It’s difficult - Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were in no way hate speech and are far from advocating violence against any group. Some responses are actual hate speech that are in opposition to principles of pluralism and advocate violence. I don’t see any contradiction in supporting Charlie Hebdo’s freedom while opposing calls to violence. On the other hand, we view actions as legitimate or not based on different perspectives. Is it ok to say that Isis is a terrorist organisation and should be bombed? How about Israel or Syria? If Europeans going to the Middle East to support Isis is terrorism, how about going there to fight against them? I’m not claiming equivalence, but there is a fairly inescapable subjectivity to our judgements and it does open the way for a biased condemnation of one side.
hate speech against Muslims is being celebrated
Hate speech in French law specifically incites violence, disparages or intimidates, or attacks a protected group in unlawful ways (like Holocaust denial). Charlie Hebdo was engaging in parody, not hate speech. Their message was that “these people are awful,” not “these people deserve(d) to die.” Now, remember that I don’t agree with hate speech legislation for a variety of reasons; however, a comedic weekly that features the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost buggering each other (one of Charlie Hebdo’s recent covers) fails under that definition in the same way that it does when the magazine runs one of its cartoons of Mohammed.
Also I seriously suspect that we wouldn’t be celebrating Charlie Hebdo so much were it not for the fact that they were attacked. The importance of celebrating certain kinds of speech to a defense of our rights is, in many ways, directly proportional to how much intimidation is leveled against it. No doubt many of the people in France would rather Charlie Hebdo would have taken its tasteless humor somewhere else - until they became a symbol.
Well, actually, it’s entirely possible to place well-defined limits on free speech. Such as, making it illegal to publicly condone terrorism.
Speech is no more indivisible than any other human right; as long as the limits placed on it are democratically legitimized and applied equally, you are not on a slippery slope that will make you lose free speech.
Interpretations of what Free Speech actually is obviously differ accross the Atlantic. As @Pradaldi has remarked, there are some areas where we Europeans are surprised by the lack of free speech in America. As far as I can tell, it seems to me that Americans tend to view Freedom of Speech strictly from a The People vs. The Government point of view. As long as the government stays completely out of it, anything goes.
In Europe, the sentiment is rather that we democratically agree on what the limits are; and as long as you stay inside those limits, you can be pretty sure you won’t lose your job over what you say. When Apple decides to keep its App Store clean of “offensive” material, Americans tend to think “no big deal”, after all, they are a private company and it is their right to do what they want. Europeans will tend to complain that it’s censorship, and it’s worse than state censorship because we actually get to vote on state censorship laws.
The right to make fun of religion (which is still not absolute in most European countries), is something that has been fought over a lot in Europe. And again, it’s not just about the legal right - the moral right to make fun of religion in polite society is something that is worth defending.
The overly-polite reaction by English-speaking media is quite saddening, just as it was during the 2005 Jyllands-Posten cartoon affair. The refusal to actually show the cartoons in question, let alone provide translations for it, allows them to be taken out of context to prove what evil muslim-hating people the victims were. There seems to be a lot of victim-blaming going on in English-speaking media as well.
I get it, I just find it hypocritical and incongruous. Everyone has the right to say uncontroversial things that aren’t forbidden by law, even in North Korea and East Hellholistan. Once you move to the standard of “free speech, except for stuff that’s totally super tasteless, or illegal” you are simply bargaining over who will get to enshrine their feelings in law, and how hard they’ll be able to crush those who vex them.
Europe doesn’t do much capital punishment, so those persecuted according to the law are unlikely to be shot to death; but the contrast is still reduced to one about judicial process vs. vigilante activity, and exactly how much force you are allowed to use.
Exception encountered: ‘Well-defined limit’ depends on ill-defined terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘publicly’. Clarify?
He could have done more research, and accuracy in any context is important for a journalist, but isn’t the entire idea of being free to speak on any idea/topic mean that we shouldn’t elevate a bunch of recently dead people to a sacred-cow status?
You conclude that CH was engaged in parody, not hate speech. Other have interpreted it differently. Have minorities felt disparaged or intimidated by their cartoons? I’m pretty sure they have. Have the cartoons encouraged hatred, even if that was not their intent? I think is probable. Have they had a more deleterious effect on racial harmony in France than someone “attack[ing] a protected group” by simply questioning or denying the holocaust? I think so.
On the other hand, I think that some of the people being prosecuted for condoning terrorism have at least as good a case for not inciting hatred as CH does (based on some tweets I saw that supposedly gave rise to an investigation, but can’t find now).
Well, the entire point of core rights is that they are not susceptible to the vagaries of democracy. That’s why constitutions and bills of rights are different than normal laws: they cannot simply be changed by normal democratic process. The US couldn’t democratically limit the thirteenth, fifteenth or nineteenth amendments, for example, just because they had the popular support to do so. It’s pretty silly to believe that “rights” that protect minorities and potentially unpopular ideas can be adequately protected by democratic principles.
“Hate speech against Muslims” would be something like “Muslims are vermin and ought to be exterminated, or at least deported.” Because it could lead to violence against actual human beings.
Insulting portraits of Mohammed is not “hate speech” because, as a quasi-mythological figure who died some 1400 years ago, Mohammed cannot be harmed in any real way.
Hurt feelings are not the same thing as being threatened. If others interpret it differently, they’re idiots. Plus, Muslims are not a protected, historically oppressed group under French law, because people didn’t try to exterminate them from Europe on an industrial scale a few decades ago.
I agree with you, I think the system breaks down very quickly when you try to define protected groups, almost inevitably is used by the powerful to suppress dissent, and is logically inconsistent to boot. I won’t defend what I disagree with about French law. I’m simply pointing out that this kind of behavior by the French government is nothing new, and not the sudden burst of hypocrisy the post and linked article claims it to be.
Can you point out where, specifically in the past week, Dieudonne has incited violence?
Is the firebombing of mosques just hurt feelings? Or is denying the holocaust a threat?
But I guess it’s good to know that anyone interprets things differently from you is an idiot.
Tell that to the Bosniaks and descendents of the Iberian Moors. And hatred is OK, so long as it’s not of the Jews (as well as any other minorities that people tried to exterminate from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s on an industrial scale)? That seems very principled.
Jews who died in the holocaust cannot be harmed in any real way, either.
While you are correct from a legal perspective, in fact often times throughout American history private acts of censorship have been criticized by both Right and Left as taking discretion by private entities too far.
The Hollywood Blacklist relied on private entities deciding not to do business with other private entities, but I think/hope most Americans agree today that the result was, at its height, almost as bad as outright government censorship.
We would be well to cultivate a society that combines the best of both worlds there – the legal protections that the United States has with the First Amendment with a broader cultural toleration of those who hold views with which we disagree. Plus more swearing on television.
Is the firebombing of mosques just hurt feelings? Or is denying the holocaust a threat?
Is changing the subject a valid technique of argumentation? Because last I heard Charlie Hebdo wasn’t firebombing anybody. Right-wing FN types are routinely prosecuted for hate speech and hate crimes; Jean Marie Le Pen has been serially indicted. And no, I don’t believe that denying the Holocaust is a threat in and of itself, though it is a disgusting act, but the French have seen fit to criminalize it. I don’t agree. I’ve made that clear.
Tell that to the Bosniaks and descendents of the Iberian Moors.
I actually believe that Bosniaks are a protected group in France; denial of their genocide is also punished. Although somehow I knew you would bring the Moors into this - a historical grievance 600 years old that no living man can remember. I won’t even be surprised when someone brings up the Spanish inquisition.
That seems very principled.
I didn’t say I agreed with it. Nor did I say it was principled from my perspective. I only said it was what France does.
I’m pretty sure the Hollywood Blacklist would fall foul of modern civil rights laws, would it not? We don’t give unrestricted discretion to private entities in hiring and a whole lot of other things, else Jim Crow would still be legal. And of course we can consider civility, tolerance, inclusiveness and general egalitarianism to be virtues without making them legally required.
I had to…
The Hollywood Blacklist would be completely legal. Nobody grieves for the fact that no one will work with Michael Richards anymore except nutty Scientologists.
I’m tempted to say Universities would have a bigger problem due to legal precedents in the meantime, but Steven Salaita disproves that point.
I’m curious since you seem to be knowledgeable about European hate speech laws…would something like Michael Richards’ outburst be likely to be prosecuted as hate speech in France or Germany?
I will not try to defend French laws about speech, as I’m not a big fan of them. But I’ll provide some context regarding why Dieudonné’s facebook post incites hate.
First of all, the French are suddenly “discovering” that many of ther youths are perfectly OK with the idea of people being killed for drawing cartoons or being killed because they’re jews. Schools were supposed to have a moment of silence in memory of the victims, but it didn’t go as planned.
Now, Dieudonné is famous among those youths, often seen as a martyr of freedom of speech and a hero because he’s black (and as such cannot be racist) and he says out loud what they’re thinking: everything bad happens because of the jews.
Now, when he says he feels like “Charlie Coulibaly”, most of them will hear “you should not kill cartoonists, but on the other hand, killing jews like Coulibaly did is fine”. Hence the hate speech accusation.
Also, yes, Michael Richards’ outbust is illegal in France and probably would be prosecuted, but he would have to do it repeatedly to be banned in most cities, as Dieudonné is.
Thanks, that’s exactly what I want to say but my poor English skills don’t allow me to say everything I want.
On a more large point of view, all kind of freedom is limited, and all Fundamental rights have laws to define and “limit” them… but I’m not saying any system is perfect.
I think this hits on the most striking difference between American-style and European-style “free speech”.
We fundamentally trust our judiciary to draw an appropriate line, hopefully based around demonstrable intent rather than actions alone. The US system is built on “healthy distrust”, so depends on absolutes - there effectively is no line, so no-one need be relied upon to draw it.
The difficult part is that these kinds of difference are so culturally ingrained, that it becomes near-impossible to see the other side’s reasoning. From my side of the pond, I can’t believe that, eg, the westboro cretins are tolerated, so “our system” feels right to me because it disallowed them the to the UK. In today’s context, we don’t find hate speech or support of terrorism to be protected either. And from over here, that seems perfectly sane.
