Facebook decided to ruin my mood by showing me posts by people I like ranting about the racism of Charlie Hebdo, as if it were self-evident and universally acknowledged. The idea is that Muslims are a marginalized group, therefore CH is racist.
O really? Then why did so many French Muslim groups immediately denounce the massacre?
The Grand Mosque of Paris, one of the largest in France, issued a statement on its website shortly after the attacks, saying its community was “shocked” and “horrified” by the violence.
We strongly condemn these kind of acts and we expect the authorities to take the most appropriate measures. Our community is stunned by what just happened. It’s a whole section of our democracy that is seriously affected. This is a deafening declaration of war. Times have changed, and we are now entering a new era of confrontation.
The Union of Islamic Organizations of France also responded on its website, writing: “The UOIF condemns in the strongest terms this criminal attack, and these horrible murders. The UOIF expresses its deepest condolences to the families and all the employees of Charlie Weekly.”
Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Drancy mosque in Paris’s Seine-Saint-Denis suburb, spoke with France’s BFM TV and condemned the attackers, saying, “Their barbarism has nothing to do with Islam.”
“I am extremely angry,” Chalghoumi said. “These are criminals, barbarians. They have sold their soul to hell. This is not freedom. This is not Islam and I hope the French will come out united at the end of this.”
Countless Muslim activists, leaders and authors took to social media Wednesday to express horror and dismay at the attack…
Then there is a long string of tweets.
A French woman commented on one of those “Charlie Hebdo is racist” posts:
Those cartoons are not, were not, inciting people to hate Muslims nor do they incite racial hatred. In fact, they represent only one subject tackled by those guys. Catholic church, politicians, and everything that made the news in France and abroad Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, etc. were given a fierce satyrical treatment under the pens of those very talented people. Some of these guys have been living with a death threat since they decided to go ahead and publish the Mahomet cartoons. For the paper and the journalists it was all about the freedom of speech and their right to exercise it. What happened today was despicable. You’re obviously not French and don’t know much about Charlie Hebdo and the cartoonists, so check your information before doing exactly what some our ‘lovely’ far right politicians will do in the next few hours, days that is incite racial hatred against Muslims in France.
And someone else on a different post:
Charlie Hebdot is more properly termed rude, vulgar, and blasphemous. It ridiculed radical Islam, the Catholic Church, religion in general, French xenophobia, the National Front Party, corrupt politicians of all stripes — it comes from a particularly French style of anarchic left-wing social commentary that goes back to the Enlightenment — the only American equivalent I can think of would be Lenny Bruce.
I think another might be Mad magazine.
I’m starting to think this is a defence mechanism. People don’t like to believe that bad things could happen to them, so they look for ways to distinguish their own conduct from a victim’s conduct in order to console themselves into believing ‘it won’t happen to me because I’m not a ___________ like the victim was.’
Yes it boils down to a classic form of victim blaming. Women wouldn’t get raped if they didn’t get drunk and act like sluts, cartoonists wouldn’t get murdered if they weren’t racists or elitists who ‘punch down’ or ‘tweak Muslims by the nose’, etc. It’s contemptible and cowardly, especially coming from bloggers and journalists in this instance.
I don’t get this unnecessary sidetrack. It does not matter in the least whether or how much Charlie Hebdo was or was not racist, sexist or anything else. You should not fucking murder people.
I keep thinking of Blazing Saddles. I recently heard a young man say “they couldn’t make that nowadays!”
How easy it would be for someone–say, someone unfamiliar with American humor–to rip images and scenes from that movie and called it a racist film.
I was just thinking someone should do it with Colbert.
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn has been denounced for being racist because one of the main characters is called N*gg*r Jim*. Anyone who’s read Huckleberry Finn recognizes that it’s an anti-racist book. Jim is a reasonable, intelligent, mature adult (just about the only adult character in the book who is). He becomes a father-figure to Huck and forces Huck to recognize the consequences of his actions. Huck Finn becomes a more mature person because of Jim’s influence. Yet because of one word that Twain uses to describe Jim, some people think the book is racist.
Charlie Hebdo is racist in the same way that Huckleberry Finn is racist.
*Asterisks used to avoid possible filters.
Because (1) they are not assholes, (2) they defend the right of others to offend them, and (3) they are kinda forced to do it, because of all those who say that not explicitly condemning the attacks is condoning them.
@RossR #2
So that’s it? The only thing that matters, the only lesson to be learned in this tragedy is that “one should not fucking murder people”. We cannot think and talk about the bigger picture, the Charlie Hebdo discussion is closed. Why is that so?
Another comparison might be Wonkette.com, a popular satirical, vulgar, crass, left-wing political blog.
Quoi, moi s’inquiéter?
Because, sff9 @ 6, to dicuss the “bigger picture” we’d need to have people who understand the relationship between France and free speech as far back as Voltaire, the Revolution and its aftermath and current strands of French thought on all this.
Add to that the long struggle with the Catholic Church for a secular society, the impact of Nazi occupation – where the Grand Mosque of Paris played a significant role in issuing Jews with Muslim ID papers to save their lives – and the impact of the Vichy government on national self-esteem and a dozen other purely French experiences, including the recent rise of the Far Right.
Then there’s the relationship between France and Algeria, at least as far back as the start of the war in 1954, with its atrocities on both sides and the badly handled mass immigration it prompted. We’d probably end up going back further into that colonial history.
Now, I readily admit that I don’t know enough about any of those even to begin the discussion. With a few predictable and honourable exceptions I’ve seen little sign that many people have or are offering that knowledge.
Besides, I’m pretty sure this is not the right moment for such a general discussion. There are other, vital, stages of coming to terms with this week first – starting with tomorrow in the Place de la Republique.
RossR @ 2 – it matters to me. Of course you shouldn’t murder people, but there’s more to the Charlie Hebdo massacre than that. Quite a lot more.
@Maureen Brian #6, I think you’re going way too far. It’s really not that complicated, CH’s staff are left-libertarians who enjoy over-the-top childish humor and practice hipster racism/sexism a lot. They fought racism by reproducing racist tropes with the intent of mocking them. All the sympathy that I had for Charb, Cabu, Tignous, and Wolinski, whose cartoons and comics I read or have read for years, does not change the fact that in a lot of ways CH’s spirit was akin to 4chan’s.
So while saying that the artists were racists is probably excessive, pointing out that a lot of CH’s cartoons are racist/sexist/islamophobic etc., or at least are problematic in this regard, and thus should not be thoughtlessly reproduced everywhere because their authors are now martyrs of the freedom of speach, does not seem so contemptible to me.
Also, I would agree with you that it’s not the right moment to discuss this, if nobody was uncritically publishing the cartoons and there was not already some violent backlash against muslims (mosque attacks, insults, etc.). The dangerous racists did not wait for the bodies to cool before attacking innocents.
Now if the discussion had gone like that ^ I would have no problem with it. It makes sense of CH and is much more reasonable than just saying “they’re racist” or “they’re punching down” over and over.
In other words, thanks for that, sff9. I take it you’re French? The more Francophones weighing in on this the better!
There’s so much confusion and disagreement among liberals about whether CH’s cartoons are punching up (lampooning religious authority) or punching down (needlessly mocking an already marginalized group of people).
Many Muslims are marginalized in France, but Islamists and conservative Muslim leaders are not powerless. Quite the opposite: they derive a great deal of power by claiming to speak for Muslims as a whole, and they’re actively working to enrich their power by undermining secular values in the West. They accuse those outside the religion who dare to challenge their power of intolerance, of racism, of punching down, as if criticism of any part of the dogma they’re selling is an attack on anyone who might have an investment with any other part of it.
There’s an array of people who identify as Muslim in diverse ways and to different extents; as liberals we surely agree that this is a good thing. But when liberals automatically conflate mockery of any part of Islam with “racist” attacks on Muslim people as a whole, they’re effectively letting the imams speak on behalf of everyone who happens to identify as Muslim, as if Muslimness is an unchanging, all-or-nothing, universal set of values that trumps any other part of a Muslim’s identity, be they doctor, merchant, social worker, single parent, left-handed, pescatarian, Center-Right, secularist, bicycle enthusiast, Arab, overly sarcastic, strawberry blonde, octogenarian, Type II diabetic, bisexual… whatever.
It’s that kind of thinking that contributes to the vicious cycle of marginalization.
@Ophelia Benson #12-13
Well I’m glad that you found my comment interesting; obviously the fact that I speak as a French who knew about Charlie before the attacks helped me getting my message across, but I want to point out that I’m not really saying anything different than the other commenters who disagree with you.
Anyway, here is an article by Arthur Chu that I find very good and well-researched; and another one by Adam Shatz, with an interesting testimony from a .
Also, Ryan Cunningham made a very good point at Pharyngula, that I think is relevant to your approach of the discussion:
sff9, well I think you are saying anything different from what most of the other commenters who disagree with me are saying.
You’re wrong. Read the stupid articles linked to. The one from Chu, for example, is another tired rehash of assertions based on the most superficial readings of the images about the Boko Haram victims, the Hara Kiri one about de Gaulle reverence, etc.
This is really indecent. All else aside, I’m offended epistemically.
Based on a quick reading, the objections seem to boil down to the cartoonists using racist stereotypes to depict the stereotyped groups.
—
sff9, further to SC’s previous comment, the one by Adam Shatz basically says as much, the “interesting testimony from a “French woman of Algerian origin, a leftist and atheist who despises Islamism””, says as much [sorry to quote so much, Ophelia, but it needs the context and it’s a smallish proportion of the whole]:
I see that much more about condemning the French milieu in which the magazine operates than about condemning the magazine.
(Nor do I see it as inimical to SC’s stated stance)
Salty – ah. Well I just meant the comment @ 11. I haven’t read the links yet.
Salty Current@17, I guess you think that all articles criticizing gamergate’s productions were tired rehashes of assertions based on the most superficial readings of gg memes… OK, that’s unfair, of course, but not that far off the mark. Yeah, the intent behind the Boko Haram cover was (probably; no way to be certain) “positive”, but it is really not obvious (even for French people, I mean), and it does not prevent it from reinforcing clichés and dehumanizing victims in practice. This specific cover has been criticized harshly at the time by French feminists and anti-racists, who saw it as a new low for CH.
Note also that the gang rape cartoon (1 mum, 36 dads), which has the same author as the Boko Haram cover, has no anti-racist explanation that I know of. It just uses a tired cliché for the lulz. A cliché that is also reinforced regularly in the mainstream media, and has no reason to be questioned by casual readers.
And what exactly is indecent here? Incidentally, the dead at CH were indecent and loved it. They would have hated being considered as saints after their death.
John Morales@18, basically that’s it. With the addition that in the last years, CH aimed more and more at Islamists, hurting muslims in the process, without seeming to care about this punching down; however, while this addition is relevant to the discussion of CH itself, it is not to the general question of the publication of the cartoons in an international context, as noted by Ryan Cunningham (see my #15).
It’s quite far off the mark. But like many others, you’ve given no indication that you care to investigate before making assertions. Why bother, when you can just misrepresent? (It’s also just odd – the articles criticizing gg opposed the superficial reading what the gg people were trying to encourage about what they were about. They showed, using evidence of intent and context, the ggers’ real motivations. That’s actually like what I’m advocating here. You have it backwards.)
If the standard for satire is “immediately obvious to everyone” regardless of knowledge and completely uncontroversial, or the only alternative is to declare that people are uncaringly, harmfully, and appallingly rehashing racist tropes, then I don’t think any discussion can be had.
I just can’t take this anymore. These people have just been fucking massacred, and commenter after commenter appears brandishing one or another decontextualized cartoon or cover demanding that others provide an explanation for how it’s free of all racism/sexism/… “Look at this picture of Taubira as a monkey! Pretty damn racist!” “Oh, well, OK, that was meant as an anti-racist swipe at the far Right and specific statements in a far-Right publication.* But why should that, or the knowledge that they see themselves as an anti-racist, social justice publication give anyone pause? Intent isn’t magic! Hipster racism! Splash damage! Look at this image of the Boko Haram victims! What’s the nonracist explanation for that?” “OK, so there’s potentially a context and intent I hadn’t considered for this and other images, and apparently these are tied to specific current events and statements, but I don’t think that’s relevant, either.” “Look at all of these images about Islamists! They’re obviously unconcerned with hurting Muslims!” “Fine, so there’s a film that shows the publication of some of these images from their point of view, and features interviews with the CH staff and court testimony** about how they – given their long history of blasphemy – saw this as in part an inclusive gesture. And people who want to blaspheme face great difficulties if blasphemy is automatically equated with marginalization and racism. But I don’t care about any of that. Here, look at this other image! I can’t think of a single justification for it. Can you defend that one? Huh?” And on and fucking on.
I’ll tell you what’s indecent, although I already hinted at it in the very next sentence. This should not be anyone’s epistemic approach to assessing the work of these people who were just massacred. You show up here without either having read or wishing to engage with statements that have been made by people, including other French people, here at this very blog over the past several days. You cite articles that you call “well-researched” that are anything but. You begin from a position and demand that people convince you otherwise. You make little effort to look at, or immediately disregard, how the CH people saw what they were doing, as if it’s totally irrelevant. As I’ve said several times here (not that you’d know), I don’t think CH was or is perfect, or need to be perfect for people to express solidarity, but they do deserve basic epistemic fairness.
* Something else some people seem to be forgetting. The French extreme Right is not only racist (and calling them out on what they are, as CH has done, not allowing them to get away with coyly using veiled racist codes, is important work, however you might judge their methods). It’s also opposed to freedom of expression, and is all too happy to exploit any arguments simplistically connecting blasphemy to racism.*** In 2006, in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy, an anti-blasphemy law was proposed. Its promoters couldn’t have cared less about specifically Muslim sensibilities, but saw an opportunity to silence Charlie Hebdo and other publications about Christianity. When people uncritically accept a general identification of blasphemy with group hatred and discrimination, they’re playing right into the hands of all religious authoritarians, including the European far Right. This is very dangerous.
**I’ll note, by the way, that they won that lawsuit.
***It should go without saying, and I assume will for anyone familiar with what I’ve written on the subject, that I’m not suggesting that blasphemy is never a cover for racism or can be cleanly separated from it in every circumstance, including this one.
Nobody hurts Muslims more than Islamists. To aim criticism at Islamists is to support liberal and secular minded Muslims, as well as those who just want to live their lives in peace.
Salty Current@21
The gamergate example was from the perspective of some lambda gator, for whom criticisms of gg memes as misogynistic are superficial and ignore the fact that they’re really about ethics in video games journalism. I admit the example was badly chosen for the reason you stated. Sorry.
Of course not.
With what are you disagreeing: that they rehash racist tropes? That rehashing racist tropes is harmful? I’d answer yes to these two without hesitating. That they did so uncaringly? I don’t know, but either they didn’t think of the consequences, or they knew and accepted them. That doing so is appalling? It’s just an opinion and it is irrelevant anyway, only the consequences matter.
I’m not demanding anything. The fact that there is an anti-racist intent does not make any cartoon free of racism/sexism/etc. anyway. That even some people who knew and appreciated Charlie don’t understand the anti-racist intent behind every over-the-top cartoon (which is what I wanted to hint at with the gang rape example) only makes this fact more obvious.
I don’t understand this. I would have been less indecent had I engaged in this discussion earlier, even closer to the massacre?
It is to whether any of their cartoons can be published unquestioningly as an act of solidarity.
I am in solidarity with Charlie in that nobody should be killed, especially for expressing opinions, and especially for offending religions. I am in solidarity with the families and friends of the dead. I am sad because I read and liked some of the work of the dead cartoonists. This solidarity does not mean I agree with all their choices, and my support to their right to publish some of their cartoons does not imply that I think they were right to publish them.
But it was on point in an important way. My point is about how we go about assessing these things. In the gg example, people pointed beyond the claims that it was about ethics in journalism to concrete evidence – from ggers’ statements to each other, to their targeting of women, to their rhetoric, to their self-identification and associations, to their history, to other elements of context, and so on – in order to get at the reality. They didn’t remain at the superficial level. That is what I’m advocating here, and what I think is the only way to go about things ethically. And yes, especially because these people have just been terribly victimized.
I’m disagreeing with the notion that “rehashing racist tropes” is some straightforward statement and not a vague characterization that carries all sorts of assumptions about intent and the context of production and reception of the images. It leaves out huge amounts of relevant information. It also bothers me immensely that people are going about things in an intellectually dishonest manner – showing the Taubira image, for example, and then when confronted with information about its context and intent immediately switching to a simplistic “rehashing racist tropes” claim without doing any more intellectual work. If every example is going to be considered through this narrow lens of “rehashing racist tropes” then I don’t think people can have a real discussion. For the dozenth time, I’m not suggesting that using superficially racist imagery without the intent to convey a racist message or even with the intent not to never has harmful effects, but we should be more sophisticated in the formation of our judgments both out of respect for the people who were just murdered and for the sake of skepticism and intellectual honesty.
The problem isn’t the timing of your engagement, it’s that you’re not really engaging. Do me a favor: before you reply, go back and read the handful of posts and comments here on this subject from the past few days, and consider whether some of your points have previously been addressed. For example, your sentence about being free of racism, etc., has been discussed, including by me, multiple times. People shouldn’t have to reproduce arguments and evidence for you just because you’re too lazy to get the background yourself.
But if you had read the prior posts and threads you’d know that this wasn’t the topic of discussion here (the topic was generally about solidarity, primarily in terms of saying “Je suis Charlie”), and that we weren’t arguing that they should be. It’s a valid topic, but in this particular context it’s (if unintentional) goalpost-shifting. I don’t think I’ve said anything about republishing the cartoons, but in fact I agree fully that they shouldn’t be published unquestioningly as an act of solidarity. Publishing them without providing relevant evidence of intent and context, as we’ve seen, can lead both to encouraging racism and to giving what I think is a largely false impression of what CH stood for, whether that impression is thought to be positive or negative. But note also that in suggesting that they shouldn’t just be shown without this information you’re implicitly acknowledging that it’s important to understanding what CH was about. You can’t have it both ways.
Nor does mine. It doesn’t have to. I can think of almost no episode in which I expressed solidarity with a person or group and agreed with all of their choices. It would be a stupidly excessive standard for solidarity. What I’m suggesting is that if we’re going to talk about solidarity we should make the best effort possible to understand what people’s choices actually are.
But this is precisely the sort of narrative I’ve been arguing against even before people started to use it. Superficially, it’s fine to say that you agree with their right to publish even if you don’t think they were right to publish. The principle is not what I’m arguing against, but its…premature application in this case. Your “even if…” implies a precipitous assessment that I don’t think you’ve based on a fair assessment of sufficient evidence. (I recognize that I don’t have sufficient evidence at the moment, either, and I remain open to new knowledge that will no doubt be forthcoming.) Try putting others into that formula: “my support to [Stephen Colbert’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s,…] right to say what they do does not imply that I think they were right to say it.”