That if CH has the right to be offensive because free speech, no sacred cows and funny satire, then so does this racist comedian?
While I agree with most of what he says, he makes the mistake of saying the French don’t conflate race with religion… yet the criminalization of anti-semitism is religious, not racial.
This is a poor argument, since modern antisemitism is not so much about religion as it is about ethnicity. It would be more apt to consider that Islamophobia is also fueled by cultural and racial prejudices, rather than by religious ones.
I don’t really think that’s true. I’m pretty sure that neo-nazis would hate a person who converted to Judaism. In fact, they may hate them even more for being a traitor. Ethnicity and religion are always a little intertwined what with the whole people often being the same religion as their parents thing.
Honestly, I think modern anti-semitism is mostly about vivid imagination and outright lunacy more than it is about ethnicity or religion.
Dieudonné is the Fred Phelps of French comedians.
His latest stunt with his own 5-year old kid making a holocaust-denial joke is just disgusting.
On what planet is satire a substantive defense to anything? Satire can absolutely be racist. It’s become a dodge that is neither artful nor clever.
I will say hypocrisy is rampant in this story. Apparently you’re allowed to be a giant asshole, but only about things “everyone knows” are true. If you want to be an asshole and stick your finger directly in the eye of society, no free speech for you.
Well, I was responding to a poster who claimed that antisemitism was a religious phenomenon (i.e. that it as prohibited on religious grounds).
My point is that it’s not the religion itself that the neo-Nazis would object to, but the cultural/historical aspects of being Jewish (or just simply for switching sides, as you said).
People seem to have a very hard time distinguishing between being Jewish, practicing Judaism, and supporting the Israeli government. One can make a very similar statement concerning Islam.
You’re essentially saying that antisemitism is about ethnicity, but this sort of ethnicity itself is something he would consider a “conflation” of race and religion, and thus illegitimate and un-French. And like you say, being Muslim is also an ethnicity—especially since in France it likely means being Maghreb Arab (but we can’t be sure since France doesn’t collect data on this). If it’s a poor argument then it’s an equally poor one by him, especially since race is essentially the point of differentiation between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, whereas Arabs are technically semitic.
Does the basis of the hatred matter? If Islamophobia has it’s roots in the hatred of terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism, does it really matter if all people who are Muslims happen to be targeted simply beacause they are Muslim? Similarly, does it really matter that the hatred of Jews for their presence in the money-lending sector or whatever else cultural and historical reason when all Jews are attacked for that reason?
Abe, I wonder where did you get to see any copies of Charlie Hebdo except for the widely circulated one with the bomb in the turban (which wasn’t even Charlie’s but from the Danish Jylland Posten) or the Dieudonné’s shows in Atlanta that you feel competent to judge what is or isn’t double standard. You are also obviously experienced in the French law because you seem to imply that the fines for Dieudonné were unjust when Charlie Hebdo didn’t get fined.
I see that you are interested in Middle Eastern politics, so I will add this: Dieudonné is often seen as someone who is defending/standing up for the muslims in France, but he is not really. The only common ground he has with many of the more radical/fundamentalist ones is his hate of Jews (aka enemy of my enemy is my friend). The guys from Front National that he is hanging out with are the ones pushing some of the worst anti-immigrant, anti-muslim stuff imaginable, especially now, after those terrorist attacks.
Yes, I agree. I apologize for being pedantic, but it just seemed weird to me to characterize antisemitism (or laws against it) as motivated by religion.
Well, root causes matter when it comes to dealing with these issues. To put less-than-delicately, I think that in Western countries white Muslims do not suffer from the deleterious effects of Islamophobia to the same extent that non-white ones do.
I see anti-semitism is motivated by fantasy and undirected anger. Certainly, though, the most prominent way you can be targeted by antisemites is by being part of a certain religion or by being a blood relative of people who are part of that religion. So I agree with you that it seems weird to say that antisemitism is motivated by religion, but it’s also pretty weird to say that it isn’t.
Glorious. The irony goes without saying.
Let’s just say that “free speech” and “freedom” will have qualifying quotes around these terms from now on.
I didn’t mean to imply that there was no religious component at all, only that it wasn’t the whole thing (or even most of it). As in, I think contemporary antisemitism is more about exploiting the traditional pariah status of the Jews than it is about disagreements over religion. Additionally, I’m pretty sure the whole Israel thing doesn’t help.
I can put words in your mouth if I feel like it. Let me be absolutely abundantly clear about something: I don’t give a fuck about French law. Any law that restricts political speech or dares to attempt to draw a distinction about what constitutes political speech, is a law that I do not respect, and which I encourage others to actively disrespect.
I see you have read some things I wrote, and I see that you have not understood them. I believe in a person’s liberty to speak freely on the issues that concern or interest them. I don’t care if they draw racist cartoons about me. I don’t care if they say that people like me don’t belong somewhere. It’s called having principles. Try it.
The official government line, including from the Interior Minister who ordered the provisional arrest, is that you can’t compare Dieudonné with Charlie, because the former, through his tweet, has committed an actual crime, whereas the other was just offensive. Technically, that’s probably true, although much depends, of course, on who writes and interprets the laws.
More generally, the arrest is probably meant to send a signal that, now the immediate political crisis is past, we are going back to earlier (and much narrower) concepts of freedom of speech.
For what its worth back in the 80s in Austin, TX I knew a white pride skinhead who was most definitely a brown skinned Mexican.
As it says in the Talmud, The Holly One, Blessed Be He, sure did have a strange sense of humor.
The problem was not and is not limited to targeting those of us who are obvious practitioners of the religion but in fact includes targeting the Jew who eats a croque-monsieur on Yom Kippur as well. Historically both religious and secular Jews ended up in the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup.
As I’ve mentioned before, Americans have ceased to see Jews as a separate “race” but it was within living memory that this was not so. Other parts of the world still see us as a distinctly different people, again whether or not we practice our religion.
Makes perfect sense.
Christ, what an asshole.
Why are you even commenting on this, then?
So you do give a fuck.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
