Speaking of the Charlie Hebdo protests…a few days ago Joyce Carol Oates retweeted a string of remarks by Dan Therriault, then made some of her own.
Dan Therriault @dantherriault May 22
With PEN dissent, I suspect more writers would have separated themselves from Hebdo content if those few who dissented were not so vilified.Majority viciously attacking small numbers of dissent used to stop more dissent, to threaten quiet others & maintain their majority opinion.
This devaluing of dissent in the US bleeds into everything, the media questioning authority, political parties, attacking corporate culture.
But it’s truly disheartening to see writers pulled along the cultural move to the right to attack fellow writers for their rational dissent.
That’s so annoying.
Just because it’s a minority does not mean it’s right or reasonable. Calling it dissent doesn’t make it right, or reasonable, or fair, or factually accurate.
Disagreeing with the stupid things said by the anti-Charlie people is not the same thing as devaluing dissent. Charlie Hebdo is all about dissent!
Again this just reflects ignorance of what Charlie Hebdo is – it’s hardly the voice of the oblivious comfortable majority!
Defending Charlie Hebdo is not part of “the cultural move to the right.”
Now for Oates.
Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates May 22
@dantherriault “Move to the right” signaled by attack of dissenters as “fellow travelers” in echo of Joseph McCarthy’s crude smears.PEN controversy might have been dealt with rationally–writer-friends Paul Auster & Russell Banks, for instance, wrote only private letters
& their (opposing) positions very clearly stated; but not made public, unfortunately. & at once, name-calling, threats, etc. poisoned scene.
It did not help that American writers/ commentators really knew little of French tradition in which Charlie Hebdo-like satire is revered.
Isolated caricatures, presented by our media to arouse/ inflame (?) reactions, were interpreted in American terms, not French terms.
It is said that poetry is what is left out when poems are translated & perhaps satire is not translatable either. We “see” only in context.
None of that is any kind of reason to kill the staff of Charlie a second time.
This whole conversation is one of those irregular verb items – we’re the rational dissenting minority, they’re the dissent-hating right-wing majority.
I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin to address the multidimensional wrong here.
I have lost so much respect for these people. It’s like this emetic cocktail of equal parts disappointment, sadness, and anger.
(garnished with a twist of confusion)
What do you call it when you double down on your doubling down?
It seems to me that these people have decided that Charlie was racist and then are too overcome with cognitive dissonance to accept the mountains of explanation that, no, they are wrong. All they have to do is say, “well fuck, I didn’t understand that… now I see” and move on. It’s not like Oates’ literary prizes will be revoked if she just says “oh, wow, I was wrong” and drop it and move on. But instead she’s just got to keep shovelling away because that hole just isn’t deep enough yet.
Majority viciously attacking small numbers of dissent used to stop more dissent
You know, it’s almost as if they’re talking about — you know — the violent majority with guns who viciously attacked a bunch of cartoonists and killed them. That is horrible. Oh, that’s not what they’re talking about? They’re talking about a lot of people pointing out to some chucklefucks that they’re being mean and stupid? Vicious attack, indeed, but I don’t see anyone threatening to put a bullet in anyone’s heart. Vicious. So vicious.
PS to famous authors: you use the word “vicious”; I think maybe you should look up what it means.
What am I missing? This–
–sounds like she’s figured out that Deborah Eisenberg’s (for one) charicterization of CH was wrong. Is she saying she knows they protested under false pretenses, but their protest should be respected regardless?
How blind can you be when you talk about the “move to the right” while siding with the islamists.
From the Klan to the Nazis to IS, violent terrorists ALWAYS perceive/present themselves as ‘oppressed’ or besieged.
‘Carpetbaggers,’ ‘uppity’ blacks, The Elders of Zion, ‘McCarthyite smearers.’
These folks appear not to know with what they’re even dissenting anymore. But it’s so terribly important for everyone to know that they’re dissenters, and, dammit, they’re dissentin’.
Ophelia; How come you got to be so politically incorrect as to disagree with the tyrannical minorities who wish to dictate what we can and can’t think? Quite an achievement in this day and age of indoctrination!