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CollegeBaby

They're taking my Freeze Peach!

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Freedom of Speech has become a hot talking point lately. The Interview, UK porn bans, Hatred game... anything GamerGate touches...

 

So by now I guess most people have heard about the French magazine Charlie Hedbo that was targetted by gunmen in an assault killing 12 people, allegedly in a terrorist attack in response to inflammatory comics depicting the prophet Muhammad.

 

If not, then this. Charlie Hebdo attack

 

It was a horrific and cowardly attack that nobody deserved, and as such many people have taken up the defence for freedom of speech in support of the victims.

 

The problem is the Charlie Hedbo cartoons are racist as fuck and have little satirical value. You can look at some of them here with English translations and context provided.

 


 

Look I am an atheist and I have some harsh criticisms of Islamic doctrine, but I separate that from the people who believe it. I separate that from the large majority of secular Muslims living in Western nations who condemn terrorist attacks, and have to apologise to xenophobic white people every time one happens. I separate that from the people living in the Middle East who deal with extremists on a daily basis that white people do not give a fuck about.

 

The comics did not do this. The comics casually conflate Islam with race, depicting Arabic people as gross caricatures. They regularly trade in causing shock and provocation rather than critiquing bad ideas and oppressive systems. The core problem is the "satire" is routinely the form of punching down at victimised people using poor taste personal insults. It is tacitly supporting of bigotry compiled of xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, antisemitism and - crucially - islamophobia.

 

Freedom of speech is an important human right and I don't think comics like this should be banned, but I question the judgement behind them being published and the people who take this up as a banner for freedom. Speech that is casually supporting of systematic oppression of maginalised people is not the kind of freedom I believe in. You can't have freedom of speech without freedom from consequences, and there already are consequences.

 


 

To all the white people who tweeted #blacklivesmatter and #illridewithyou but are now supporting the Charlie Hedbo cartoons as a paragon of free speech, kindly go fuck yourself into the sun. You can support the victims and condemn the assailants without making this into a politcal grandstand disseminating hatred.

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Hmmm, I don't know anything about Charlie Hebdo. But I'm going to take a dozen cartoon covers with a grain of salt. Yes, a lot of those are bad and should be criticized. But I could take probably any major English speaking media outlet and by picking out a dozen examples paint them as being homophobic, racist bigots who think women should cook and not speak, particularly if I was providing the context and translation to non-English speakers.

Fox News is, quite often, all of those things. But if a bunch of Fox News employees were murdered tomorrow, I don't think we'd see a rant like this.

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Condemning the magazine does nothing, those artists are dead and you are not helping anyone by condemning them now.

I am worried about the chilling effect this will have with other artists or people who may consider discussing Islam, like the threats against South Park Studios that resulted in the incredibly heavy censorship of a very specific episode.

Please do not dismiss those who do not support your opinion, you're closing discussion and it helps no one.

 

Seriously? I started a thread to open discussion.

 

Islam doctrine deserves to be criticised. That I have no problem with. Racist comics that caricature Muslim people? Completely gross and not worth defending.

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Hmmm, I don't know anything about Charlie Hebdo. But I'm going to take a dozen cartoon covers with a grain of salt. Yes, a lot of those are bad and should be criticized. But I could take probably any major English speaking media outlet and by picking out a dozen examples paint them as being homophobic, racist bigots who think women should cook and not speak, particularly if I was providing the context and translation to non-English speakers.

Fox News is, quite often, all of those things. But if a bunch of Fox News employees were murdered tomorrow, I don't think we'd see a rant like this.

 

Fair enough if you withhold judgment. Why do you say there would be no rant if Fox News was attacked? There isn't enough breath in my body to list the problems I have with Fox News, that wouldn't change if they were the target of an attack. Not sure what you are trying to say with this.

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The racists charactures are not being defended here, because they've stopped now, the artists behind them are dead. The point is sending a message that violence should not ever disturb any sort of speech, no matter how much any of us disagrees with it.

 

The artists are dead, the publication is not. The hundreds of newspapers re-publishing them are not. The people who are mass retweeting them are not. They deserve that freedom, I don't think it should be taken form them and nobody deserves to die for this. But they sure picked a real shitty battlefield to make their last stand upon.

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I've found recently that a lot of people I encounter online who viciously defend free speech (almost always for purposes of defending gamergate et al) don't usually realize that the reason freedom of speech is so important is because of the immense power that words can have and instead choose to wield them like a kid who found his dad's gun.

 

If you hurt someone and the strongest defense you can make for your actions is to say that they technically weren't illegal, you're probably an asshole.

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Fair enough if you withhold judgment. Why do you say there would be no rant if Fox News was attacked? There isn't enough breath in my body to list the problems I have with Fox News, that wouldn't change if they were the target of an attack. Not sure what you are trying to say with this.

That wasn't so much aimed at you, as it was a thought in general, as I've seen this thing about CH brought up a few times last night and this morning on social media. There are many, many, many people, companies and media outlets that occasionally or regularly contribute to the demonization of marginalized people (Fox being an easy example). The point I was making is that I think CH is itself being both victim blamed and used as an example in a way that other outlets wouldn't necessarily be. I don't have any proof of that, but the history we have of selective blame certainly makes it a possibility in my mind.

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Sure. I'm curious to hear about what you think people should be doing instead of tweeting hashtags and how they should be reacting.

 

Not directed at you, but to the people mass posting the comics in a act of defiance.

 

1.  #illridewithyou

2. Don't solely blame this on Islam

3. Don't repost the comics

4. Stop with the endless Voltaire quotes

 

I might think of some other things but this would be a good start. I understand this is an emotional topic, but we need to understand there is a system here much bigger than some Muslim extremists and a bunch on dumb comics.

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That wasn't so much aimed at you, as it was a thought in general, as I've seen this thing about CH brought up a few times last night and this morning on social media. There are many, many, many people, companies and media outlets that occasionally or regularly contribute to the demonization of marginalized people (Fox being an easy example). The point I was making is that I think CH is itself being both victim blamed and used as an example in a way that other outlets wouldn't necessarily be. I don't have any proof of that, but the history we have of selective blame certainly makes it a possibility in my mind.

 

I don't want to selectively blame CH, definitely. I think there is a much bigger problem across entire Western society that trivialises the marginalisation of Muslim people that are already so mistrusted because of an alarmist reactionary media. Tragic acts like this feed in to a cycle of mistrust that only make it harder to bridge the gap.

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"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." A quote often attributed to Voltaire (philosopher) but was actually from his biographer. A favourite of internet libertarians. Good in principle, but does not acknowledge 21st century problems. Pretty sure nobody at CH was prepared to die for this.

 

People can support CH and the victims, I give hard side-eye to people who support their choice to publish irresponsible comics.

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Ug, my wife spent hours last night arguing on Facebook about this last night.

They have the right to publish horribly racist shit, I have the right not either not read it or even protest against it if I feel that strongly, no one has the right to kill someone else.

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I'm not entirely sure where I fall on this because I think those cartoons are totally not acceptable and you have to bear in mind that if this is a magazine in print then they're obviously speaking to people that listen to them and take in their message to some extent.

I don't think murder was a response that can be forgiven but it absolutely does not absolve the cartoonists of perpetuating racism with their work. Any artist or media person has a responsibility to consider the effect of their work or at least accept that they're being shitty if they make no effort to consider it. And also, it does matter. These individuals are dead but that doesn't stop media outlets existing that harmfully stereotype people like this at this very moment, with coverage of this footage.

The murders helped no one, at least as far as I can imagine. But I still have sympathies for people that can live in a society where they are so openly vilified in media and have no effective form of rebuttal.

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People keep saying they weren't brave to do what they did, and even though the stuff they produced was vile, I think it's pretty stupid to say they were cowardly.

MS3Fei4.jpg

And don't forget, they were attacked before in November 2011, their office was hacked and firebombed.

Being brave or cowardly seems irrelevant in the grand scheme. They still published and perpetuated harmful works about a minority because they had the privilege to do so. There was nothing noble or useful about the message so it doesn't matter if it was brave of them or not.

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I um don't think that just because these people were unjustly murdered means that we shouldn't be allowed to talk about how shitty and racist and offensive their cartoons were...

 

Also it sorta seems like the terrorists achieved what they wanted - reignite the anti-Muslim fire. I don't think they ever really cared about the cartoons. This is just an excuse to increase hostilities. Hurray.

 

Anyway peach is a delicious fruit.

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Honestly I don't entirely believe this was an attack directed only to silence CH and the comics. I don't think they were that stupid to not know that the comics will blow up all over the media. I suspect it was an attack to deliberately cause a schism between between secular Muslim minorities and reactionary white people to create a political unrest that will push some towards extremism. Effectively a false flag.

 

If this were the case - and it is only speculation - championing the comics seem additionally silly to me and misses a much larger problem.

 

EDIT: damnit Twig ninja'd me and said basically the same thing.

 

I never said the artists were cowardly.

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1. Charlie Hedbo have a right to publish stupid racist cartoons they think are funny.

2. I have a right to say they are stupid racist cartoons that prey on existing political tensions and trivialise bigotry against innocent Muslims.

 

Therefore, to the people who hold up Charlie Hedbo as being the heroes of freedom - the fucking of thyself into the Sun, so on and so forth.

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Do we have any French members on the forums? I don't think we do. I'd be curious what people of different backgrounds think of CH experiencing it in the context of French culture.

These are mini-obituaries of the twelve people killed. Mostly old folks, some of them old enough to have been kids during WW2. A couple of Jewish descent. A Muslim cop. A cartoonist who was a member of a group dedicated to 'unlearning intolerance' through cartooning (which, in context, seems odd), a group who in part was organized by Kofi Annan (former Secretary General of the UN).

That's why I'd like to see the perspective of some folks who actually experienced Charlie Hedbo's work first hand and didn't draw their conclusions from looking a dozen cartoons on the Internet. Because the bits and pieces I'm seeing about the staff of CH, it's hard for me to believe that their work was as limited in range or conclusion as has been presented in the last 24 hours.

 

CollegeBaby, do you have any experience with CH other than just the covers you linked to?  If so, I'd like to see what else is informing your opinion. 

 

 

Edited to add:  Is it possible CH is something closer to South Park than Fox News type bigotry?  It would be really, really easy to paint South Park in the same colors that CH is being painted, but you'd miss a fuckton of context by doing so. 

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The racists charactures are not being defended here, because they've stopped now, the artists behind them are dead. The point is sending a message that violence should not ever disturb any sort of speech, no matter how much any of us disagrees with it.

 

Here's some words that are relatively close to how I feel.

 

There will be no more racist caricatures from the victims, but racist caricatures in general have not stopped (their circulation has sped up, if anything), because the culture and attitudes that produce them do not disappear if you silence some of their voices. I'm just not sure how you think that particular message, "We stand for free speech," is harmed if you prelude the statement with "Those cartoons are awfully racist." Why is it necessary to spread them around in order to show how unafraid you are? I can easily condemn the violence without having to adopt the message spread by those under attack, yet instead of differentiating like that, people are taking to Twitter in an "I am Spartacus" fashion to point out that they, too, are Charlie. If, glob forbid, something like this happened to Stormfront or Westboro Baptists, would people be tweeting "I am Stormfront" or "I am Westboro" now?

 

Even if people were doing a better job of distancing themselves from the comics, the fact that they are talking about this at such length at all is evidence of the fact that this event has been given the terrorism treatment on the news, detailed live coverage and speculation, regular updates, all that jazz. Meanwhile, news around here had not a word on the attempted NAACP bombing, and when comparing back called this attack the worst since 2004 subway bombings, neglecting that in between those two the right-wing extremist Breivik killed over 70 people in Norway. Racist notions about how terrorism only or disproportionately comes from particular groups (religion of hate, and all that) are forever reinforced by other kinds of violence never being given that label. It's not terrorism when a white guys does it, to be very blunt. The same media that are now making certain connections instantly will later tell you that the motives for one of the many attacks on asylum seekers around here are "yet unknown."

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Edited to add:  Is it possible CH is something closer to South Park than Fox News type bigotry?  It would be really, really easy to paint South Park in the same colors that CH is being painted, but you'd miss a fuckton of context by doing so. 

That's something I hadn't considered.

 

Although there are people who will damn South Park to hell regardless of the context, so it's not exactly a get-out-of-jail-free card. (Not that I think that's what you were saying.)

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