Charlie Hebdo shootings & retaliation

[botley]

Okay, so since I complained in the ISIS thread about Islamic extremists being lumped together, and there really being so much more to talk about in relation to this, what do you make of the Charlie Hebdo shootings yesterday in Paris? An outrage, sure — was it an attack on freedom of speech? What about the high percentage of public response that is purely racist invective, which al-Qaeda was probably counting on as an aid to their cause of drawing more French Muslims into their ranks? Elsewhere in France today, some idiots went out shooting at mosques in "retaliation". Surely that can't help but fan the flames.

[Jinsai]

I just got angrily "unfriended" on Facebook over this... so... Right now, the people we need to be rallying support behind are the victims who were murdered, and the ultimate right that we should be defending is the right to be offensive, outrageous, mean, whatever the fuck you want to be, and not have to fear lethal retaliation. We also have to look into the intentions of the murderers, and I'm curious to hear them defend this, but I really got fed up with people having a tough time dealing with the fact that the comic strip was being heralded/championed despite their insensitive content. The support for Charlie Hebdo is in large part not truly an endorsement of their content, but a statement of support for the concept of free speech, especially against the threats of tyranny or terrorism.

[marodi]

" I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

[Sutekh]

Charlie Hebdo is a racist paper (there is no doubt about this, they have portrayed black politicians as monkeys more than once) - but we don't kill racists.

It's certainly an attack on free speech in the vein of the Rushdie affair. The awful thing about this is we are moved to defend a puerile, racist rag. But tests are supposed to challenge, I guess

Also amusing how all these muslim bashers don't seem to realise that the cop who was shot point blank was a muslim

[baudolino]

that's an oversimplification of satirical art. show me an un-altered cartoon that supports your claim.

[Sutekh]

You could google it yourself in 2 seconds but very well, here's charb's cartoon depicting a black french MP as a monkey

not a monkey because she's messy, or stupid, she's just depicted as a monkey... zero context or props or scenery

You can accuse me of oversimplification but have you ever read the paper? It's for right wing armchair thumpers, they consciously toe the line because they can't compete with Canard. That's their audience and this is the kind of thing they put out

[baudolino]

ehm, i asked for an UN-altered cartoon. the one you posted misses a lot. easy to google by the way.

[Sutekh]

OK so why is the cartoon not racist? What's the worthy message there

[baudolino]

OK so why is the cartoon not racist? What's the worthy message there

have you seen the original? anyway. Satirical art is per definition provocative and can easily be missunderstood. any society which support "free speech" also has to rely (to a certain extend) on the maturity of its citizens. But mature citizens are apparently a rare species nowadys.

[Sutekh]

I'm not talking about satirical art in general I'm talking about this paper specifically. Satire is supposed to be provocative but that doesn't mean satire is an arena for racism - overt or covert. Satire is about throwing a light on political and social problems by using humour. Using publications to spread racist sentiments or sympathy isn't satire, it's closer to propaganda.

I guess it boils down to your perspective on that specific cartoon - myself, I've read the paper in the past and thought "ew", France has a large, burgeoning right wing population. The paper was, in my opinion, pandering to the racists in their crowd by putting out such an image.

The presented joke might not have been "black person is like a monkey", but there is no way it would not have occurred to the cartoonist that it would be interpreted that way. To me it's fairly obvious they knew full well it would score them some brownie points (pardon the expression) with their closet racist readership and generate a bit of publicity for the paper. While we're defining satire I think it's worth remembering that satire is supposed to be a noble endeavour, providing right wingers with an illicit thrill to sell a few papers is about as grubby as publishing gets

BUT

they should be free to be that shitty

[baudolino]

I'm not talking about satirical art in general I'm talking about this paper specifically. Satire is supposed to be provocative but that doesn't mean satire is an arena for racism - overt or covert. Satire is about throwing a light on political and social problems by using humour. Using publications to spread racist sentiments or sympathy isn't satire, it's closer to propaganda.

I guess it boils down to your perspective on that specific cartoon - myself, I've read the paper in the past and thought "ew", France has a large, burgeoning right wing population. The paper was, in my opinion, pandering to the racists in their crowd by putting out such an image.

The presented joke might not have been "black person is like a monkey", but there is no way it would not have occurred to the cartoonist that it would be interpreted that way. To me it's fairly obvious they knew full well it would score them some brownie points (pardon the expression) with their closet racist readership and generate a bit of publicity for the paper. While we're defining satire I think it's worth remembering that satire is supposed to be a noble endeavour, providing right wingers with an illicit thrill to sell a few papers is about as grubby as publishing gets

BUT

they should be free to be that shitty

depicting popular persons as apes in cartoons has a long tradition in france. the sample you choose was incomplete and hence not suitable to proof your claim that Charlie Hebdo and its creators were/are racists. which they aren't imho.

[Sutekh]

If that's what you think then I haven't made myself clear - I think they were making a non racist joke whilst towing the line in a way they knew would please their right wing readers. There's no point in saying the cartoon wasn't complete as the point I'm making only requires the caricature and some information about the background of the magazine and its readership

[baudolino]

that is an unfounded assumption and contrary to the personal statements of the accused authors imo. And reducing that cartoon to a lone picture makes nothing clear but conceals its meaning/intention. Charlie Hebdo and every other contemporary satirical magazine i know of have the intention to encourage "self-thinking" in general. If you don't like it than it might just be a subjective matter of taste.

[Sutekh]

No, like I've said, my issue here is that I believe there is a pandering to racist demographic within the image, if so, that would be objective reality rather than a subjective opinion.

And I really don't know about self-thinking being encouraged... it's a right wing muslim bashing paper in a country that is fairly right wing and has a tense relationship with its muslim community. They're totally going with the flow

edit - they've cornered the suspects now, it's moving to a siege

[baudolino]

No, like I've said, my issue here is that I believe there is a pandering to racist demographic within the image, if so, that would be objective reality rather than a subjective opinion.

And I really don't know about self-thinking being encouraged... it's a right wing muslim bashing paper in a country that is fairly right wing and has a tense relationship with its muslim community. They're totally going with the flow

edit - they've cornered the suspects now, it's moving to a siege

It is a liberal (in the best sense) any (stupid) ideology bashing paper in a country that is in its majority left wing.

[Sutekh]

A country where 400,000 people join a march against homosexuality and the national front is set to storm the next election? Where they have a government enforced dress code for muslims? I know it's all relative but France has a strong right wing current, it's not marginalised like the far right in the UK or Germany

[Jinsai]

Charlie Hebdo is a racist paper (there is no doubt about this, they have portrayed black politicians as monkeys more than once) - but we don't kill racists.

It's certainly an attack on free speech in the vein of the Rushdie affair. The awful thing about this is we are moved to defend a puerile, racist rag. But tests are supposed to challenge, I guess

It's simple though. Yes, the paper was/is racist. Its form of humor wasn't really clever or insightful either, it's just shitty awful racism. True, it's easier to take the high road in a case like Rushdie with The Satanic Verses, which I finally did read and it's not a bad book at all. Even if I didn't like the book, at least there's a defensible artistic product at the heart of the debate, and it feels more rewarding when you defend that sort of thing.

But maybe it's essential that we have to defend something tasteless, awful, and racist against the idea that any of those qualities would make it any more or less worthy of being a target for violence. It's a bit of a wake up call where we have to stand up and defend the rights of people that we don't even really like, because that's a truer test of our values.

[Sutekh]

Absolutely - I'm loathe to defend hebdo, but free speech is important, important things should survive testing, and a test should be challenging

[Khrz]

You could google it yourself in 2 seconds but very well, here's charb's cartoon depicting a black french MP as a monkey

not a monkey because she's messy, or stupid, she's just depicted as a monkey... zero context or props or scenery

You can accuse me of oversimplification but have you ever read the paper? It's for right wing armchair thumpers, they consciously toe the line because they can't compete with Canard. That's their audience and this is the kind of thing they put out

That drawing was in direct reaction to an actual quote from a far right magazine comparing that minister to an ape. Context. CH wasn't racist, its goal was to taunt every group and power trying to impose their view and shut down difficult topics. Their humor was lowbrow and offensive, but they made fun of every side.

[Khrz]

A country where 400,000 people join a march against homosexuality and the national front is set to storm the next election? Where they have a government enforced dress code for muslims? I know it's all relative but France has a strong right wing current, it's not marginalised like the far right in the UK or Germany

Not trying to defend the decisinon about the burqa, but once again, context : France is founded on secularism ; Everyone has the right to be religious, but there's a very strong separation of the church and the state. As such every employee of the government, being a representative of the nation's value, ought to be religiously neutral in its appearance : no obvious diplay of crosses for instance. People are absolutely free to wear a burqa in the streets, wherever they go. Just not when you work in an officially national setting, or on the photo of your ID card (that should be obvious, but it apparently wasn't).

The march against gay marriage/adoption was deeply religious at heart (something Charlie Hebdo actually fought against/mocked), christians and muslims were heavily present there. Yes the right wing is gaining speed here, mostly because they've cleaned their act to be more PC, and also because the Far Left and left wing have left many left-leaning people disappointed. Traditionally, France remains left-leaning, only in the current political context, they are completely at loss with nobody left to which turn their votes.
I really don't want to sound confrontational here, I'm deeply sorry if I may come out that way, but where are you from Sutekh ? It sounds like you're making a lot of assumption based on actual information yes, but lacking any context ?

[Sutekh]

Sorry but people aren't free to wear the burqa in the street - it's a total ban on burqa/niqab in public places.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11305033

also remember this? This is not something that happens in a left wing country http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...led-woman.html

I'm from London but I visit france fairly regularly, I read french papers, have French friendfs etc (after all I'm geographically closer to France than I am to Scotland)... Like I say, it's relative - compared to the UK or Scandinavia, France is right wing. My French friends tend to be pretty uptight on a variety of issues, every conversation about politics I've ever had in France has always ended up with people preaching social conservatism to me.

At the end of the day you had that massive anti gay march, you banned the burqa and the national front is huge - whereas the BNP (UK equivalent of FN) get less than 2% of the vote, an anti gay march would never be allowed let alone be attended by nearly half a million, and we'd never enforce a dress code on minorities.

So from my perspective, France is a more right wing country than Britain, and this is because you've got a lot of rightwingers... I remember driving to nantes from clisson a few months ago, and every pillar on the motorway had a stencil of le pen on it. You just wouldn't get that in the UK, because the support isn't there - last election they averaged 1.9% support, whereas at the french elections in september, the FN scored about 26% & the socialists got 14%. To me that says something

[Khrz]

Sorry but people aren't free to wear the burqa in the street - it's a total ban on burqa/niqab in public places.

Odd to see so many of them every day then ?

Traditionally left-leaning doesn't mean homogeneous. Indeed, there is a dangerously rise of the right wing, something most of the country seems concerned about. There was a massive anti gay marriage march (allowed under the freedom of speech and protest law), and massive pro gay marriage marches. The issue has proved divisive, but gays can marry, and everyone who tried to oppose that has been left behind. The leader of that movement is forgotten, and has lost all influence she could have after that. The fact that an anti-gay march wouldn't be allowed in a democracy is somewhat worrying though, isn't it ? Even though freedom of speech is relative in France (something I actually find paradoxical and unhealthy, I want to know who I disagree with, not have them rile each other in hidden forums), most issues are deemed worthy of debate.

I have no idea if Britain is more left wing than france, and honestly don't care, as I fail to see the point of that comparison. The problem when comparing politics between countries is that despite using the same terms, they describe very different things. Obama is liberal, but applied to french politics, he's strongly right wing. Your right wing sounds less social than ours. Those things are extremely relative, and only representative of the politics inside each country. Issues are different, background is different, history is different...

Look, I'm not trying to defend some of those political stances, being left-leaning myself I disagree with most of them. The decisions about the burqa for instance, were made under Sarkozy's stewardship (UMP/right wing), and many of his stances were dictated by populism. Indeed, those aren't left-leaning decisions. But you're painting that picture with a broad brush, and I ought to add some nuances to that picture. There's a precise timeline to those events, a political and social context that is absent from your posts.

[Exocet]

There is a second hostage situation taking place in Paris. A guy walked into a restraunt with two machine guns.

[Sutekh]

Yeah don't get me wrong - I'm not saying France is Nazi Germany or that most French people are wingnuts, I'm just saying that generally speaking it is pretty right wing & it has a lot of right wingers compared to the rest of W Europe - which is a stone cold fact, as the election results, policy changes and social issues illustrate

Comparison is far from pointless - you're correct that much of politics is relative and terms have different meanings across different borders, but there are certain objective barometers which indicate how socially liberal a country is, things which mean the same in every country - the general attitude towards LGBT and Ethnic communities are two of the biggest indicators.

An anti-gay march is an anti-gay march wherever you are, it means the same thing, it's not quite like the strange American alternative universe use of the word "liberal", which everywhere else means classically liberal in the vein of Locke, whereas in America it means a fabian society type middle class socialist progressive

The point of the comparison is you might not be able to appreciate how far left or right of centre your own country is as much as someone who is from a different political climate could. If you've been somewhere very right wing and somewhere very left wing, you get a better sense of what the middle ground is. Excesses that might seem normal or usual to you will stick out more to someone who is from a different kind of system. The other side of the coin is that a lot of my friends from Poland, the middle east and yes France think the UK is suicidally liberal

[Khrz]

It's in a jewish supermarket actually. Probably related to the recent events, but until those (a woman and a man) guys are arrested, there's no way to tell to which extent. It seems way more random.

[Sutekh]

BBC news is saying it's the guy who shot the policewoman

I'm sorry to say this Khrz but I dread to think what's going to happen to the politics in France over the coming months, I think you're going to see exactly what I've been talking about mushroom in terms of support

[Khrz]

The point of the comparison is you might not be able to appreciate how far left or right of centre your own country is as much as someone who is from a different political climate could.

Alright, that's a very god point. And the fact is that the political left side is getting weaker and weaker, as the right wing has had a tendency to rely on populism to gather votes and attention. It is generally accepted that some right wing politicians are trying to sweep the rug from under the FN's feet by using their own rhetoric, which has proved a disastrous maneuver, as it only reinforced the status or the far right.

The fact that an organized anti gay sentiment has been expressed is important indeed, but isn't it just as important that countless spontaneous counter-marches have been held all over the country ? Or the fact that gay marriage has passed and is considered a non-issue by now ? Doesn't that say just as much about the population. People saw right wing, hard religious movements organize and gather, and decided they had to take to the streets to show they were supporting the right of everyone to marry and have the same status as every other citizen.

Fact is, the right wing is trying to act against religious extremism and doing a disastrous job at it, while the left wing is too scared to touch the issue with a hundred-foot pole, as it would inevitably stain their already problematic image. Everyone's trying to figure out how to handle this without alienating the population, and so far it has been less than successful.

And yeah, I have the same concerns, everyone has. The attack on CH is going to benefit a whole bunch of very nasty, despicable dickheads.

Oh, an addendum : FN is notoriously considered right wing, but it is not, not really. For instance I have a family relative who's very far-left, and who's counting on the success of the FN to "stir shit up" after the countless failures of the far left to deliver. Their voters come from all backgrounds, associating with various sides of the coin. While the FN used to be indeed far right, the ascension of Jean-Marie LePen's daughter has completely shuffled the cards in the recent years.

[icecream]

Sutke, I thought UKIP was a pretty right wing party, almost like FN. Are they just right wing but not far right? My understanding is they are becoming quite popular too.

[Sutekh]

@icecream
UKIP are doing pretty well but nonetheless their success is nothing compared to FN's. The general election in May will show how far UKIP have advanced. Thus far they have 2 MPs, and both of those were established and well liked Conservative party politicians who simply switched sides. We've yet to see a UKIP candidate knock out an existing MP
@Khrz Sure - there's more to it. Like I said, I'm not saying France is Nazi Germany, just that there is a strong right wing current that is more pronounced than in the rest of western Europe (although the rest are catching up). There's a strong socialist and secular tradition in France which is to be admired. Also on a more frivolous note I've always liked how the French aren't uptight about nudity (Brits are messed up in that department, still in victorian mode)

I'm sure there's lots of tactical and punishment voting going on, but let's be real, most people who vote FN do so because they agree with what FN say.

It seems to be happening across Europe at the moment, with the Freedom party in the netherlands, true fins in finland, UKIP in Britain and also the rise of street movements in Britain and Germany such as pegida and EDL... antifascists often oppose them, but such groups are almost always composed of members of the far left - there's no populist anti fascist groups in the way there's populist right wing groups.

Anyway this is drifting to the point where it almost belongs in my "Europe lurches to the right" thread

[Khrz]

I'm sure there's lots of tactical and punishment voting going on, but let's be real, most people who vote FN do so because they agree with what FN say.

Well that's the problem : since Marine Lepen's leadership, and due to the very nature of France secular tradition, most of what the FN say has become actually politically correct. When her father used to make jokes about Jews and cremation ovens, she simply talks about stopping Muslims from praying in the streets. Which is, okay wtf, but not too different from a UMP representative claiming Arab kids are stealing other kids' chocolate bread "because it's Ramadan" (which never happened of course, but that's how low the guys are going).

So, you have religious extremists trying to impose their views in a secular country (to which CH regularly reacted, hence why you would consider them racist, when it's only an instance of their content reflecting the zeitgeist, they mocked Catholics just as well, only Catholics have learned not to be so vocal anymore), a left wing party who wants nothing to do with it, a right wing party trying to act AND stop the FN from stealing their votes, and the FN pointing out at that mess and saying "isn't it time those fuckers went back home ?"

That's the context for the attack on Charlie Hebdo, that's the context under which Charlie Hebdo operated.