Sean Gabb
As ever, for the avoidance of doubt, I will say that I believe in freedom of speech, regardless of what offence may be given. Anyone who responds with violence deserves the fullest punishment allowed by law. Anyone who defends a violent response is a bigot.
But let us put Islam aside for the moment, and consider the general output of Charlie Hebdo. Have a good look at this cartoon. Is it funny? Is it brave? Is it making any point that is worth discussing? Is it doing anything beyond giving gross and unprovoked offence? When Bayle and Voltaire and Gibbon wrote cuttingly about the Christian Faith, what they gave us retains all its argumentative and comedic power a quarter of a millennium later. The questions Voltaire asked about the chronology of the historical books of the Old Testament remain a challenge to any biblical literalist. The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall remain a masterpiece of sustained irony. By comparison, the above is at best tiresome.
Certain facts of demography have brought us into a cultural war with Islam as it is usually practised. If we are to win this, I suggest we shall need better weapons than the equivalent of that cartoon.
I repeat that the cultural leftists at Charlie Hebdo did not deserve to be murdered. Even so, they make thoroughly disreputable martyrs to free speech – a cause, by the way, in which they do not appear to have believed in any general sense.
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I don’t understand the cartoon. Monseigneur 23 has 3 Dads – with the old man being “the Father”, being anally penetrated by a younger man “the Son”, who has an oddly shaped sex toy called “the Holy Ghost” in his rear end. It is not funny – partly because I don’t understood who it is directed against or what point is being made.
I suspect Charlie Hebdo is a more “daring” version of Private Eye, which, under Ian Hislop, is a uniformly tiresome magazine. I expect the genuinely funny things that could be said about the left are left unsaid in both magazines.
The only good thing about C.H. that can be said is that at least it did publish “offensive” cartoons, when most British publications refused to show the Danish Jyllenpostens cartoons about Islam.
I think a good and historically accurate film about the life of Muhammad should be made in the West, showing him condemning runaway slaves to hell, authorising rape in warfare (so that God had more opportunities to create life), ordering the killing of infidels, having-on-the-spot revelations ordering young girls to marry him although he already had four wives, etc. There is much fascinating – and appalling – material in his life. If this commitment to free speech means anything, the BBC should be ordering a dramatisation a.s.a.p.
Not really sure I understand it either. Perhaps if I was a male Gay atheist, then I might find a case for finding it “offensive”, perhaps for making fun of my preferred way of having sex, if that is indeed what they have (I don’t know and am afraid to ask) and making it look like I like God and stuff like that, and orgasmically-wet myself over the idea of Him.
Is this the sort of thing they drew? (It’s not even technically very good.)
In the end, if there is a God (I do rather think there is actually, as a scientist) and if He is Omnipotent, Omnicscient and hopefully Beneficent, (as in “In The Name Of The Most Merciful God” as it says in front of every chapter of my Koran in front of me here) then no Man can hope to begin to either predict His actions, or prophesy when He will “come here”, if at all. if He is that good at what He does, then we are utterly dispensable, and of no account whatsoever – notwithstanding that we can now Comprehend, dimly, we think, maybe, What Is In His Mind.
All the signs point to God being rather pre-occupied elsewhere right now.
But ” Mohammed”
– The Movie(s) tetralogy” –
Would run like this:- (1) “The Awakening and the Deal”, (2) “Flight and Revelation”, (3) “A Wife For A Life”, (4) “The Consumation” – would not need much special effects or money since there will be millions of willing extras, and would scoop every Oscar and BAFTA award going. I expect they’ll cast Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley as these are the happening people right now I believe.
“Some People Were Mortally-Harmed in the filming of this movie (all blood and heading-swords were real), and also animals”.
Somehow, I can’t see Peter Jackson wanting to direct these.
Some very valid comments Sean.
I believe someone was sacked from this magazine a few years back for making a fairly mild political joke at Jewish expense. And I also believe that the magazine was involved in a call to ban the French National Front 1996. So yes, at best an uneven champion of freedom of speech.
As for the “#Je suis Charlie” crowd, it would be interesting to know, for example, whether given his sudden enthusiasm for free speech, Dave now plans to repeal the UK laws that criminalise people for making the wrong kind of tweet or saying the wrong thing about a designated “victim” group. Or for “glorifying terrorism”, whatever that means. Or discussing some aspect of the work of the Court of Protection. Or an adult looking at the wrong kind of picture of another consenting adult.
And it would also be interesting to know whether his friend Francois will now be repealing eqivalent French laws that criminalise the “wrong” kind of history and the making of disparaging remarks about various French mascot groups.
And here it is interesting for a moment to consider what would have happened to Charlie Hebdo at the hands of the French authorities themselves if Jews rather than Muslims had been the targets of its satire. I think that we all know the answer to that question.
I would just add that apropos the UK media this short post is well worth reading:
http://howtobeacompletebastard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/wristband-solidarity-from-british-media.html
It is also quite telling that when the plucky Daily Telegraph tweeted a photo of someone holding a copy of Charlie Hebdo they carefully pixelated out the cover picture – just in case:
http://www.imediaethics.org/News/4983/Who_is_afraid_of_charlie_hebdo_cartoons.php
Meanwhile the odious capering clown Boris Johnson has come out with this spectacular gobledekook, in which somehow he has contrived for each sentence to contradict the previous one, pretty much-
Nobody sane would vote for this malignant buffoon.
I also looked at what Boris said. But, not really being able to make out the logic he used, I walked away, confused.
I think that might be because he didn’t use any logic.
Because I don’t live in London, I didn’t have to choose, but I think he was up against Ken Livingstone.
Livingstone was at least an honest Communist. I voted for him, actually. Just to upset Tony Blair, really.
This is vintage “Boris”. The key point to note is how various contradictory ideas are jumbled up.
That’s no accident. The idea is that the superficial listener is almost bound to hear something there that he agrees with, overlook all the contradictions and things he doesn’t like, and reach the conclusion that “Boris” is on his side, thus giving this scheming politician maximum voter appeal.
You can see this working in the piece that you quote: there are things that both authoritarians and libertarians can seize on. Of course none of it stands up to serious scrutiny; it isn’t designed to, and from his viewpoint the demographic that does expect logical argument is too small to be worth pursuing electorally even if he felt inclined to do so.
No, the idea here is to appeal to the type of voter who can only respond to politics with emotion – and all you should expect from this man is the same old corporatism and authoritarianism that the Conservative party usually serves up.
Sean Gabb states:
[quote]”Anyone who responds with violence deserves the fullest punishment allowed by law. Anyone who defends a violent response is a bigot.”[unquote]
Dr. Gabb’s condemnation is not of violence per se, but violence in response to free speech that offends. I’m quite sure I can agree with this, but it’s apparent that the state is able to deploy and justify such violence itself, under the pretence of lawful prosecution, to lock up people who cause ‘offence’ to certain protected groups.
Is it not the case that this is done not out of an abstract concern about ‘causing offence’, but due to a need to suppress certain opinions and forms of dissent that threaten the elite or their client groups with scrutiny?
If so, is it possible that the naive ‘offence’ thesis being assumed here by all (or most) analysts, including even the perceptive Dr. Gabb, might be mistaken? It is not that Moslems feel offended by cartoons. It is, rather, a wish to impose broadly Islamicist mores and values on European civilisation, and a concomitant determination to suppress any outgrowth of intolerance or dissent towards Islamic and Moslem hegemony, wherever it might arise.
It could be, and everyone here has allowed the possibility.
Possibility? From where I’m standing, and philosophical/ontological niceties aside, it looks like a racing ‘certainty’.
I think almost-everybody who has discussed this issue has missed that this is, in reality, a civilisational/racial conflict – and always has been. However, I would argue that of all the groups that threaten Europe, the Moslems are the least threatening and for the most part, they are here simply to serve as scapegoats. But they are still, in their own way, a threat and it has nothing to do with some sordid magazine that prints bad cartoons.
The “free speech” issue is fake and a distraction. It allows discussion to be diverted into liberal issues such as who has a licence to offend and who doesn’t – which is beside the point. In a European society, there would be no issue or discussion about free speech. The concept would simply be taken for granted as a near-absolute liberty. The problem is we are no longer Europe.
Discussions around illusory concepts also allows different groups in society to pretend they agree on certain common civilisational standards, all the while quietly pursuing their own collective ethnic interests. That is what those marches are really about. It’s for show.
The more ‘violent’ and ‘bigoted’ the Moslems become, the more European civilisation will retreat back defensively on its fake, invented liberal values and an increasingly empty construct of what it is to be ‘European’, ‘French’, ‘German’, ‘British’, etc. That is what organised Islam counts on. They are playing a two-handed game: using both political/cultural techniques and physical force. But they are also getting help.
In the end, ‘violence’ is not bigoted. It is just a tactic. In this case, it is being well-utilised by the enemies of Europe. Who those ‘enemies’ are is not a simple question. Who was behind the attacks in Paris is also not necessarily obvious. The Moslems are, in fact, the least threatening group in society because their aims, motives and tactics are rather obvious to all but the purblind.
Bring in millions of immigrants from backward theocratic societies, then insult their religion in the most vulgar way possible – what could possibly go wrong?
To set the record straight, the establishment figures claiming “je suis Charlie” and thereby suggesting they support free speech are supersized hypocrites.
The same press reporting this reports every year on the Muslims who burn cars at the New Year, calling them “jeunes” (youths), but refuses to call them what they are, ie, Muslims.
Likewise, the mayor of Paris recently threatened to sue Fox News for telling the truth about Paris, namely, that it contains Muslim no-go zones were police and firemen may not enter.
That is simply too much truth for these lovers of freedom of the press.