I suspect he was simply warning that it was becoming dangerous. Not that they were wrong in a moral sense.
Charlie Hebdo/ Hara Kiri, even in his early days (I had some familiarity with the 70s issues, while I have none with the recent ones, apart from what I saw in the current news), has always been deliberatly provocative and offensive.
I know you think that. You’ve made that clear. But they didn’t “choose” to die on that hill. The Muslims chose it. And you think it’s the same thing.
You poke a rabid dog enough times and you have, obviously, decided you enjoy poking thedog enough to consider getting bitten worth it.
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that when you acquiesce to threats of violence, you send the message to extremists that threatening violence is the way to get attention and get people to take you seriously.
I applaud all the media sources that had the courage to publish Charlie Hebdo’s drawings after the attack - not because I agree with Charlie Hebdo’s drawings, but because ** it is essential to show that this senseless attack was not successful in silencing Charlie Hebdo**. If you show the fanatics that violence WORKED in silencing Charlie Hebdo, you are just encouraging other people to act out violently when they see something they don’t want the media to publish.
If you think that Muslims are the only group of people who are capable of acting out violently like this in response to unflattering media, then you are very naive I’m afraid.
(Also: no, Muslims are not a race. Not all Arabic people are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arabic.)
The murdered editor had stated he would rather die standing than living knelt.
So I guess it allowed him not to kneel to appease the religious maniacs.
I realized I misspoke in the OP. I shouldn’t have used the word racist. My bad and that one word nearly derailed the entire thread. :o
What I meant was, my reaction to Charlie’s cartoons was **identical **to my reaction to racist cartoons I’ve seen. That same kick in the gut, sick to my stomach feeling. How could anyone think this stuff is acceptable feeling.
YMMV but I can’t separate my reactions. They are equally grotesque and denigrating.
this speaks for itself
obviously racist. I guess they deserve some credit for equally insulting everybody.
No, not obviously. I think you still don’t know what “racism” is. Racism is the belief that traits inhere in races. Some dictionaries call racism the belief that one race is superior to others. Who is being mocked in that cartoon? Blacks or whites? And what trait is being ascribed to the insulted race? I think the caption reads, “Fear Changes Sides,” and the paper reads, “Sarkozy Screwed.”
I don’t get it.
I have noticed that the cartoons generally don’t have a mean spirited feel to them. I don’t sense any hatred for any of their subjects. That sets them apart from a lot of stuff on the internet.
I agree the carton with the black lady in a maid’s uniform is pretty tame. There’s a lot worse stuff out there that others have created.
My feelings on this are that being afraid snd/or ‘silenced’ by the relatively small portion of Islamic extremist 'organizations (-v- the whole population of islam/Muslims), and allowing them to ‘scare’ anyone or any business into submission is, simply put, “Letting the terrorists win…”. Has become a quite populat catch-phrase over the past years., and Hebdo certainly does not want such terror/exteremist orgs to win over them (IMHO), and Hebdo tried(?) to make lemonade from the lemons they were handed unwantingly. Its something that a business has a choice over, and the choice as to try and make lemonade from an unconscionable attack upon the offices of CH.
Its not as simple as ‘poking the bear’ in any manner and getting attacked. This ‘bear’ is scattered around many areas of the Earth and doing its best to eliminate anyone/anything it disapproves of, poked or not by the victims/targeted persons. A great example is Boko Haram (sp?) that is, currently, wiping-out/kidnapping/making examples of entire villages in Nigeria (and surrounding areas?) without BH even being provoked by satire or whatever.
The ‘bear’ (or tiger/whatever) is taking openly vicious/non-caring-of-civility actions to eliminate those who fail to do things as bear dictates, amiright? Hebdo seems to feel that such actions are intolerable and is taking a firm stance, of which has received a large amount of approval (based on the rallies/reprinting of another Mohammed cartoon on cover page of CH/ and other similar reactions around the world). Going from an average of 60K issues (of CH) to a single edition selling 3 million+ copies of CH’s latest edition seems to lean towards MANY others giving support to fight the idea of ‘kill all who diss the extremist’s demands’.
ETA: gotta say I totally agree this is NOT about race/racism in ANY, but ideology/belief-system(s) of all races/ethnicities against being kow-towed into submission through fear mongering and/or ~“Kill all the inidels, praise Allah!”.
I think I see the Islamist extremists pretty much as Joe Pesci’s character Tommy in “Goodfellas”.
We are in a permanent “funny how?” conversation with them and once he’s decided you aren’t on his side then any perceived slight, real or not, is going to get you whacked.
Oh, and arse-kissing is not going to save us either.
But Piss Christ was ok.
No, it fucking isn’t. Freedom of speech exists so that the people in power cannot forbid political talk that they disagree with. I don’t know when the lie started that it’s about protecting people from the consequences of being a assholes, but I do know it was made up by assholes.
People who deliberately go out to offend people have always been seen as bad people. People disassociate with them all the time. This message board, like most message boards, bans them from being around.
The issue with Charlie Hebdo was the right to life, the right not to have your life not be ended by someone else. It’s still perfectly okay to believe they should not print what they have printed, to think they are racist, to try to get them banned by anti-hate speech laws, etc. What’s not okay is performing an illegal and immoral act in order to try to stop them.
I have intentionally stayed out of judging Charlie Hebdo because it would take a lot of context and research to determine if they were really being racist/religious bigots/whatever you want to call it. I know, for example, that South Park is okay because I am familiar with that work, even though disparaging stuff about religious leaders might initially lead me to think otherwise.
But I have seen rather respectable people make the argument that, no matter the intentions, Charlie fell into Islamophobia as of the past few years. And when the fucking co-founder is one of them, you can’t just ignore it. He not only is familiar with the work in question but is also in one of the best positions to judge, as someone who intrinsically understands what the publication is supposed to be about.
This idea that we have to all go jingoistic in our support due to the publication being attacked is just stupid. The idea that we have to pretend like being a jerk is not a shitty thing to do, that it’s wrong to try and stop assholes from being assholes, is even more asinine.
Freedom of speech is NOT about the freedom to be offensive. It has always been and continues to be about the freedom to disagree with those in power.
Piss Christ was never about disparaging Christianity. The author has flat out said this to be the case. It was about the cheapening of religious icons. It also is not visually offensive, deliberately designed to be artistic, and multiple art critics pointed out its artistic merit without regard to its substance.
You cannot compare it with something deliberately designed to be offensive, that appears offensive just upon looking at it. Stop using this as your goto piece.
It’s not as if there aren’t other much more sacrilegious works out there, anyways. South Park’s Jesus is worse than Piss Christ, even, and I just got through saying I think it is acceptable. (As were, incidentally, its depictions of Mohamed. Hence my lack of certainty on the Charlie Hebdo case.)
Thank you. Exactly right. In the time when our own Constitution was written, running your mouth (or pen) like an asshole might well earn you a challenge to a duel or a good old fashioned flogging. The men who founded this country did not seem, from what I have read of them, to be notably tolerant of assholes or concerned with their safety.
Yes it is.
No, it’s not visually offensive, because there’s no way to tell, just by looking at it, what medium the crucifix is suspended in. Based just on how it looks, with no preconceptions about the work, it looks completely devotional. It’s only when someone tells you how the picture was taken that it becomes offensive. Which, granted, can be done simply by looking at the title, but the title isn’t part of the picture.
What an idiotic argument. Well, NOTHING’S offensive if you pretend you don’t understand it.