male I need to be careful about the assumptions I take into situations and allow those who have been hurt by existing power systems to speak first. And suppress the ever-present desire to lash out, either in word or deed, because that is never productive. I think also, and this is especially true online, being angry is taken as a signifier of having the Correct Thoughts, and being a part of the Good Progressive Group of People. And then, fini! The right words have been typed, in-group approval has been gained, and we can go on our merry way without anything further. In such a way we develop not a politics but a political folklore that has no power to affect change. And so frustration, anger, and the cycle repeats.
@Vanya:
This is a complicated questions. First some personal reflections — as an aid to understanding, I grew up in a suburb of Paris, and although I now live in the US (On Wisconsin!) my family lives there and I am a regular visitor. Violence (and not just physical, but also metaphysical) against immigrants in France is structural. It’s in attitudes towards immigrants as “lazy” and “undeserving” and a drain on the state’s finances. It’s often subtle, but there is widespread job and housing discrimination. I am fortunate to have family from Morocco and Syria, and you can tell from the reactions people have to them in the street. It is, in a word, fear, fear of the other. Nothing is new under the sun.
From a more historical perspective, the question is much more complicated. Again, difficult I think for Americans to get a feel for because France has much less of a “melting pot”-type tradition. Immigrants were/are supposed to give up their traditions for an all-encompassing Frenchness… total acceptance of the extraordinarily secular (another important topic here that would merit an impossibly long post…) French state. Imagine, if you will, an immigrant arriving at Ellis Island and immediately being told to develop a taste for apple pie, guns, bald eagles, and all the rest. Easy for someone like me, but someone from the Maghreb…? This attitude found its apotheosis in the particularly French version of colonialism, where we built schools and theaters and Parisian boulevards in Saigon and Dakar, and taught the little brown boys and girls that their ancestors were the Gauls…
Back to the main thread of the conversation…
I think undergirding this whole debate (and so many others) is the question of what is the liberal project for mankind? Democracy has been in large part rejected by a significant fraction of the world’s population, and we should not and cannot assume its inevitability. Where then does that leave us? As the world shrinks (pace the insufferable Friedman) the zones of convergence between cultures and traditions multiply. What does a defense of traditional Western values look like in such a world? Can there even be agreement when the axioms around which we base our societies are not in agreement?
I read a book a long time ago, by Amelie Nothomb, about a dystopian future where to “fix” the world the rich countries band together and glass the global South with nuclear fire. On my darkest days I fear that is the future towards which we inevitably slide…
One last note, another quote by Camus, and this time more optimistic (to counter the fatalism of the last sentence):
May we all strive to see ever more clearly!
PJ
@Mandalay: People who, as a group, have more power than others can feel “marginalized” and “voiceless”; this has been the voting engine of the Republican party since the civil rights acts of the 1960s – is there any group more aggrieved in our society than rural/suburban white males? (I would add “fundamentalist”, but the group is larger than that). These “marginalized” and “voiceless” white men are the people who tend to go on shooting sprees and set bombs in our country. How does this feeling of marginalization and voicelessness ever justify violence? What should we do to soothe people who believe that their own mental pain justifies destroying other lives?
JoyfulA
@squid: Thanks for the French perspective, so helpful for this discussion.
Mandalay
@Vanya:
Enough of this fucking strawman that is repeatedly destroying reasonable discussion here.
If you have seen anyone here posting that the attacks were justified then post links. I have not seen anyone claiming that.
Elizabelle
@Dave C:
@Villago Delenda Est:
USA Today caption on the op ed:
They took pains to separate him from mainstream clerics.
I wish truth in labeling applied to politicians writing in USA Today too. Inhofe deserves “radical” on just about anything he would contribute.
robindc
@Bill: All he is talking about is the right to protect ourselves within the bounds of reason. That said this is right a right that would ideally be exercised peremptorily instead of reactively. The real tough question that arises from these types of incidents is to what level we are willing to stray from our ideals in the name of security. This has become an existential question throughout the entirety of the western world, and has no easy answer.
In all honestly the true threat of terrorism is statistically less significant than a myriad of things we live with on a day to day basis. From that standpoint no adjustment in our behavior is necessary given the statistical improbability of death by terrorism in our homelands. But on the other hand nobody wants to die from something that could conceivable be preventable. I am ultimately of the mindset that we need to be willing to have the courage to live by our ideals in spite of the danger. Compared to some of the threats to democracy that our ancestors faced without sacrificing their ideals the threat of Islamic terrorism is marginal. But I am sympathetic to other viewpoints, especially in an age where the statistics could flip with the procurement of even one nuclear weapon.
robindc
@Mandalay: Strawman? This is Mnemosyne’s direct quote from yesterday’s thread:
“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.”
Note how clear his/her meaning becomes without the “macro”. A clear conclusion that this was justifiable violence by any reasonable reading. One which was backpedaled from but never renounced with a genuine “I was wrong” statement. This is nearly the exact same statement being made by Anjem Choudary in USA Today. The only difference is to what exactly is attributed as justification for the violence. One blames the offense of blasphemy, the other discrimination.
Linnaeus
@squid:
Thank you for sharing this. You articulate some of the thoughts I’ve had as I’ve followed this discussion (there are some other issues you touch on as well, but those are probably best left for another time).
I haven’t jumped in because I’ve been trying to sort out a few things myself. Free speech as a principle is of course a hallmark of a liberal society and one that should be upheld and enacted vigorously. But it’s important to remember that in practice, free speech doesn’t work the same for everyone. Not everyone gets to speak or be heard, gets the same access to media, or gets the same consideration when it comes to mocking or ridicule.
That does not mean, of course, that it’s right to ban speech because it may be offensive or blasphemous or that an appropriate response to offensive speech is murder. What it does mean, IMHO, is that those of us who want a more just society, one that also respects difference, need to do a better job of ensuring that those who want to speak and be heard can do so. That’s a harder job that it looks, for a number of reasons.
It’s possible – perhaps even likely – that in the case of this crime, the perpetrators really weren’t concerned about their right to speak at all and found a convenient justification for murder. But that doesn’t mean that empowering people further – particularly those who have less of it – won’t reduce the possibility of violence.
Mandalay
@robindc:
You’re nuts. She did not come anywhere near to suggesting that the attack was justified in the quote you provided.
Pogonip
@Bill: The way to end a cycle of violence is indeed to respond with more violence. It worked in WW II.
gian
Reminds me of the murder of Alan Berg. I guess to some of you he was complicit in his own murder by provoking the violent extremists. Murder is murder no matter whether your neo Nazi or fundamental religious beliefs are offended.
dedc79
@Cervantes: Not to make things too confusing, but her claim of “slanting” had to do the instances I mentioned that occurred over the past year or two where french jews were attacked by arab or north-african individuals. The JDL had absolutely nothing to do with any of these incidents. I was a bit surprised to see the sources discounted merely because they were jewish publications.
Another commenter brought up the fact that pro-palestinian protests had been temporarily banned in france as an example of free speech hypocrisy. I noted that I did think that was problematic, but also mentioned that the reason for the ban was that the protests had resulted in violence directed against jews. I was aware that the JDL was involved in confrontations with the pro-palestinian protesters. My understanding had been that individuals from JDL were guarding the doors to the synagogues that the protesters had approached (and within which french jews were stuck waiting for the protesters to leave). I wasn’t aware that they had initiated anything themselves – the AP story is pretty vague, although you did provide that quote from a rep of a jewish organization placing part of the blame on them.
Jado
@Face:
This is why critical thinking and debate training is so important in school. You want to stop bullying? A biting wit and public ridicule changes the dynamic of the bullying relationship.
He (or she) who throws the punch loses. Poor caveman can’t think fast enough to hang with the smarter kids? Well, then by all means settle things with your fists. That’ll convince everyone that you’re right. Buffoons and slow thinkers react to speech with violence. And if you are a slow thinker, don’t go around lobbing verbal bully bombs to those who can think on their feet. Cause if you get caught out not able to verbally spar with the linguistically nimble after starting something, I have no sympathy.
Don’t start none, and there won’t be none. But if you start, you better not have gap teeth. Or a strange gait. Or a cowlick. Cause if you start it, expect there to be open season on anything and everything. “Yo Mama” jokes are gonna fly fast and furious, and if you lose it and start swinging, YOU LOSE!!
Gian
for those who don’t remember Alan Berg:
http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_12615628
Elizabelle
@squid: I hope you will stick around and comment a lot. Smart is always appreciated around here.
J R in WV
@Dave C: At least people who directly read those remarks in USA Today and then voted, 2% strongly agreed with the “cleric’s” statements, and 91% strongly disagreed with him. I fall into that larger group, which is unusual. This self-proclaimed cleric doesn’t deserve any podium, and I strongly reject the USA Today choosing to allow him to spew his unAmerican tripe on their pages.
Debbie(aussie)
@squid:
This, a thousand x this!
Thankyou for your thoughtful expression, also nice to hear from someone with the background to help put us ‘in’ the picture a little bit better.
Denali
@Amir,@Squid,
Please stick around; we need your input.