Here are some thoughts from a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist who didn’t make Wednesday’s meeting:
“We have a lot of new friends, like the pope, Queen Elizabeth and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It really makes me laugh,” Bernard Holtrop, whose pen name is Willem, told the Dutch centre-left daily Volkskrant in an interview published Saturday.
France’s far-right National Front leader “Marine Le Pen is delighted when the Islamists start shooting all over the place,” said Willem, 73, a longtime Paris resident who also draws for the French leftist daily Liberation.
He added: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”
Commenting on the global outpouring of support for the weekly, Willem scoffed: “They’ve never seen Charlie Hebdo.”
Willem missed Wednesday’s meeting because “I never come to the editorial meetings because I don’t like them. I guess that saved my life.”
1weirdTrick
Misanthropes. They’re like cockroaches. They always survive.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, the gunmen were of the religious persuasion that is very unpopular with all of Charlie’s new fans.
mellowjohn
i like Salman Rushdie’s question on Maher last nite: “Just what would a respectful editorial cartoon look like?”
Keith G
He forgot to mention the NSA. I am sure that they are also Charlie.
scav
@1weirdTrick: Misanthropes that don’t attend certain meetings, perhaps. Misanthropes cursed with a work ethic, a functioning timepiece and no delays due to traffic not so lucky in this instence.
This one seems pretty clear-sighted about the state of affairs.
Keith G
As more of the history of the Hebdo murderers becomes apparent, I suspect that one of the more interesting debates will be how does anyone know, short of the advent of rigor mortis, that a violent extremist is no longer a threat.
Mandalay
What a vile asshole. Almost a dozen of his colleagues have just been murdered and his priority is to sneer at those who show support.
BGinCHI
Pro Tip for a better life there:
Don’t go to fucking meetings.
BGinCHI
@Mandalay: If he behaved like everyone else he would be an accountant, not a counter-cultural shitkicker.
Lee Rudolph
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m not sure that this Pope is particularly down on Islam.
Lavocat
Once again, Glenzilla nails it: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/greenwald/
I’m always amazed @ how people howl in protest when the shoe is on the other foot.
Sure, let’s publish blasphemous Islamic cartoons in support of Charlie Hebdo. Better yet, to get to the heart of the matter, let’s publish blasphemous cartoons of ALL religions in support of Charlie Hebdo.
dedc79
@Mandalay: I think that’s a pretty uncharitable reading.
Keith G
@Mandalay: That was the essential characteristic of the magazine and his comrades.
They sure as hell weren’t Town and Country.
eric nny
He seems very French….
Lavocat
@Mandalay: I completely agree with this “asshole”. What kind of friends only show support for you when it’s the easiest time in the world to do so? Newsflash: these people are NOT your friends. True friends support you when it’s very much to their disadvantage to do so.
Bex
@Mandalay: Vile asshole he may be, but he’s right when he says most people have no idea what Charlie Hebdo is like.
Mandalay
@Keith G:
Sneering at those who show support after the murders? I don’t think so.
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
No meetings?
Works for me.
Keith G
@Mandalay: As much as I might not have voiced his feelings and his way, I read it that he was opining at the cosmetics of the ceremony of the occasion, as often as not delivered with only half hearted concerns for the actual people who are being “mourned” lack of a better phrase.
I just saw it as a bit of the same cynicism that was native to the journalistic enterprise in question.
scav
@Mandalay: He’s in the middle of a media storm and he knows a large chunk of the ‘support’ has no real clue about what they actually did day to day nor who they really were. There’s a lot of pet-rockism mixed in with some knee-jerk anti-Muslim crap and the actual support of free-speach. His collegues were useful as symbols by the attack and as symbols by the “support” — not a bad thing to be aware of when it’s you being tossed around.
Steve from Antioch
Good for him.
The “I am Charlie Hebdo” bandwagon was starting to get overloaded.
Mandalay
@scav:
Of course not. But people can still genuinely feel sadness and support towards those who were murdered, and their families. People can be sympathizing with those who were slaughtered rather than Charlie Hebdo.
But that precious prick still had to get on his soapbox.
Gin & Tonic
@Mandalay: Sounds to me like he was properly respecting the spirit of his murdered colleagues. Have you ever read any comments by Charb?
Linnaeus
Folks may be interested in this blog post by Adam Schatz at the London Review of Books. It touches a bit on the question of the authenticity of the support for Charlie Hebdo that Holtrop criticizes, but also goes into the issue of the position of North Africans in France:
Another observation from the same piece that should look familiar to readers here:
Peale
@Bex: yeah. I can’t imagine Putin being amused by the Russian language equivalent.
dedc79
@Mandalay: Even assuming he meant it the way you seem to think he meant it, a person who just lost twelve colleagues and in all likelihood some close friends deserves a bit of leeway when he speaks his mind.
J.D. Rhoades
That’s the ironic thing. On an ordinary day, we’d all probably be deploring Charlie Hebdo as an awful, racist, xenophobic rag, if we’d heard anything about it. But being murdered for it does change the calculation.
scav
@Mandalay: But even that can be self-indulgent on the ‘supporters’ side, being merely a way to feel connected to something that’s hot in the news. If there is anything meaningful to support politically (beyond the annodyne ‘it’s sad when people die’), it is more linked to their professional careers and free speach issues. Between recognising the support that would have turned on a dime if it had been their ass getting gored by his collegues and those like yourself telling him to shut up about the motives or behaviour of anyone voicing ‘support’, I’d say he’s got his head sewn on right (on this topic, bien sur).
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:
Which is the entire point of Charlie Hebdo.
Duh.
He’s successfully trolled you.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Every meeting unattended is another slice of life reclaimed for something useful, or enjoyable.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, a 73 YO cranky French political cartoonist. Who’s expecting kittens and rainbows?
Mandalay
@Steve from Antioch:
It certainly was, and there was a something of a backlash in the media here about it. But to conflate public support with “Je suis Charlie” is unfair.
It’s easy to mock that slogan, just as we still mock McCain for saying “We are all Georgians now”. But that absurd slogan didn’t mean that people didn’t support the Georgians, and nor does the literal absurdity of “I am Charlie Hebdo” mean that people don’t genuinely feel support towards the dead and their families, and the rights of free speech. You don’t have to have known anything about Charlie Hebdo before this week to feel that way.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lavocat: I’ve got to admit that Glenzilla hit it way out of the park so that it will need a visa, because it’s going to land in South America.
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est:
No it’s not. Their point was not to criticize those who are showing support for Charlie Hebdo after almost a dozen of its staff were slaughtered. There is no precedent for you to make that claim.
Roger Moore
@mellowjohn:
It would make a point without being gratuitously offensive. There’s a big difference between offending people because you disagree with their point of view and they take offense at being made fun of and offending people for nothing more than the sake of offending them. The second is still legal and no justification for murder, but it’s not a model of how to behave.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: You’re one of the people who don’t get Charlie.
They INTEND to offend.
Are you really as stupid as you post?
BGinCHI
@Mandalay: le sigh.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
A dozen of his colleagues have just been murdered, and his response is to keep their spirit alive by responding the way they would have. He’s dead on that the outpouring of support is only because the murderers had even more enemies than his colleagues did. Those “supporters” aren’t really on Charlie Hebdo’s side; they’re just enemies of his enemies.
kc
@Mandalay:
Try viewing his comments in context.
You know, give him the same courtesy you extended the murderers the other day.
max
@Mandalay: It’s easy to mock that slogan, just as we still mock McCain for saying “We are all Georgians now”. But that absurd slogan didn’t mean that people didn’t support the Georgians, and nor does the literal absurdity of “I am Charlie Hebdo” mean that people don’t genuinely feel support towards the dead and their families, and the rights of free speech. You don’t have to have known anything about Charlie Hebdo before this week to feel that way.
A part of the story MM didn’t include:
He’s arguing against falsity, not actual sympathy or support of free speech.
max
[‘Relax.’]
Lavocat
@Villago Delenda Est: When I think of Glenn Greenwald, the verb “excoriate” most often comes to mind. I consider him to be the Ajax cleaner for nasty cases of intellectual hypocrisy. I read his pieces and can only think of a two word response: “FUCK YEAH!”
kc
@Roger Moore:
Yep. I don’t blame him for being pissed off at the world.
Heliopause
Bless this man. Exactly how I would feel if I were in a similar situation.
I’ve always found “we are all [insert name of victim]” to be offensive horseshit. Not only is it a falsehood, it’s an insult to the memory of actual victims. However I meet my demise, I’d rather be sent off with an honest “good riddance, asshole” than an insincere “we are all Heliopause.”
John Revolta
“We fart in your general direction!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Lee Rudolph: Well, Francis may not be, but plenty of his parishioners are. The other day Cole posted something that was half asshole Islamic cleric, half asshole Roman Catholic “advocate” and the result was seamless asshole.
dedc79
@Lavocat: But note that none of the jewish cartoons Greenwald includes (by the way, someone must be publishing these cartoons, or where would Glenn have found them) are actually blasphemous to the religion of Judaism. Some include anti-Semitic depictions, others are critical of Israel, but they are not blasphemy.
Greenwald attacks Chait and others for essentially endorsing the publication of hate speech, but that’s not what any of them were doing. They were arguing for defending the right to blaspheme against religion.
Lavocat
@Heliopause: Bingo. I’ve always enjoyed “good riddance to bad rubbish”.
@John Revolta: My all-time favorite retort, in which one shows one’s utter contempt for the other person and their position – worthy only of a fart (i.e., “please enjoy the cologne of my colon”).
Villago Delenda Est
@max: Unfortunately, there are lines that even Charlie dared not cross, as Greenwald points out in his commentary on the entire issue.
Some things do have the quality of “sacredness” that make it difficult to be truly all around offensive to everyone, because some wounds are not healed, and may never be healed, because they were so horrific in the first place.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
I can agree with that, but there are those who do get offended at the most trivial of slights. Charlie had a tendency to do a Spinal Tap…to turn it up to 11 at the drop of a hat.
Lavocat
@dedc79: Oh, they’re blasphemous alright. Potayto, potahto and all that. And while I have not yet read, in full, what Chait & Company wrote, I doubt very much that they were in fact arguing what you claim. Also, reread what you wrote with the words “Jewish” changed to “Christian” and “Judaism” changed to “Christianity” and try to see things from where I am standing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lavocat: I’m sure Ross Douchehat would be more like Bill Donohue if he knew more of the Charlie oeuvre. Because Charlie could dish it out on Roman Catholicism as much as they could dish it out on Islam, and Douchehat’s fragile feefees might be hurt.
Since in this particular incident, Charlie was dishing it out on Allah, not Jehovah, all is good.
Lavocat
@Villago Delenda Est: Bill Donohue reminds me soooooooo much of my wife’s buffoonish uncles that it makes me laugh. As soon as you engage these goatfuckers in honest deliberation, almost all of their arguments evaporate in the smoke they always were. Just bigotry dressed up as reason – which is pretty much what most religion is in the first place. “But, but, but, … you’re attacking my religion by bringing logic into this debate!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Lavocat: Voltaire’s prayer was answered. In spades.
dedc79
@Lavocat: So you say Greenwald “nails it” in criticizing the supposed hypocrisy of Chait and others, then acknowledge you didn’t actually go and read what they wrote. And when I (who actually did read it) tell you they said something different than what Greenwald says they did, you’re sure I must be wrong? Hell if you even look at the quotes from those pieces that Greenwald excerpts – even they are specific defenses of the right to blasphemy. Chait’s whole point is that whenever the right to blasphemy is at issue, that blasphemy will be offensive to some religion.
Blasphemy and hate speech are not the same thing.
I tried your Judaism/Christianity switcheroo and can’t for the life of me figure out what your point is.
Lavocat
@Villago Delenda Est: My mind is apparently translucent today, though not yet transparent: allow the Enlightenment to enlighten me … what was the quote?
Lavocat
@dedc79: You entirely misrepresent what I stated.
Villago Delenda Est
@dedc79: The problem here that Judaism itself hasn’t really been the problem, except for their denial that the Messiah has come, risen from the dead, and headed upstairs to Dad’s place, from the Christian perspective.
Its that the fact that they’re not “of the body” and do things outside of the prescriptions on the body (like operating banks) and were “responsible” for the crucifixion itself (which is problematic, because He had to die for our sins and make redemption an option in the first place…) that made them the ideal scapegoats for Europeans for centuries.
Baud
Je suis le Westboro Baptist Church.
.
I don’t think I could do it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lavocat “Lord, make my enemies ridiculous”
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Nope. No can go there.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Which is why I made the distinction between people being offended because they don’t like what you’re saying and people being offended at how you’re saying it. If nothing else, it is more effective to limit your offensiveness to your message rather than to your medium; an offensive medium gives people an excuse to ignore and suppress your message.
BGinCHI
@Baud: I think I’d go with : Too Bad So Sad.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: They’re going to ignore and suppress the message anyways.
Charlie was all about getting in their faces.
dedc79
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s the Christian perspective. There’s also the muslim perspective of course. And while Greenwald’s focus was on the supposed hypocrisy of the western media, it’s curious that he never got around to mentioning how pervasive anti-Semitic writing/images are in the middle east (remember Iran’s holocaust cartoon contest), Much of their anti-Semitic material was of course derived from the old European/Christian sources such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Villago Delenda Est
@dedc79: Well, the Muslims have their own fish to fry with Judaism apart from the entire “steal all the land of the Palestinians and drive them into refugee camps so we have something to divert attention from our own misrule” thing going on.
chopper
@Mandalay:
a Charlie Hebdo political cartoonist on a soapbox? heaven forfend! my smelling salts, quickly!
chopper
@Villago Delenda Est:
but…but…tone!
Cervantes
@Lavocat:
(May 1767)
Villago Delenda Est
@dedc79: His point is that there are all sorts of hateful images out there that we do not applaud because of who is the object of it, and other images we don’t have that many problems with because of who the object is.
No one (well, except for BiP) is going to get too offended by depictions of Vlad Putin naked getting backdoored, for example. Muslims, on the other hand, get riled up when The Prophet is so depicted, but Muslims are not on everyone’s Christmas Card list in the west, so they don’t have any basis for getting upset about it in the slightest. Barbarians.
Villago Delenda Est
@chopper: SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Channeling Village wisdom is may result in drain bamage.
Tree With Water
He added: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”
Like Wonkette might write, “he sounds nice”. Then again, he’s got bigger worries (other killers finishing the job being worry #1). Or does he intend to metaphorically vomit on them too?
Kropadope
@Villago Delenda Est: Living in contemporary America, I can tell you that your enemies being ridiculous is insufficient to the task of defeating them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tree With Water: He might wind up bleeding on them, yah.
But the man seems pretty fearless.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: Alas that he’s not being properly deferential and tugging his forelock to all the beneficent Lady Liberal Bountifuls deigning to ‘support’ and ‘feel sorrow for’ his colleagues and his miserable self.
dedc79
@Villago Delenda Est: I get and am pretty sympathetic to that broader point. My point was that in making his point, Greenwald (as is often the case) misrepresented what the writers he was criticizing actually said. If you take a look at what Yglesias wrote, it’s not all that much different from Greenwald’s general point.
And more significantly, I think he misleadingly fails to distinguish between the blasphemy of the cartoons and hate speech, and in doing so makes it sound like douthat (whose writing I almost universally despise by the way), Chait and Yglesias are endorsing the publication of bigotry against muslims. Do blasphemy and hate speech overlap and is it sometimes difficult to tell where one starts and the other ends? Sure.
But I don’t think there is any overt or implicit censorship of blasphemy against Judaism. Hell, most jews are secular and many secular jews blaspheme against Judaism all the time, without censorship or any other consequence.
Lavocat
What strikes me most about this whole sad affair is that it is nothing more than an armed pissing match by people with the mentality of disturbed teenagers fighting over being offended by the adult equivalent of Mad Magazine. Were the images offensive? Um, yeah, that was precisely the point, n’est-ce pas? So, for turning an idea into an offensive image (visual satire), the proper response is murder? Um, no. The proper responses ran the spectrum from ignoring it (probably the best response) to initiating litigation for hate speech (probably not fruitful in the long run). Somewhere in between might be jumping on the internet & creating a viral image of someone or something near and dear to Charlie Hebdo’s heart shoving their head up their ass and discovering the shit that most people consider to be Charlie Hebdo’s stock in trade. I, for one, always like best those solutions where nobody dies. I guess I’m quaint.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s the third or fourth time I’ve seen someone use “BiP” in a comment thread. I tried Googling it, but I didn’t see anything that seemed to fit.
What does “BiP” mean?
Villago Delenda Est
@kc: Bob in Portland, our resident apologist for the Russians and their policies vis a vis Ukraine.
Amir Khalid
@kc:
BiP is commenter Bob in Portland.
Kropadope
@dedc79:
There is that common mistake of conflating Israel with Judaism.
Lavocat
@Cervantes: Here is one of my favorites:
May those who love us love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we’ll know them by their limping.
I think the Irish are the all-time winners in the art of saying “FUCK YOU!” without actually saying “FUCK YOU!”
J.D. Rhoades
@dedc79:
a person who just lost twelve colleagues and in all likelihood some close friends deserves a bit of leeway when he speaks his mind.
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Ann Coulter, September 14, 2001 (one of her close friends, Barbara Olson, died in the 9/11 attacks)
Villago Delenda Est
@Lavocat: The problem here is that not all Muslims are pretty reasonable guys like Amir is. The problem is that there are some Muslims who consider any slight against The Prophet to be provocation for murder, and they follow through, as they did in Paris. This falls outside the spectrum of “reactions to offending material that are considered acceptable” in post-Enlightenment societies. So we have some conflict right there.
How do we resolve the conflict? Well, as has been pointed out by some commenters over the last week, this is a very hard nut to crack, and much of it can be laid to the severe gap between the paces of technological and economic development and social development. We here in the West have had a few centuries to develop concepts such as “freedom of expression” and how to react to that expression that offends that much of the Islamic world has not. Saudi Arabia is still very much in our Christendom 14th century, and is in fact in their own 14th century, by their calendar.
In the meantime, the micro problem is addressed by vigorous law enforcement when criminal acts are committed. How we tackle the macro problem is time.
This does not ease the suffering of the friends and relatives of those who are caught up in the violence, of course.
Lavocat
@Kropadope: In fact, I believe it’s the only real qualification for earning a seat in Congress.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kropadope: And it’s often done deliberately by those who stand by Israel no matter what atrocities they commit.
Cervantes
@Lavocat:
Funny you should say that. Before Charlie Hebdo was founded, some of the principals made a little money by translating Mad into French.
Villago Delenda Est
@J.D. Rhoades:
A classic case of good riddance to bad rubbish. Much like the vile Michael Kelly, who died in Iraq while doing something most of his fellows would not…putting his actual ass on the line, not fighting the war from some office in the Empire State Building.
wilfred
@dedc79:
Look into the treatment of Dieudonné and the consequences for using the quenelle gesture. You can also look into what happened to Sufi Abdul Hamid during the Harlem boycott of 1935.
Some speech is freer than others.
Kropadope
@Villago Delenda Est: It threatens to supplant baseball as the national pastime. One. piece. of. land. at. a. time.
J R in WV
The thing that I admire the most about Charlie was that they were multi-blasphemous, against all the wings of the Abrahamic god, perhaps excepting the uniquely American protestant varieties, which aren’t so much of a problem in France.
I think one of the most blasphemous thing from orthodox Jewish belief is to actually pronounce G-D, or write it out. They have other evasions, like G-D, that get used in different places, for different parts of speech. There’s probably other things proscribed by the Torah that I’m just not aware of, not being a religious scholar.
Of course it easy to get blasphemous against theocratic local religions in America, I do it without even knowing I’m out there. In a real theocracy I would probably get whacked pretty quickly, as I’m just not well educated in what’s required and what’s proscribed. Thankfully, if you just maintain an even keel in public you can mostly skate in America.
Although I went to a business lunch once, and the salesman and my boss got down to pray over the plates before tearing into the food. I just was quiet and patient, and it seemed to work OK. They must have known each other, as they went into it like it was standard operating procedure at a business lunch – a government agency business lunch !!!
Now I’m retired, and I try to be polite, that’s as far as I can go. When I was in boot camp and told the company commander that I didn’t care to go to the southern baptist church revivals on Sunday, you could have heard the shouting a mile away, but I still did not go to church, ever. Pissed a lot of folks off for rocking the boat, tho.
Lavocat
@Villago Delenda Est: Being a life-long cynic, I see this all as Kabuki for the Ideologues. Haters’re gonna hate and that’s all there is to it.
Find the alleged perpetrators of these heinous acts. Prosecute them accordingly and imprison them as the law and juries see fit. A bonne fin.
For us common folk, the best outcome will be looking to the law for recourse (which is almost always the best outcome).
France could collectively blame one of its former colonies in the Levant and invade it for no reason, other than it being politically (and, perhaps, economically) expedient (See U.S. invasion of Iraq). France could invoke the Muslim bogeyman and ram through its legislature a Vive La France Patriot Act, taking the U.S. as a sterling example. France could allow its intelligence agencies to (further) subvert French laws by eroding Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite even more than they already have.
Or France could take the path of reason and merely let its laws fashion a just response, avoiding a great deal of bloodshed in the process. Law matters most when you wish to invoke it least. Beyond it lies barbarity.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est: @Amir Khalid:
A.K.A. HODOR! (with props to Pogonip)
Villago Delenda Est
@J R in WV: I had something of a problem of this nature when I was a Brigade Signal Officer.
One of my junior NCOs was very religious, and had a bad tendency to attempt to proselytize his subordinates. They reacted to this pretty militantly (one told him, as he bedded down on the ground in a tent for the night, that he was doing it to be “closer to his master, Satan”).
My Comm Chief (an E-7) told me about this, and I advised him to counsel the E-5 to that it was not appropriate for him to use his position in the chain of command to proselytize, and to counsel the troops to stop mocking the sergeant, because it smacked of insubordination, no matter how much I sympathized with their point of view. That they all should be respectful of each other’s beliefs or lack thereof.
My interest of course was to have a coherent set of subordinates who could get their assigned mission accomplished, not to have a religious debating society under my command.
Seemed to work because it never came up as an issue again.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Speaking of…holy shit Saudi judicial system, is this really life in the 21st century (yeah, by whose calendar)???
Nice little theocracy you’ve got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.
dedc79
@wilfred: Hamid – you mean the guy who called upon blacks to tear out the tongues of any jews they met, and who endorsed “an open bloody war against the Jews who are much worse than all other whites?” in the years leading up to the European Holocaust?
I’m familiar with him and his work, thanks. As I am with Dieudonné.
How about you look into National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie
wilfred
This was sound advice after 9/11, but was ignored then and will be ignored today. Almost immediately, the actions of three people were run through the extrapolation generator to signify a billion people and what they believe in, aided and abetted by the usual manipulative creeps. Similarly, the instantaneous, over the top emotionalism of this being an attack on free speech, and thus a threat to life as we know it, was skillfully framed as the correct response. Thus the actions of three Muslims become the standard of behavior for everyone else and necessitate the question, “What’s wrong with Islam?”.
Bill Maher will soon point out that Muslims who don’t do these things are, in fact, bad Muslims. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Works every time.
Villago Delenda Est
@wilfred:
See Trollhattan’s #94 above.
Yup, “Bad Muslims” by Wahhabist standards…not Bill Maher’s.
dedc79
@trollhattan: Last year, Pew put together a helpful overview on which countries still outlaw apostasy and blasphemy:
wilfred
As for the latter, I just called you out as a hypocrite and a dissembler, as anyone who cares to look further would see.
As for Sufi, the best account of his leadership of the boycott, which was intended to force the big department store owners in Harlem hire more black people (gasp!), comes from Claude Mckay, who quotes Sufi directly, shortly after LaGuardia had him arrested for using invective against the Jews. Free speech, indeed.
McKay’s account was contemporaneous; he knew Sufi, and admired him. He was, in part, a model for Malcolm X in a later age.
Joel
@Mandalay: get off it. The dude is calling out the self serving for what they are.
dedc79
@wilfred: Re Dieudonne: France has a different approach to free speech than the U.S., and a much more problematic history with respect to its treatment of jews. The French made a decision to carve out an exception to its free speech protections for anti-Semitic speech and holocaust denial, as a consequence of that (quite recent) history. I find those restrictions problematic and I question their effectiveness, but I understand why they felt the need to do so.
Re Sufi – if the best example of supposed American hypocrisy you can find is about 75 years old, then I think that speaks very well of the American model. His language – which specifically called for people to assault and harm jews- skirts the line of what is deemed permissible even under our expansive protection of the right of free speech.
You seem rather fond of Sufi…
Still no reaction to the far more recent Skokie decision, huh? Doesn’t fit your thesis, does it?
Villago Delenda Est
@J R in WV:
Well, Mitten’s tour in France doesn’t seem to have been very productive, n’est ce pas?
trollhattan
Dear lord, there are no words to capture how vile this is.
kc
@J.D. Rhoades:
Yeah. This cartoonist didn’t say anything like that.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, thank you. No wonder I couldn’t find it on Google. :D
kc
@Amir Khalid:
Thanks!
dedc79
@J.D. Rhoades: I’m having trouble telling whether you’re actually trying to draw a comparison between the two quotes or not. I can’t imagine why you would be…
I said he deserves a “bit of leeway”. Suffice it to say that Coulter exhausted her leeway and then some.
Bobby Thomson
Inspiring.
Meetings suck.
wilfred
@dedc79:
Oh, I remember when it happened. I was against it, actually, as I felt then that free speech that is deliberately offensive should not be mixed up with free speech in general. That really is a distinction with a difference. On a personal level, I also believed that if the Nazis had a right to march in Skokie, they should have done without the police protecting them.
I still feel that way. I don’t subscribe to the “I may not agree with you, but will die for your right to say it”. Not me. Deliberate, provocative hate speech should not be protected.
As for the other point. Some speech is freer than others. The French have a murderous past in Muslim Africa, which apparently doesn’t affect their insistence on freedom for vile hate speech against Muslims. In any case, the bottom line is just that. I doubt the French have had a sudden outbreak of remorse for their problematic role in the Holocaust. More likely is that Jews still retain a degree of political and cultural influence in France, something which African/Arab Muslims do not.
dedc79
@wilfred: It was only in the past few days that I learned that while French law does protect against certain forms of hate speech against jews, there are not similar protections for muslims. As I said above, I don’t know that I agree with the French prohibiting holocaust denial or other anti-Semitic speech, but if they’re going to go down that road, I think it’s only fair to protect the muslim minority from hate speech as well.
I don’t think there’s a similar legal double standard in the U.S., although I think the media is definitely far more sensitized to anti-Semitism than it is to islamaphobia.
kyle
I thought that Andrew Sullivan’s take on it was very interesting:
Hahahaha. Just kidding. He continues:
And it’s a Moore award nominee!
Southern Beale
Today I wondered if we’d all be Charlie were Islam not a factor in the equation.
Bob In Portland
I don’t take offense at attacks on Putin. That shows how you don’t understand what I keep writing. I recognize propaganda and you don’t, folks. Not the stuff directed at you. When I was ten and wore a Fidel Castro mask for Halloween I did not recognize that it was propaganda. It’s not such a big deal to not recognize propaganda. You can live your whole life not recognizing it. Granted, you will be manipulated over and over, but really, for some of you, it’s the only thing that gets you to fire up your neurons.
Have any of you finally admitted that the US threw a coup in Ukraine or are you all still in denial?
Excuse me, I’ve got to get back to looking for WMDs.
kc
@dedc79:
Is that true? I thought Brigitte Bardot was fined, maybe more than once, for alleged hate speech against Muslims.
kc
@dedc79:
That doesn’t appear to be accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_France
kc
@wilfred:
1) that’s a non sequitur
2) the second half of that statement is false.
wilfred
Seems a useful debate would be to identify the line between provocative/obnoxious/piss taking speech and hate speech. And maybe that’s a civilized way to proceed.
dedc79
@kc: Shoot, I could swear I read that yesterday but can’t remember where. From that link and some others I’ve been looking at just now, it appears that I was wrong above.
max
@Villago Delenda Est: Unfortunately, there are lines that even Charlie dared not cross, as Greenwald points out in his commentary on the entire issue. Some things do have the quality of “sacredness” that make it difficult to be truly all around offensive to everyone, because some wounds are not healed, and may never be healed, because they were so horrific in the first place.
And so there we are. Our sensitivities are better than their sensitivities. Or vice versa.
max
[‘I have no particular urge to pee on the Prophet or the Prophets, but it should be legal to do so.’]
doug r
@Mandalay: He is aware of what fair weather “friends” they are, he’s calling them out on their bullshit. He also just lost friends and colleagues, he’s allowed to lash out.
wilfred
@kc:
Is it? What I mean is that there is little or no circumspection on what they tolerate in terms of free speech when it insults Muslims and Islam even though they have a much bloodier history with both than they have with the Jews. French official participation in the Holocaust was more third party acquiescence than anything else, even if they assisted the Gestapo in deportations.
In Algeria, they slaughtered people. One of the eyebrow raising bits of hyperbole in this whole thing was the assertion that there was something political about the editors of CH – May ’68,Danny the Red, and other assorted bullshit. If they were leftists, they certainly forgot Sartre, and Fanon and, to as lesser, extent, Foucault. They were hardly revolutionaries.
As for being false – again, how so? It may not be hate speech or vile to you, but it is to a lot of people. Did not the French insist on the right to it?
Lurking Canadian
@kyle: any “Je suis Charlie” people should be asked how they felt about Piss Christ, the Manure Madonna and the collected writings of Richard Dawkins. I suspect that in many, many cases you’re going to find “this is in terrible bad taste and Something Ought To Be Done about it!”
Mike in NC
@kc: Brigitte Bardot! There are probably a lot of old geezers watching FOX News who still have the hots for her.
Carnacki
I am going to blow off meetings next week in solidarity or something.
Zinsky
A fair number of right-wing tools in the United States, like Lindsey Graham, expressed “outrage” over the Charlie Hebdo shootings, as well. My biggest question is where was that “outrage” when 20 innocent children’s lives were snuffed out in Newtown, CT? I guess American 2nd Amendment gun rights trump outrage over the massacre of innocents.
Cervantes
@Zinsky:
Their outrage is reserved first and foremost for Muslims and the like.
It’s not difficult to comprehend, I’m sure you agree.
dedc79
@wilfred: The Vichy government was far more complicit than your description would suggest. The Holocaust also isn’t the only example of france’s penchant for anti-Semitic violence (see, for example, the Dreyfus riots), which was prevalent since jews first set foot in France in the middle ages.
wilfred
I think Joe Sacco makes some good points. Now that the hysterions have had their say, there are some useful things to consider.
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est: Mitt’s hardship tour of France did save him from the draft. Just a coincidence of course!
kc
@Mike in NC:
She was an incredible babe in her day.
She seems a bit . . . misanthropic in her old age. Though she is devoted to animals.
kc
@wilfred:
None of what you said makes any coherent sense to me. Sorry.
French law makes no distinction between “hate speech” targeted at Jews or Muslims. It’s all prohibited.
wilfred
@kc:
You’re being disingenuous. Above I mentioned the punishment of the quenelle and the ostracism of Dieudonné. Feel free to direct me to similar applications made against CH, which is at least as hateful to Muslims than the quenelle is to Jews. or anybody else.
It’s not about laws, it’s about their application.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
There is no justice system in Saudi Arabia, and what they are doing to their victim is indeed barbaric.
I’ve always believed that our real enemy on 9/11 was Saudi. The despicable actions of Bush, closing our air travel system and then sending airliners carrying the bin Laden relatives back to their barbaric kingdom, safe from the investigation of the attack, was almost as despicable as the organizing of the attack itself. All treason, all the time.
Then he has Prince Bandar visit his Texas “ranch” where he kisses the Prince and holds hands with him working back to the ranch house. I was shocked and astonished at that public display, and then republicans have the gall to criticize Obama for showing mutual respect for heads of state of our allies?!! After Bush kisses a “royal” of one of our primary enemies… disgusting.
I would have run that film over and over in any election G W Bush was in, ever. In fact, I think it would be appropriate in any Bush family election, ever. The family is politically perverted and traitorous to its core, just look at their primary ancestor, Prescott Bush, who had much of his fortune confiscated for “trading with the enemy” Nazis in WW II !!
And the deserting coward, what a hero! And the people swallowed it whole… When the Republicans can steal and corrupt the tools of government, over and over, ye gods!
wilfred
@dedc79:
Fair cop. I’m not up on the scholarship except for the obvious. I know a lot more about the wholesale execution of clerics during the Revolution, however.
I’m not a great admirer of French treatment of the Other. The only thing that has changed over time is who the Other is. Now it’s Muslims; before it was clerics, than Jews. A wonderful book, btw, that includes information on obscure, forgotten forms of French discrimination, also involving executions, is Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France.
Xenophobia is as endemic in France as anywhere else. Nowadays, with the sudden empowerment of gay people, the only socially acceptable form of bigotry is that practiced against Muslims.
Cervantes
@wilfred:
Are you actually suggesting there was nothing political about them? They were leftists, and long before the uprisings of 1968. As for their not being “revolutionaries,” can you elaborate? Whose hyperbole asserted that they were?
Mike in NC
@J R in WV: Of course, the “rules” are different for the rich in this country, and pretty much always have been.
Villago Delenda Est
@max: Well, of course our sensitivities are better theirs! We’re us, they’re them!
Villago Delenda Est
@wilfred: The clergy earned their status in France. The French have not forgotten the role of the clergy in the Ancien Régime.
Villago Delenda Est
@kyle: Sully can go find a fire to die in.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland:
This has to be the epitome, the ultimate, in self awareness.
NOT.
Gag me with a spoon, Gospodin Romanov.
wilfred
@Villago Delenda Est:
Some did no doubt, but the Terror did not discriminate between the good and the bad, whether they were clerics or milkmaids.
Mnemosyne
I think this was already posted in other threads, but it’s certainly relevant here:
Let’s not sacralize Charlie Hebdo
The nut graf:
priscianus jr
@dedc79: “Do blasphemy and hate speech overlap and is it sometimes difficult to tell where one starts and the other ends? Sure.”
… particularly when we’re talking about the religion of the same people that are regularly getting hate-speeched. It’s difficult and it’s also hair-splitting.
chuckbutcher
At least Bill Donahue was an honest asshole unlike a shit ton of the people jumping on the CH bandwagon – but this shit only seems to happen when the right people are the villains. That doesn’t begin to address the fact that a shit ton of these platitude spouting media folks can’t manage an iota of free press when it comes to plutocrats, corporatists, or rw loons in politics. The Sanctified Pamphleteers of the Revolutionary War wouldn’t piss on most of them if they were on fire.