https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
This is a sensitive topic for some people, so please do your best to have civil discussions. Let’s do better than the average social media.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
This is a sensitive topic for some people, so please do your best to have civil discussions. Let’s do better than the average social media.
Obviously it’s horrible to kill people over speech. Cartoons do not justify violence or terrorism.
But we also shouldn’t pretend like speech is necessary or valuable just because it’s offensive or that offending people to the point of violence is noble.
If someone was killed for saying the n word that would be a tragedy and should be condemned. But we shouldn’t all go around yelling the n word just to assert our free speech or pretend like the guy saying the n word was a hero for doing it.
There is a big difference between the two!!
You do not chose to be black, you chose what fairytale to believe in.
You do not try to convert other people to be black, religious try to convert others into their nonsense.
You do not kill people for stopping to be black, Islam does.
Religion NEEDS to be mocked, because it is ridiculous and it is infecting everything around us.
I wouldn’t care about anyone’s religious beliefs if they practiced for themselves and left everyone else alone, but they never do. They have to spread their bullshit and infiltrate governments to try to legislate their bullshit.
Charlie mostly draws satire of people in power or with influence. Do you think they only do that to be offensive?
No, speaking truth to power is an important part of satire and political discourse in general. I haven’t seen the original cartoon but if that’s what it was then I’m all for it, though Muslims are very marginal in France and don’t hold much power.
This was in response to all the people, including a lot in this thread, that also probably haven’t seen the cartoon but want it published everywhere and for us to show more pictures of Muhammed. In that case people are valuing something not because of its message but because it offends and “triggers” people, which is the same rational for some of the worst right wing “comedy”.
Offensiveness can be a means to an end, such as showing the corruption of the powerful, but when it becomes an end unto itself it simply becomes cruelty.
Indeed, that’s why those cartoons don’t target Muslims but the islamists or politicians (Islamism is a political ideology) who try to influence others.
I think what they do is really different from the people in this thread posting offensive cartoons for the sake of freedom to do so. In fact, freedom of expression is much more regulated in France than in the USA. If you post racist content with no indication that it is a satire or some other good intention, you can get condemned for racism. The former leader of the far right party Le Pen who just died yesterday have been convicted multiple times for his racism in the media.
I agree with intentionally provocational speech hiding behind the ‘free speech’ disguise being stupid, but I think its also important to see a difference between racial slurs and discrimination based on things that people can’t change, versus legitimate criticism of religion - which, although not always easy to get out of (I.e. cults, trapped family members, cultural norms) I see as still a fundamentally voluntary behaviour that you can to an extent opt out of as a belief system, as opposed to discrimination on race, sex, disability, nationality, etc.
Now of course that doesnt mean I will go into religious buildings and shout obscenities or try to have edgy atheist rants at inoffensive elderly worshippers - but the saying that “your freedom ends where mine begins” holds true for me, and I won’t tolerate outward discrimination on religious grounds, the forcing of those belief systems inside secular systems like schools or courts or governments, and I think I’m well within my rights to criticise harmful and unacceptable behaviour undertaken for ‘religious’ grounds, which would otherwise be crimes or offences. (I.e. animal torture/sacrifice, child marriage, slavery etc.)
This view is ostensibly reasonable (I’ve been tempted by it myself). The problem is the slippery slope. As soon as someone declares, “I’m offended so pleased don’t say that”, you begin to get de-facto limits about what (perfectly legal) things may be said. In the case of religious offense it’s doubly dangerous because religion always gets a free pass when it comes to offense.
Next thing you know, only a few very brave people are willing to say whatever (perfectly legal) thing has been established as verboten. And then they become easy pickings for extremists. This is exactly what has happened with innocuous, legal, Mohammed cartoons, among other things. It’s called the assassin’s veto and personally I find it much more offensive than any cartoon.
It’s not a slippery slope, it’s an ambiguous gray area which a lot of moral rational debates like this don’t do well with. For example I think we can agree that white people shouldn’t call black people n*gger, but what about negro? There are some people who will do the victim hood Olympics and say calling people black is bad too.
If we follow the free speech absolutist line then we get a bunch of white men demeaning every marginal group with horrific slurs. If we follow the no offense at all costs line then we’re walking around a term for Mexican food because someone said that it’s racist. We need to find some sort of middle ground and that ground is going to be very blurry, socially determined and subjective, and it won’t have any easy hard rules that people desperately search for in stuff like this.
The punishment for leaving this area should just be social ostracization though, not violence or death. There shouldn’t be an assassin’s veto but there also shouldn’t be an asshole get out of jail free card.
This all wasn’t my argument though, I was arguing against the people in this thread saying we should’ve doubled down, published the cartoon in all major publications and done more Mohammad drawings simply to assert free speech. That’s saying that speech is valuable and should be spread simply because its offensive and caused an overreaction which is the same logic as those annoying right wing assholes who say horrible shit to “trigger the libs”. Offensiveness can be a means to an end but when it becomes an end unto itself then it just becomes cruelty.
This leans heavily on two very modern, and US-centric, ideas:
Personally I dispute these premises. I think it would be better if we stuck to something close to free-speech absolutism: easier to police; no perverse incentives to victimhood; resilience is an underrated virtue, etc.
Technically I belong to one of your “marginalized groups” but I don’t see myself as a victim. My answer to insults is usually to roll my eyes rather than to break down in tears and call for Daddy to step in.
Anyway, I think this is really about the cultural zeitgeist. My ideas are going out of fashion and yours are coming into fashion. Better hope this experiment goes well.
Taboos aren’t new, they’ve just shifted. Before they were based more on Christian morality but nowadays it’s mostly from a secular multicultural morality.
If someone repeatedly called you a slur you may not break down and cry, though I don’t judge those who do, but wouldn’t you at least stop talking to them? Wouldn’t you tell other people to also stop associating with them? I know I would and that is the social ostracization that I think should be a punishment for offensive behavior.
I don’t see how you can make the case that verbal abuse doesn’t harm people without completely ignoring psychology and mental health. If someone becomes depressed due to harassment are they not harmed? What if they commit suicide, is it purely their fault since they couldn’t toughen up and the bully is absolved as some fucked up form of natural selection?
Even ignoring mental health words can damage your respect which is a valuable resource that is being unjustly taken. If your bosses right hand man keeps making misogynist jokes and using slurs against you and then you get passed over for a promotion because your boss doesn’t take you seriously then those words cost you monetarily. Your level of respect can open or close many doors in your life and having someone degrade that which you may have worked very hard for is harmful.
The discrimination question is a valid concern. My general approach there is to have strong legislation that puts the onus on companies etc to prove non-discrimination, and leave it there. Trying to legislate outcomes is counter-productive, there are other ideals that are more fundamental than group non-discrimination. We are human beings before we are members of this or that group. Alas Americans, especially younger ones, tend not to see things this way any more!
But for this question of “emotional harm” (which is clearly what you’re talking about), I think it’s more complex than it looks. That somebody might be “hurt” by some non-physical “violence” is a subjective reality that we created collectively. It can therefore be uncreated collectively, if we so desire. I think that would be the better path to take.
I agree with your sentiment although the n word wouldn’t have been my choice for that analogy.