The Death of Imagination

It begs the question to assume the cartoons and articles published by Charlie Hebdo were humorous as opposed to simply mean. There's been an awful lot of implied violence toward minority communities in our bloody history under the guise of "humour". Do you really think coon jokes and minstrelry "make the world a much better place"?

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mallorys-camera.livejournal.com

It begs what question? Have you seen these cartoons and articles?

One of the purposes of humor is to defuse implied violence. Thus we have comedians like Chris Rock and Dave LaChapelle. Yup. I think they're really, really funny even though they're filled with rage and white culture is often the butt of their humor. I guess I'm white (although by the quaint judicial codes of pre-Civil War Louisiana, I'm actually an octaroon.)

I may well have thought coon and minstrel jokes were funny if I'd been an adult back when they were the rage. Cultural mores shift over time. I think the wholesale bowdlerization and condemnation of the past because it doesn't share the enlightenment of the present is pretty fucking bizarre. That doesn't mean I don't support the more enlightened views of the present.

There's no way I can spin the bombings in France as anything other than an action by a particularly creepy fundamentalist faction of Islam that I would cheerfully obliterate if I could. Fuck 'em. Seriously.

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I have seen the cartoons since I work at a library that immediately ordered a copy of the issue in question when it was first published. It is a testament to the power of terrorism to silence speech that so few people have. Can you think of another instance where an attempt at censorship hasn't resulted in the wider dispersal of thing being censored?

The cartoons are quite mild compared to Piss Christ etc. that Christians are considered inbred boobies for even hemming at.

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mallorys-camera.livejournal.com

Yeah, I immediately flashed on the Piss Christ, too. Funny.

And have since tracked down a few of the Charlie cartoons. I wouldn't describe them as particularly inflammatory. Mileage varies on that one, I suppose.

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gopower.livejournal.com

Unstable? Surely you are not suggesting mental illness is a factor.

Had they not been distracted by cartoons, these people would have been occupied with their usual pursuits -- burning synagogues, killing Jews, assaulting homosexuals. Oh, and killing any family member who trespasses against their view of honor.

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I was thinking specifically of mental illness when I wrote "unstable". I don't think deciding to shoot up a bunch of people for disagreeing with you (an everyday occurrence in this country, but usually without an overt political agenda) is the choice of a "stable" individual. Perhaps it's narrow-minded of me to think that way.

So far, I haven't seen any evidence that the Kouachi brothers did any of the things you charge them with here, but I admit to being less than au courant with recent developments in the case. Their previous concerns seemed to be with the decolonisation of Iraq.

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If you see yourself as a jihadi, fighting a global war for Islam, you don't have to be any more disturbed than a member of any other army on the face of the earth in order to kill your perceived enemy.

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If a bunch of terrorists hadn't martyred them for free speech, they wouldn't be free speech martyrs.

They may also have been assholes. Freedom of speech is frequently tested by assholes. But when it's between assholes and murderers, I'm foursquare on the side of the assholes. (And that famous quote that Voltaire probably never said, but should have.)

The very least the murderers should get for their efforts is a lesson in the Streisand Effect. Shutting up the speech they murdered people to shut up creates incentives in entirely the wrong direction.

Re "if you keep it up long enough, eventually unstable men will take up arms against you"-- I at least don't know of any murders in response to the long, storied, and ongoing history of vile antisemitic cartoons in the Christian and Muslim worlds. I also don't recall hearing of any in response to many decades (at least) of hatefully racist cartoons and caricatures in the US.

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tyrannio.livejournal.com

Wait, who I am I supposed to kill in retaliation for these cartoons? I'm so confused.

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If you mean that no American cartoonist has been murdered for creating racist caricatures, I have to agree that I don't know of any such incidents. If you mean that racist caricatures played no role at all in convincing Blacks to take up arms against White oppressors in this country, then I'm not sure that's true.

You and I know that Muslims have historically responded differently to these sorts of visual depictions than Christians and Jews do. The staff of Charlie Hebdo knew it, too; that's precisely why they chose the subject matter they did. It's no fun mocking someone who doesn't get mad, is it? And that's why I termed it "pulling the tiger's tail".

I realise that freedom of speech makes for uncomfortable bedfellows. I'm eternally grateful for how easy Larry Flint has made it for me to find hardcore porn even while I agree with his self-assessment as "the worst". It just galls me how these murders have converted puerile racist offensiveness-for-the-sake-of-being-offensive into something akin to heroism.

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But when it's between assholes and murderers, I'm foursquare on the side of the assholes.

I guess at heart what I'm objecting to is having this sort of false choice forced upon me. Of course when having to choose sides between two groups of assholes, I'll choose the less assholish assholes. But why do I have to side with assholes at all? Why can't I take the stance that the cartoonists were in the wrong (morally, if not legally) and so are their murderers (morally and legally)?

As far as I can see, this sort of polarisation only benefits extremists. I recognise the urge to want to stick one in the eye of the militants, but I don't know that it's the terrorists who need a lesson in the Streisand effect. Convincing liberals and moderates to spread anti-Islamic images calculated to offend Muslims who already feel misunderstood and persecuted by the actions of Western elites seems to serve their purposes more than it does ours.

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I just wrote a long response, which LJ summarily ate.

But I think the choice was created by the massacre. CH, whatever else it is, is an example and a bulwark of free expression. (Which only matters when someone is offended.) The murderers are directly attacking that principle in the worst way possible.

(Not just "offensive speech should be silenced", but allowing "offensive" to be defined by who's willing to kill over it. Going along with that is asking other people to demonstrate that their issue is just as worthy of restraint, in the only way we've shown we respect.)

In a discussion of fair or appropriate or respectful speech, I'd likely be on the side of the critics. But when it comes down to allowed speech, that's another matter. And the latter takes priority.

I also think that it's high time the other side was the one who had to be reminded that killing someone to silence them can make them a martyr, and spread what they had to say further and more thoroughly than they could have alive.

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But what exactly are the "sides" here? As far as I can tell, it's a tiny number of fanatics (those willing to kill summarily in order to enforce limits on freedom of expression) versus...everyone. I don't see how spreading the offensive images originating with Charlie Hebdo harms them or their goals. I do see how it harms ordinary Muslims and I see how it harms our goal of convincing those Muslims that the majority of non-Muslims bear them no ill will, consider them equal members of society, and will be as ready to assert their rights to free expression as we are to assert our own.

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I don't see how spreading the offensive images originating with Charlie Hebdo harms them or their goals.

How else do you harm the goal of silencing through intimidation other than not to cooperate with it, and as far as is possible make the tactic counterproductive?

The people willing to commit murder and assault to limit freedom of expression when it comes to blaspheming against Islam are so far doing pretty well. In a global news story of demonstrated broad and ongoing interest, massive newsgathering organizations that have on occasion been willing to face the risks of going up against nuclear superpowers (CNN, the New York Times, ABC News, and many others) have been intimidated into not showing the central subject of their story at all.

In the last go round, Yale University Press refused to include the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in a scholarly book about the controversy. (I find it impossible to imagine a book about anything else in visual media making such an omission. The importance of being able to show what you're talking about in scholarship is pretty much the entire reason there's such a thing as Fair Use in copyright.)

(And I understand-- I'm not particularly brave, and could surely be intimidated by the threat of being shot or firebombed. Which is why if I hope to have any rights at all, I had better give support to their defense before it gets that far.)

The only way to demonstrate our commitment to free expression to any community is to demonstrate a commitment to free expression. If we're failing to defend someone else's rights to free expression, then we should stop doing that and defend them too.¹

¹Stipulating that I'm a lazy man who only knows what rights violations he reads about in the virtual paper, and generally can't think of much to do to defend them other than shake my head and donate to the EFF. It evidently takes the murder of a dozen people to get me to take the bold and active step of posting to social media. (*gasp*)

Which, again, is why I acknowledge my debt to the people actually engaged in defending the boundaries of our inalienable rights-- and especially those who give their lives doing it-- whether or not I would like them much in particular outside of that.

And we should show, by example, that the way to respond to bad speech is more speech (and other similarly nonviolent activity: support candidates who condemn the speech, vote with your wallet, vote with your feet, demonstrate etc.)-- and that violence against the speakers will be met with outrage and scorn, and redoubled efforts to protect them and their ability to communicate their message whatever we think of them.

Regardless, we should not be less than zealous in asserting those rights against an extreme and direct attack, made with the overt goal of forcing limits upon it.

Edited Date: 2015-01-12 04:12 am (UTC)

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How else do you harm the goal of silencing through intimidation other than not to cooperate with it, and as far as is possible make the tactic counterproductive?

As I've said elsewhere this presumes that this was, in fact, the sole or chief goal of the murderers. I'm not convinced it is. It was, to quote

mollpeartree "an act of political theater" and art is notorious for allowing multiple interpretations (much like the cartoons from Charlie Hebdo).

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When a bunch of writers, artists, editors, etc. at a magazine are specifically targeted for murder, I'd say the most plausible aim is that it's to shut them up and intimidate those like them.

Especially given those years of violence and intimidation focused on a narrow range of subjects, the wide agreement among news organizations that those subjects (and those alone) present a physical danger that they're better off giving a wide berth to (even when they're unequivocally news), and the followup firebombing in Germany and bomb threat in Belgium against those who reprinted the cartoons. Call it a rebuttable presumption.

(I mean, 9/11 could conceivably have been an act of propaganda by the deed by unhinged architecture critics-- the Twin Towers were examples of a particularly cold and inhumane aesthetic that was by 2001 considered counter to desirable urbanism. But I think you'll agree that's a rather less likely hypothesis than the ones involving various goals more germane to violent Islamism.)

If that's not what the killers wanted to communicate (along with "and we should kill some random Jews, just because"), then I'll attribute that to their poor choice in their mode and method of communication. (And encourage the substrain of radical Islam that spawned them to use their words instead, for improved clarity and reduced murder.) But I'm still going to frame my response based on what I consider the likelier intent.

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danthered.livejournal.com

I don't agree with you. I think I understand your viewpoint, and I can see some merit to it, but I think it substantially elides the context and circumstances that incubate—I want to argue necessitate—the likes of Charlie Hebdo. And I say so with no regard to the "Eurabia" shit-disturbers.

From my perspective, respect can only be earned. Any attempt to demand it, particularly a demand punctuated by "or else", deserves to be dismissed, mocked, and scorned; the alternative is a hierarchy of cowed subjugation catering to those whose threats are shouted loudest and whose body counts are highest. I contend that a civilised society not only may but must respond to "Shut up or else I will kill you" with "Fuck off or else I will discuss you", then proceed to do so with every variety of discourse and art—including cartoons which may very well be very deliberately disrespectful.

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I guess I can see why you think this is "punching down" in the French context, but Muslims are not a minority everywhere, and radical Islam is not nearly as minority a movement as it ought to be by rights.

These guys are not very likely to be mentally ill in any meaningful sense of the term; as a rule the type of unstable person who is as likely to shoot up a McDonald's or a cop car depending on the cultural zeitgeist acts alone.

These kinds of acts are explicitly political theater, meant by radicals to demonstrate the worldwide legitimacy of Islamic law even in Christian lands. It's a revolutionary, ahistorical claim that does no favors to Muslim immigrants attempting to rub along peacefully in Europe, and making excuses for it is not actually helping.

Edited Date: 2015-01-08 12:59 pm (UTC)

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In the piece linked to above, Cole agrees it's political theatre but has a different idea what the ultimate goal is. (Of course, no reason why it can't serve both.)

Charlie Hebdo is created and published in a French context. Few people I know were aware of its existence before yesterday (I myself was ignorant of it before the "Charia Hebdo" issue of 2011) and, as comes up in the discussion of Canfield's piece, it's impossible to understand a lot of their cartoons without a knowledge of French politics. I would feel entirely differently about their choice of targets if these journalists were Muslims.

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Muslims are by no means the only targets of Charlie cartoonists, btw.

And at least one of the dead was not ethnically French; I think he may have been Muslim-born but secular (I can't seem to find any more info).

Cole may be partly right about that, though perhaps not in the way that he means. Provoking anti-Palestinian violence in front of Western cameras is certainly the point of most Palestian terrorism. Of course, by that logic, the real cause of terrorism is, not to put too fine a point on it, people like Juan Cole.

Edited Date: 2015-01-08 07:19 pm (UTC)

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I'm aware of Charlie Hebdo's attacks on Christians. Bringing them up is a false equivalence, exactly like defending a sexist comedian by saying, "But he makes fun of men, too!"

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/joe-sacco-on-satire-a-response-to-the-attacks

Then what were you trying to say here, exactly:

"You and I know that Muslims have historically responded differently to these sorts of visual depictions than Christians and Jews do. The staff of Charlie Hebdo knew it, too; that's precisely why they chose the subject matter they did. It's no fun mocking someone who doesn't get mad, is it? And that's why I termed it "pulling the tiger's tail"."

From:

anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com

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wiped.livejournal.com

i totally agree with your response. it's nice to see some subtlety in the midst of a lot of black-and-white 'you're with CH or you're with the murderers' thinking. cheers from paris, by the way.

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