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Les fesses sataniques
I'm having a mixed reaction to the events at Charlie Hebdo. On the one hand, the massacre is horrific and I absolutely don't hold the victims accountable for it. Whatever the provocation, it was entirely the killers' decision to take up arms and needlessly slaughter people. However, baiting Muslims has been the magazine's stock-in-trade for some years now. Despite the outlandish claims of Islamophobes, Muslims are still very much a minority in France and a disadvantaged one, which means this is punching down. So I'm not eager to see these cartoonists acclaimed as free-speech martyrs.
Worse, all they've really gone and proved by pulling the tiger's tail is that if you keep it up long enough, eventually unstable men will take up arms against you. We kind of knew that already, didn't we? Ultimately all this does is play into the hands of extremists on both sides. Seeing those who seek to humiliate Islam taken down a peg is a great recruitment tool for young radicals. Conversely, those demagogues warning of "Eurabia" have further confirmation for their contention that Islam is incompatible with modern civilisation.
So now we have a dozen people dead, thousands more living in fear, and no end in sight to the rising tensions between immigrants and nativists in Europe or elsewhere. I can't and won't criticise these journalists for "getting themselves killed"; that's victim-blaming nonsense. But several of them did contribute to making our world a little bit worse, and for what?
ETA: Given the professionalism of the assassins, Juan Cole posits that this was an al-Qaeda plot to provoke an overreaction that will further alienate young Muslims in Europe.
Sandip Roy shares some of my reservations. Jacob Canfield goes further. ("In summary: Nobody should have been killed over those cartoons. Fuck those cartoons.") Surprisingly good discussion in comments.
Worse, all they've really gone and proved by pulling the tiger's tail is that if you keep it up long enough, eventually unstable men will take up arms against you. We kind of knew that already, didn't we? Ultimately all this does is play into the hands of extremists on both sides. Seeing those who seek to humiliate Islam taken down a peg is a great recruitment tool for young radicals. Conversely, those demagogues warning of "Eurabia" have further confirmation for their contention that Islam is incompatible with modern civilisation.
So now we have a dozen people dead, thousands more living in fear, and no end in sight to the rising tensions between immigrants and nativists in Europe or elsewhere. I can't and won't criticise these journalists for "getting themselves killed"; that's victim-blaming nonsense. But several of them did contribute to making our world a little bit worse, and for what?
ETA: Given the professionalism of the assassins, Juan Cole posits that this was an al-Qaeda plot to provoke an overreaction that will further alienate young Muslims in Europe.
Sandip Roy shares some of my reservations. Jacob Canfield goes further. ("In summary: Nobody should have been killed over those cartoons. Fuck those cartoons.") Surprisingly good discussion in comments.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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
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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.