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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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2015-01-13 03:26 am (UTC)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.