Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Queen kneeling on Meghan Markle's neck

Very unlike the French to have issues with royalty.

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Holding her out as typical might be. Seeing that racism is so prominent and devastating that it manages to even hurt people in otherwise privileged positions is very much the opposite of trivializing it, though.

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Charlie Hebdo certainly seems to excel at this kind of mean spirited faux edgelord “it’s not racist, it’s just ‘social commentary’, you guys!” brand of “humor”.

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This is Charlie Hebdo. They very deliberately do not let “being able to kill people you disagree with” stop them.

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je ne suis pas Charlie

UHNWI - Ultra high-net-worth individual

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With all the snarky articles not saying the quiet part out loud it was a long time before I figured it out. One drop rule still applies apparently. SMH

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The Treason Felony Act 1848 is still on the books in the UK. That doesn’t enforce lèse-majesté affronts to the crown like this one, but to call for the elimination of the crown, even by peaceful means, is still a felony in the UK, publishable by life imprisonment.

Until 2017 this Hebdo cartoon would have been illegal in Germany; it was illegal to insult foreign heads of state. That is still illegal in other countries (eg Poland and the Netherlands). France, to their credit, has been not very sensitive to the rights of royalty for quite some time.

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I thought Dirtbag Left was closer to their political position?

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No, they’ve always been like that.

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This is still somehow one of the more tasteful Charlie Hebdo covers…

Remember when they did the one with the Syrian boy who had drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean? If you don’t remember, do yourself a favor and don’t look it up.

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The only regulars of theirs whose political associations I was aware of certainly seemed right wing to me. The French equivalent of American “libertarians”.

I’d say it’s a pretty good example.

I mean, the US and the UK both like to claim that racism is not an institutional issue. Any racism is just individual unfortunate instances and really everyone gets a fair shake based on merit, etc., etc.

But if you can, as the meme points out, have members of the royal family and a billionaire media figure and cultural arbiter sit and discuss the everyday casual instances of racism they experience, then should that not make people think “If that is what life is like for the wealthy and privileged, what the hell is it like for ordinary people?”

“And shouldn’t we be doing something about that instead of letting Priti Patel talk crap about how the police is not institutionally racist?”

Or having an LBC presenter tell an expert brought on to discuss racial inequality within the NHS that there can’t be a race barrier within the NHS because whenever he goes to a hospital, the consultant is Indian…

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But she is.

She was raised by a Black mother and identifies as a Black woman. That should be enough for you or anyone. :woman_shrugging:

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Oh, sure, later it all became clear, I just didn’t know anything about her at the time! :joy:

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Thanks for that info!

Judging by the discussion here, the editors of Charlie Hebdo have achieved their goal…

They got people talking.

Theirs is a Larry Flynt view of free speech sometimes: if you’re not being yelled at for being offensive, you’re not defending the limits.

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It seems more like a dead cat, to be honest.

Boris Johnson employed Crosby as his campaign manager during the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections, and wrote of his advice that “There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”

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I’m sorry did you just compare someone’s racial identity related to discrimination that they faced because of that identity with liking a sports team? Really? People were murdered THIS WEEK probably for their race, dude. :woman_shrugging:

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