The Charlie Hebdo Massacre and Free Speech

I want everyone to consider what Giliell said:

No, folks, please, we’re usually better than that.

No, the cartoonists didn’t “have it coming”. Nobody should be murdered for publishing their shit and suggesting that this is to be expected does nothing but paint muslims as irrational beasts who just cannpt control themselves. It’s just two sides of the same coin.
But this “you don’t have the right not to be offended nanana freeze peach” is the same bullshit we’re constantly getting when discussing feminism. And people here are usually better than that.

We usually understand quite clearly that “equal opportunity offense” usually means kicking down the ladder.

I stand for the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish their cartoons, I stand against the people who murdered them. I also stand to my opinion that their cartoons were racist and misogynist. This is not incompatible. My enemy’s enemy is NOT my friend.

She summed up a lot of my thinking over these past several days.

In looking for Charlie Hebdo covers for my post on the massacre the other day, I noticed themes that I don’t support. There’s a definite taste of racism. There’s homophobia, and some things swerving awfully close to rape. I think that’s lazy, using knee-jerk cultural distastes in order to outrage people. I don’t know what the magazine itself is like – I don’t read enough French to have followed any of its issues. Quite possibly, in different times, I might have criticized them, not for publishing offensive cartoons, but for hitting down rather than up.

But no matter what tropes they employed, even if they were utterly despicable, those artists and journalists didn’t deserve to die.There are limits to free speech. Inciting crime, defamation, and harassment are beyond the pale. Most of us can agree there. Hate speech is damaging to a society, and needs to be opposed, although the law is probably too blunt an instrument to use. There is a lot of speech I’d like to see less of: sexist speech and sex-shaming speech, for instance. I’d like religious people to turn down the volume of their religious speech, certainly.

But while I think some types of speech should result in legal sanctions or imprisonment (death and rape threats, for instance), most speech should be free of such threats no matter how much any one group dislikes it. MRAs are free to say how much they despise women, for instance, and we are free to mock them and turn their own words against them. I wouldn’t want to see them thrown in jail for saying things like women are nothing but cum-buckets. That would give them too much credibility, and make martyrs of moles. I find the Republican party deplorable, sociopathic, and a danger to my country, but as much as they horrify me, seeing them shot down en masse would horrify me more.

No one deserves to be murdered for their ideas. No one.

I’ll defend Charlie Hebdo’s freedom of speech. I hope the magazine can continue. It would be outstanding if the people who take up the jobs of those who were killed can fight political corruption and religious intolerance without employing problematic themes to do it. But if they go on in the established vein, I’ll still defend their right to speak out without being killed.

There are plenty of ways to counter speech we don’t like. But using homicide isn’t one of them. Neither are death threats, rape threats, or harassment.

I’m with the blasphemers against the religious assholes who attempt to terrorize them into silence.

Cover of Charlie Hebdo for The Life of Mohammed, Part One: the Debut of the Prophet. Image is a goofy yellow man leading a sweating camel in a desert with rocky hills in the background.
Cover of Charlie Hebdo for The Life of Mohammed, Part One: the Debut of the Prophet.
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The Charlie Hebdo Massacre and Free Speech
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7 thoughts on “The Charlie Hebdo Massacre and Free Speech

  1. 2

    What bothers me about Giliel’s position and its supporters on Charlie Hebdo is their refusal to be swayed by facts.

    G: They are racist and misogynist.
    R: They aren’t though. CH is known in France to be pro-human rights, anti-racism and pro-immigration.
    G: This drawing is racist.
    R: That drawing is a response to racists. This is the context it was published in. The subject of the drawing acknowledges that it is not racist.
    G: The subject is a self-hating WOC. This other cover is racist and misogynist.
    R: That cover supports WOC and is a response to racist politicians in France. This is the context. At the time of the shooting, the CH staff was meeting to discuss an anti-racism conference they would be participating in.
    G: It doesn’t matter. Intent isn’t magic.

    No. Intent isn’t magic. Neither is misunderstanding. I would like to see an acknowledgment that perhaps (you know, just maybe) CH’s covers and drawings may have been misinterpreted by those who accuse them of racism, misogyny and now, homophobia (even transphobia, although I certainly don’t see the basis of that or the homophobia, but I guess in for a penny, in for a pound). I would like to see people acknowledge that, like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, sometimes satire is great and sometimes it falls short of our hopes for it or our worldview. Sometimes satirists fall short of what they are trying to accomplish. That makes them imperfect, not racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic or provocateurs.

    I genuinely believe this is why the left is always falling apart. We don’t have to wait for the right-wing to attack us. Thanks, but we’re all over ripping each other apart already.

    Artists who spent their professional lives challenging racism are killed for their work and before they’re cold in the ground, their allies in the struggle are attacking them. Meanwhile, the right-wing fundamentalists who killed them and the right-wing fundamentalists they disagreed with continue unabated – even using their deaths to further their own goals.

  2. 3

    Satire is great when it’s punching up. Molly Ivins described it:

    Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

    However some (not all but some) of Charlie Hebdo‘s satire was punching down. Homophobia, misogyny and racism are punching down, they’re forms of bullying, they’re telling the powerless that they don’t matter.

    Yeah, I’ve read the apologia: “But you don’t understand the cultural context.” Sorry, the French are as homophobic, misogynist and racist as the rest of Western society. CH was reflecting this part of French culture.

  3. 4

    Some words/images/scenarios etc., are going to be perceived as ____-ist by some people. Some people just don’t want to see/hear them under any circumstances. Regardless of context. Regardless of intent. Regardless of who wrote/filmed/drew/said them. Regardless of whether they are supposed to be meta-clever/satire. See for example: the N-word. Some people just don’t wanna hear it. Not from white people, not from Black people, or Jon Stewart or Dave Chapelle or the guys on the basketball court or whomever. Those people have every right to object to it’s usage and frankly it’s incredibly condescending to ‘Splain to them that they just don’t get satire or understand context or can’t take a joke. They can understand the context/satire perfectly fine and STILL be offended by what they read/see/hear. Their perspective is totally valid even if you may disagree. I err on the side of respecting them even if I don’t agree with them because 1.) there have been plenty of times that I didn’t see something as ___-ist but then later understood why after more thought/listening and 2.) I realize how annoying it is to be told not to be offended by something and I’d rather just avoid being that guy. There is the problem of Fauxtrage like the people who whine about the War on Christmas but in those cases there are usually other ways to see that they are probably just crying wolf to score points, but that’s just a judgement call. When a minority says something is ___-ist I think the best practice is just to accept that it is (or at least is from their perspective.)

  4. rq
    5

    Perpetuating racist/sexist/etc. tropes is your right guaranteed by freedom of speech, but you’re still perpetuating racist/sexist/etc. tropes. So you can do so, but it kind of makes you an asshole. Think about punching up and punching down.
    And CH can call themselves whatever they like, and BE left-wing liberal etc., and consider themselves allies – but that does not make them good allies. It does not mean that everything they do is beyond reproach. It does not mean they approached that position with thought and sensitivity. It does not mean they were not (perhaps subconsciously) biased themselves. Their lack of introspection certainly seems obvious: if they really were so anti-racism/anti-sexism/etc., they might have bothered to actually look at the material they were producing.
    Here’s two articles for reading on this: In an Unequal World, Mocking All Serves the Powerful and Trolls and Martyrdom: Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie. Please read them.
    But incidentally, Giliell‘s finest comment (IMHO) was a metaphor, which I shall attempt to paraphrase, because I am too lazy to find the actual comment: “In a world where you’re stepping on everyone’s toes, you have to remember that some of those toes are already bare and crushed, while others are wearing steel-capped boots.”
    CH may have been stepping on all the toes, but that just means they were already stepping on those everyone else steps on, too. Not good allyhood there.
    Misinterpreted, you say? Imperfect, you say? Perhaps. But their imperfections are racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, and if the misinterpretation is that easy to make, perhaps they weren’t as stellar in satire as you would like to believe. That kind of imperfection… Kind of reflects badly on them, yes, as people, too, not just satirists.
    And? The fact that satire falls short is being acknowledged – and we’re also happening to point out how it falls short. And if the left has to (once again) tear itself apart in order to sort out, finally, once and for all, to skim off those who believe that racism is okay sometimes, that misogyny is okay sometimes, that the downtrodden won’t mind one more trod sometimes? Well, good riddance, I say. Because you might think that the ends justify the means, but those means are doing less for the end than you could ever know.
    One final point:

    Artists who spent their professional lives challenging racism are killed for their work and before they’re cold in the ground, their allies in the struggle are attacking them.

    We’re not attacking the artists – we’re attacking their art. And before they were cold in the ground, their art was being lionized as some perfect example of the kind of free speech the world should be perpetuating. Sure, they were provocative and you need context to understand them, but they’re also perpetuating horribly racist/sexist/etc. images that have also long been used to discriminate against those that CH supposedly supports. Does that mean that the artists themselves deserve to die? No. Not for one moment (and let’s not forget that it wasn’t just the artists who died, it was the janitor and the police officer and the bodyguard and the editors and the psychoanalyst, too (see here for the faces and the names)).
    So are the cartoons unproblematic and bright-shining examples of progressive, left-leaning, liberal thinking? No. Because in the larger context of the world, not just France, those images and similar ones have long been used to trample upon those others have deemed less-than – less-than human, less-than [nationality], less-than. CH should have been smart enough and left enough to realize that, and to figure out some smarter, more progressive satire. And adding some French context to the mix (and let’s be honest, the French aren’t exactly the finest example of a sexism-free or racism-free or transphobia-free or homophobia-free society) does not change the fact that these images have been and are hurtful to those already vulnerable. By perpetuating them, we perpetuate the very same tropes they supposedly stand against. Is this the kind of progress we want? “Oh, don’t worry, I know you find that racist, but it’s for a good cause!” Yah, no.
    And this is why #JeNeSuisPasCharlie. I will not keep spreading those images, and I’m glad there are others out there who won’t, either.

  5. 6

    Three links say it better than I could :

    http://www.vox.com/2015/1/9/7521151/charlie-hebdo-jesuisahmed

    I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so. #JesuisAhmed

    Respect. Vale Ahmed Merabet. And the other murrdered dead including tehjanitor, the cartoonists and the editors of Charlie Hebdo.

    Also this :

    http://www.onbeing.org/blog/9-points-to-ponder-on-the-paris-shooting-and-charlie-hebdo/7193

    Is how one truly good, intelligent and compassionate human being and writer responds -and that human individual also happens to be a Muslim (named Omid Sfai) too. Respect and seconded by me. Read via rq, a commenter on the Pharyngula blog here.

    To quote a key exceprt :

    Let us hope that it is not merely the freedom of speech that we hold sacred, but the freedom to live a meaningful life, though others find it problematic. Let us hope that the freedom to speak, to pray, to dress as we wish, to have food in our stomach and to have a roof over our head, to live free of the menace of violence, the freedom to be human are seen as intimately intertwined… Yes, let us cherish and stand up for the dignity of the freedom of speech. And let us always remember that speech, like religion, is always embodied by human beings. And in order to honor freedom of speech, we need to honor the dignity of human beings.

    Plus :

    http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2015/01/09/mourning-the-parisian-humorists-yet-challenging-the-hypocrisy-of-western-media/

    A rabbi’s eye view (Tzadik’s even?) with some disturbing facts and global context.

    Different people, different perspectives and opinions and backgrounds. Common humanity.

    The world already sucks. People are already messed up. We can do better than add to the hatefulness and pain.

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