I dislike Reason magazine most of the time, but there is some inevitable overlap on liberal and human rights values. One of those overlaps covers the disputes over Charlie Hebdo. Reason isn’t wrong on this one.
The massacre at the Paris offices of the venerable satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been met with near-universal condemnation, but a growing chorus of self-appointed arbiters of good taste are going public, following up cursory denunciations of the murders with caveats that Charlie Hebdo is a “provocative,” “racist,” “Islamophobic,” “homophobic” publication who brought much of its trouble on itself.
Richard Seymour at Jacobin makes this point most succinctly in the final paragraph of his article…
Speaking of which, why are so many people passing around that article? Richard Seymour? Of Lenin’s Tomb? Come on.
Here’s that final para:
No, the offices of Charlie Hebdo should not be raided by gun-wielding murderers. No, journalists are not legitimate targets for killing. But no, we also shouldn’t line up with the inevitable statist backlash against Muslims, or the ideological charge to defend a fetishized, racialized “secularism,” or concede to the blackmail which forces us into solidarity with a racist institution.
Right. We should abandon “fetishized, racialized ‘secularism'” and settle down to theocracy instead. Theocracy is all about de-fetishization.
Jacob Canfield sneers at Charb.
Canfield spends much of his word count sneering at Charlie Hebdo‘s white editorial staff for having the temerity to satirize Muslims and their prophet, and cites this quote from a BBC profile on Charlie Hebdo‘s murdered editor, Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, as evidence that he’s a “racist asshole”:
Charb had strongly defended Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad.
“Muhammad isn’t sacred to me,” he told the Associated Press in 2012, after the magazine’s offices had been fire-bombed.
“I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don’t live under Koranic law.”
Charb defended Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons featuring Mohammed – yes, and? We’re all allowed to draw Mohammed. There’s nothing wrong with drawing Mohammed. Nobody should live under Koranic law, very much including Muslims. Theocracies give short shrift to human rights because they’re more concerned with putative goddy rights. Charb was on the right, just, freedom-loving, human rights affirming side of this question.
Self-described “Geeky Porn Starlet/Lecturer/Presenter/Sex Critical Feminist” Kitty Stryker wrote:
So, I’m generally pretty anti-censorship. I mean fuck, I just worked on a porn where we gently poked fun at the new British porn content laws by enacting all of them in a playful, consensual space. I am a big fan of art, and using humour to hopefully make people think and change their minds.
That said, I do not believe that racist, homophobic language is satire. I think it’s abusive, and I think it punches down, harshly and often.
Later, the “generally pretty anti-censorship” Stryker explicitly puts to words what so many others have danced around:
I don’t think that shooting up the Charlie Hebdo office was ethically Right with a capital R, ok? But I do think it’s understandable.
To steal a line from Bernard Williams, that’s one thought too many.
And it gives Anthony Fisher at Reason an opening I wish people wouldn’t give anyone:
These Social Justice Warriors must be very proud to be in the company of Catholic League President Bill Donahue, who yesterday opined:
“It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death,” said Donohue of Stephane Charbonnier, Charlie Hebdo‘s publisher.” In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, he said, ‘Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.’ Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive.
People who use the pejorative “Social Justice Warriors” are assholes, so we shouldn’t give them excuses to use it.
USA Today published as a counter-point to its own editorial, an op-ed from “radical Muslim cleric” Anjem Choudary, who skips the mealy-mouthed platitudes about the right to free expression and instead puts the blame on the French government for not stopping Charlie Hebdo from provoking Muslims, “thereby placing the sanctity of its citizens at risk.”
This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, “Whoever insults a Prophet kill him.”
However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.
Choudary is a notorious outlier and flake and attention-seeker. He and Richard Seymour should get a room and set up a caliphate there.
Splash damage, anyone? I wish some people – *no matter* what their intentions are – tried for a change to apply that concept to themselves.
She is basically saying it was ‘right’ with a little r. If someone came along and shot up one of her porn-shoot sites, or wherever it is she works, how could she not find that understandable? The Kouachi brothers no doubt would find something like that highly understandable. Would it be wrong with a big W or only a little one?
I wonder how “understandable” she found the hostage-killing at that kosher supermarket.
As I’ve been reading commentary akin to that you’ve posted here one thing has really struck me: something is disturbingly out of place when the idea of “punching down” gets applied statements that carry a real probability of getting a person shot. The problem for satirists like CH is that Muslims are the ones in power elsewhere and not well treated in France. It makes for a target that’s hard to hit cleanly, but that’s hardly an excuse for using a phrase that implies cowardice.
(I’ve been an off-and-on lurker here. I’m delurking now because right now I really need the points of view being expressed here.)
Do folk remember the two year long panty-twist the Republicans threw over Benghazi? In that case the GOP theory was that the attack was not at all about the racist film attacking Muslims that appeared on YouTube and was in fact perpetrated by Al Qaeda. Obama allegedly covered up the Al Qaeda involvement in the runup to the election as this might be seen as denting the success of killing Bin Laden.
Some parts of the GOP theory are correct. It is likely that the attackers would have attacked the CIA outpost at some point if the video had not been shown. And it is highly unlikely that the group would have attacked the post if the only thing they were upset about was the film. But then and now, all the intel suggests that the reason that several different groups decided to show up at the compound to perform a coordinated attack on that particular day was in fact the film. Contrary to the GOP claims, that claim has never been retracted by the CIA. Nor is there any evidence of the attack being organized by Al Qaeda.
Here we have an attack that is very similar except that in this case the GOP are prattling on about ISIS when it turns out that it was perpetrated by Al Qaeda in Yemen. And again, the cartoons are the pretext but not the cause. If Al Qaeda was serious about making a statement about religious respect they would not have murdered the policeman, nor would they have attacked the Kosher supermarket the same day.
We don’t know for certain what the reason for the attack is yet, but the most likely reason is that Al Qaeda is feeling marginalized by ISIS and Boku Haram. After the death of Bin Laden, Al Qaeda is generally considered to be a spent force. The death of Awlaki in a drone strike crippled the Yemen branch which was more or less the only one left functional.
Yes the cartoons were a pretext that terrorists used as a justification for murder. But so was calling a NYC office block by the grandiloquent title ‘World Trade Center’.
Yes. Well said, Ophelia.
Welcome beryl. These aftershocks bring my thoughts about “punching up/down” to a certain point too.
I can read satire with “punching up/down” in mind as a flag to examine dynamics further, but I don’t take it as an axiom (a defining principle of satire) or a criterion (to judge who’s right).
I think the same way about David Hume’s distinction between “is/ought” (and “fact/value”, etc.). It flags interesting dynamics, then I need to evaluate the dynamics with some other tools.
Odd to see this in a piece ostensibly against victim blaming.
What? I have no idea what you mean.
Assholes being assholes aren’t “excused” by anyone else’s behavior.
Or did I misunderstand and when you said,
you were giving a sarcastic, demeaning summary of the previous quote?
Yes you seem to have comprehensively misunderstood me. Using X as an excuse to do Bad Thing Y is not the same as being excused for doing Bad Thing Y.
As for your final question, again, I find it incomprehensible.
Maybe you’re carrying over a conversation from Pharyngula to here, and forgetting that the terms of that conversation won’t be automatically comprehensible to people who haven’t been part of it.
To clarify further – I think it’s clear that you’re expressing hostility to me – but it’s not at all clear what you’re trying to say in the process.