Huh? I was having a discussion with other when you started replying to me, so I’m not sure what your problem is.
Where have I suggested it’s mostly used against antisemitism? I said the origin of most of these laws was a post-war reaction against antisemitism—something you appear to agree with.
Now you seem to be upset that these laws are being used for other purposes than antisemitism and holocaust denial, despite not seeing that there is any sort of slippery slope and the possibility of suppression of other forms of speech. And it’s certainly not like hate-speech holocaust-related laws have been used as models for far broader laws in countries like Poland, right?
And other than the International Declaration on Human Rights, the ECHR is actually enforcable. Parties to the convention are bound by the court’s verdicts.
Which is not surprising. All human rights are always balanced against other rights. Only the exact balance between different rights is slightly different between countries. And yes, the US has a stronger freedom-of-speech tradition than any other country that I know of.
But even in the US, defamation and libel laws exist.
In the context of this event, “hate speech” would be something like “Moslems are vermin, and should be exterminated”. Because it can incite to harm against, you know, living human beings.
Attacks, no matter how vitriolic, against quasi-mythological figures such as Jesus or Mohammed are not “hate speech” since neither of them can be harmed in any way.
I agree that “the pen is mightier than the sword” a fairly romantic concept in many ways, but the idea that the sword can bring peace is pretty romantic too. Ideally, we want to stop conflicts from happening and create allies rather than defeat enemies. ISIS will not be stopped merely by being nice to Muslims, but strengthening ties between communities and fostering understanding will help to remove some of the seeds of conflict. There’s no end to how long conflicts can continue if the root causes are not addressed. I strongly disagree that some elements only respond to force, although some force may be necessary to allow dialogue to happen.
My idea doesn’t really involve the use of hashtags, but rather attempts to overcome the situations where society is fragmented and there is a breakdown in communication. Focusing on killing those responsible gives the promise of a quick solution, but it often just creates more support for them. True integration (by which I don’t mean assimilation) will be a slower process, but I don’t see other ways that it can work.
Sure, but words also have meaning. If humour is used to punch down and support harmful stereotypes, that isn’t really benefiting people and I don’t have to support its content. I can support their right to free speech without agreeing that they’re making things better.
I agree with your point - Hebdo’s covers are seen everywhere, and aren’t necessarily purely educational. But they’re making the point emphatically that freedom of speech is exactly what it says on the tin, and challenging any restriction on it.
They’re anarchic, sure, but I’d rather have fighters for freedom than a systematic bowing of backs.
If we all fought vigorously for these very freedoms, the Hebdos of the world wouldn’t have an audience.
My reading is that conspiracy theorists actually have insanely complex worldviews. Didn’t BB run a piece about this in the last year or so? The basic mindset of conspiracy theory is knowing that something is wrong. What exactly is wrong is malleable. People who really buy into conspiracy theories will usually be willing to simultaneously hold multiple, contradictory conspiracies at the same time, deferring to whichever one fits the newest evidence at that moment.
Definitely fewer moral grey areas, though. Basically everything is wrong all the time!
All that being said, sometimes things really are frame ups (or “false flags”). The suggestion that this could be such an attack is hardly out in magical-thinking woo land. I mean, if solid evidence did appear that this was a “false flag” my reaction would be “Oh, I didn’t expect that” rather than “That’s not possible.” It’s not like supposing that gravity doesn’t work.
We know a small number of people with guns were willing to kill a dozen other human beings to make a point - is it totally inconceivable that they were also willing to employ deception? It’s nowhere on the scale of thinking the CIA was behind 9/11 (but frankly, if 50 years from now it comes out that the CIA was somehow behind 9/11, I will be more shocked that the evidence surfaced that than the CIA was morally bankrupt enough to do such a thing - I’m sure the reason the CIA doesn’t routinely kill off thousands of Americans is because they just don’t have a good reason to do so, not because they would think twice if a “good reason” was there).
Hate speech laws can be totally reasonable. America has the crazy idea that freedom of speech should trump every single other thing. Yet still America let itself become a plutocratic police state, so a fat lot of good that “freedom” is doing. I’ll take everyone else’s reasonable belief that free speech has to be balanced against other rights.
Not to speak for someone else, but does Catholicism support sexually abusing children? Support how, directly financially? Or by aiding and abetting abusers? As a matter of fact it does. I understand that after enormous global public pressure they are gradually turning around on the issue.
Punching down and support harmful stereotypes, like when they draw the Prophet being beheaded by ISIS?
Or like when Charb wrote an editorial saying “he was a Kurd” in support of their fight against ISIS?
Words have meaning, and for all I see, their consistent meaning in Charlie Hebdo was “There is nothing sacred that we will not mock, because religion is bad” without going into hate against people.
Problem is, this is largely a judgment call. Depictions of the prophet are dick moves to those who think drawing the prophet is blasphemy, no matter the intention.
And looking at it through their eyes, it is a dick move because of what they believe to be true about the world.
Now, you may happen to know this, and not believe, as non Muslims do, that drawing the prophet is blasphemy deserving of death. So if you decide to not draw such a cartoon out of deference to other people’s religious convictions, you’re just being nice. If you decide to go ahead with it though, it could be a dick move, it could also be benign.
The only way to say that not abiding by someone elses religious beliefs is always a dick move, Is to say that those beliefs are true. You’d have to be (an extremist) Muslim to do this.
The problem is what happens when you’re convinced that drawing and/or publishing such a cartoon is going to get you killed?
You are admitting that blaspheming under someone elses religion will also earn you the fate reserved for people who freely adopt such a religion. And here is where we disagree.
Not in subjectively judging drawing a cartoon as a dick move. But in what way the dick move is to be interpreted.
If you are going to be so respectful of the religion as to draw a line of respect which can only be crossed by the faithful, you might as well become Muslim.
To that extent would you also agree that punishing someone for not believing as you do is a dick move?
Think about it, it’s the sort of insult that confirms itself.
I call you a violent good for nothing jerk and you respond by punching me in the face. Great, I deserved it, but so did you.
Thing is, nobody here deserved to die (like you said), so why do we need to call them dicks for drawing some cartoons? We could have done that while they were alive, but apparently, the only people paying attention were those who supported the magazine by buying it and those who felt offended by it.
To talk about the dead is to literally beat a dead horse. There’s no more discussion, they won’t change, they’re dead.
To say that they should have done things differently is to somehow say that they deserved this. I hope you don’t mean this. Because now you’re either arguing that they’re dead because they weren’t skilled enough to mock religious people properly or you’re arguing that we should, not only respect other people’s beliefs, but abide by them or face the consequences.
Yes, yes it would. Especially since it would be idiotic.
I guess, they chose some examples of things they actually believed in and knew to be controversial.
But really, are we arguing that they are putting out satire or how effective they are at it?
I honestly don’t understand the cover about Boko Haram (it’s almost certainly a reference to something some French politician said at the time, but I don’t follow French politics very closely). You completely missed the point of the other two cartoons (very briefly : the first one is meant to point out that Marine Le Pen’s party is still racist even if she claims it’s changed, the other one is pure Catholic-bashing abuse directed at the two figureheads of the anti-gay-marriage movement in France). Claiming that some of their cartoons were racist is not absurd, but if you want to do it, I suggest you start by making sure you understand the context.
In an age of surgical drone strikes it almost makes sense to want the perfect jab.
Unfortunately, in a world where fourth parties routinely get offended because you might be offensive to a third party when you are being critical of somebody’s actions, its pretty much impossible to only hurt the ones you hate.
Race, and racism, are social constructs. What’s become plain is that the template of race is applied to Muslims and Islam, so that expressions of bigotry follow familiar patterns.
We make these kinds of judgment calls all the time in real life. You can be an asshole in the streets and insult people or those they’re with. The bounds of what is accepted will be a judgment call depending on the context in which the words are said, but if you cross the line you probably shouldn’t be too surprised if your legal right to free speech ends in illegal violence. We self-censor all the time, and not many people other than members of the Westboro Baptist church and abortion-facility protestors seem to think this is a big problem, or that what the world really needs is more people telling the world how they really feel.
I don’t think this is true at all. I think US foreign policy sucks and they’ve successfully pissed of a lot of people. That doesn’t mean the US deserved 9/11. I think a lot of cartoons shouldn’t be published (and apparently the French government does too, since they tried to persuade them not to publish some of their cartoons), but I don’t think this means that either I or the French government are somehow saying they deserved this.
They really believe that the prophet would pose for porno videos? This, to me, reeks of them chasing controversy as opposed to a message, unless that message is simply that we will publish whatever we want regardless of the threats you make or how mad it makes you. And if that is the message, you could also make a very similar message by mocking antisemitism or holocaust denial laws.
There is a pretty big difference between criminal law and civil law. And a huge difference between after-the-fact civil penalties and prior restraint, which is a cornerstone of American First Amendment law. The French could prevent publication of hate speech in the first place. In the US, you could really only hope to sue after it has been published.
I learned a long time ago that it’s only offensive if it describes you.
If you get upset because someone uses words against you, well, you’re human. If that gives you the right to assault them when you could ignore them then you’re a sociopath who deserves to be marginalized and neutered of political power.
"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
I don’t get this. How would the French prevent publication of hate speech? After all, there is no censorship office that the newspapers are submitted to prior to publication.
I don’t know the details of French law, but here in Austria I know for sure that there are no effective pre-publication limits on free speech.
