You’re talking about this Al Jazeera?
[QUOTE=Anduril]
Instead of modulating OUR behavior, why not modify theirs. The way to do it is NOT by discouraging these types of movie. In fact, by encouraging more movies criticizing Islam, whether by satire or something more serious, we will be successfully modifying their behaviors - not that I’m a fan of this movie - in fact it’s pretty much a big load of crap.
[/QUOTE]
You might be on to something here, actually. In a world full of crappy anti-Islamic films, who are cranky Muslims going to flip out at?
Hrmm, just watched An American Carol (Big Fat American Film to some) directed by David Zucker (hard to believe he was sought out to direct the Onion Movie: were both parties so desperate?). In it, the Michael Moore simulacrum is told he is abusing his free speech rights and harming America (paraphasing, but the word “abuse” or a variation of it was used). That’s probably why similar claims rankle.
So just to be clear… your position is that in a situation in which one person says something and other people angrily and violently react to what the first person said, the first person NEVER has ANY responsibility for the violent reactions, no matter how predictable, no matter how inflammatory what they said was, no matter how tense the situation was before what they said?
If so, I pretty strongly disagree with you, and I think the hypothetical about the LA riots in my previous post makes it pretty clear what my position is.
I have absolutely no idea what cowardice has to do with it… unless you think that those of us on the SDMB who are not as black-and-white about the topic as you are are holding the positions we hold out of fear that angry Muslims will read this message board and come kill us.
Why must it be only one or the other? The rioter’s behavior STRONGLY needs correcting, by legal means and force if necessary. The filmmaker acted like an irresponsible douchebag, and people should not act like irresponsible douchebags, but that should not be government enforced.
Several responses to that:
(a) If your position is that we should say X (“I condemn the rioters and support the filmmakers”) instead of Y ("The situation is complicated’) because saying X will lead to more safety and fewer deaths in the future, then you are (ironically) doing EXACTLY what you are decrying… you’re choosing what to say based on the reaction of violent people
(b) I’m quite confident that NOTHING we say on the SDMB (within reason) will influence the actions of violent Muslims one way or the other at all… so while your argument might possibly affect what Obama should say about this issue, it’s certainly irrelevant to what MaxTheVool should say
(c) I’m also far from convinced your analysis is right. Human reactions are tricky things… maybe rioters would be MORE pissed of by the US government taking a hardline absolute stance and fully standing behind the filmmakers. Beats me.
(d) In any case, the CORRECT and TRUE stance to take is in fact one that is nuanced… our support for the RIGHT of the filmmakers to make this movie is complete and unwavering, but we do not endorse the content of the film itself in any way.
The rape story is questionable. The video has been removed as spam on this site. WARNING: grusome content. The picture looks real and was not removed.
The video removal comment:
The Washington Times has also printed a statement from the AFP:
And yet noone shot a rocket propelled grenade over it.
You familiar with the concept of fighting words?
Maybe its both. The Rwanda genocide was largely driven by a talk radio host. Does he deserve none of the blame for the genocide that occurred?
Well, if you’d like to get hyper-technical, I down say you wanted restrictions on him, did I? Now how about you answer the questions I asked of you?
I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on Hitler. Think about it. If he had simply been happy with parts of Eastern Europe and not tried to go all Dr. Evil on us and tried to take over the world, most people wouldn’t have an easy counter for appeasement. Its a dirty word, but it really shouldn’t be. We should appease these Muslims because, let’s face it, they’re not going to change for at least a few hundred years, so for peace and quiet now, I’m willing to give up a couple of rights like criticizing them. I’m looking at this logically: how often in a week do I criticize Mohammad? Not often. In fact, I could go weeks without doing it. So by giving that up and letting the terrorists win, its ok, because it was a right that I wasn’t really exercising in the first place. Throw this Nakoula guy to the wolves and tell them he’s theirs for the punishment!
I’m late to this party.
The film maker made a piece of crap, and it was (apparently) offensive to some splinter group of a certain religion. So these “religious” people decided to go off and riot, and kill people who had nothing to do with it. Now we have some moron in Egypt making apologies for the fanatics having been offended. We also have people talking about how the film maker should be held accountable and maybe be punished for offending them.
To hell with that. If we have to curb ourselves for fear of offending a bunch of terrorists and fanatics, and apologize when THEY are the murderers, then WTF is going on?
Everything offends them. Everything is a reason to go on a killing spree.
WTF
No we don’t. I don’t believe a single person on the thread has made either of those claims. Certainly that’s not the general consensus of the anti-filmmaker side of this argument.
It’s not an either or issue. Meaning we can well condemn each action separately on its own “merit.” I think Americans even have a name for that…oh yeah! Free Speech! that’s it. :smack:
And if a “bunch” is say, a few hundred here and there in Muslim countries, fine, I’ll agree with you. But I trust you keep in mind there are close to 2 billion followers of Islam before you go stereotyping Muslims as a whole, which is exactly what this piece of agitprop did. Beyond that, are you surprised there are intense anti-American feelings amongst many Muslims? Do you (or anyone else for that matter) know how many innocent ones you’ve killed just in the past ten years? If I was a survivor of an American attack on my family, I might just be a bit resentful too – regardless of what god I believed in or not.
Yes, that’s my position. The violence should fall squarely on the lap of the violent. However, the person saying inflammatory things is responsible for his statements. For example, if I say person X is a certifiable idiot, I’m responsible for that statement - I should be denounced and sued for it. If he kills me for it, I’m not responsible for his actions.
You’re right, and I think I should have made myself clear. Insofar as the violent behavior is concerned, we need to correct the rioters. Insofar as the douchiness of the filmmaker is concerned, we need to correct him on that - by denouncing him and NOT by blaming him for the killings.
The situation is NOT complicated. The rioters are responsible for the killing. The filmmaker was a douchebag. The filmmaker, however, is not responsible for the killing.
You’re right. I’m merely categorizing your response as the kind the would lead to more violence.
But it’s not a hardline absolute stance. We DO value freedom of expression more than some people’s right not to be insulted - or at least we should. That shouldn’t stop us from denouncing the filmmaker all we want as we should. What we don’t want to hear is having people BLAME the filmmaker for the violence.
I’m all for this. Let’s just not blame the filmmaker for the violence because he is not responsible for it. He is responsible for his general douchiness and lack of taste.
That’s ENTIRELY different. This would fall under the reasonable restrictions of free speech, which also includes fighting words.
So there’s a legal definition of “Fighting Words”. There has to be such a definition, because courts need precise definitions. But even so, there are going to be case that are super-duper close to that line on either side, because there’s obviously a continuum of speech that might incite violence, from “hey, you, holding the gun, why don’t you shoot that guy, I hear he raped your wife” (clearly illegal) to “all republicans are rich jerks and something ought to be done about it” (clearly legal). So somewhere in between there are two very very similar statements/situations where one is, legally, fighting words, and one is not.
If someone says the one that is not, we agree that because it’s not legally fighting words they should not be legally interfered with. But does that absolve them of all ethical or moral responsibility for any violence that might result from their speech?
Does it matter? If they have no legal responsibility for it, then determining the precise amount and nature of the theoretical blame to apportion to them seems kind of pointless.
I agree that we should roundly scold people who do stupid and hateful stuff with reckless disregard for the consequences. But that’s true irrespective of what the consequences may turn out to be, or how much guilt they end up feeling.
These filmmakers bear the ethical and moral responsibility of being irresponsible stupid hateful dicks. I see no reason to weaken the force of that condemnation by worrying that it somehow isn’t severe enough unless it’s accompanied by partial responsibility for murder.
Sheesh, you people are so off track here it’s fucking ridiculous. Let me review a few of the facts in case you want to try steering the discussion in an intelligent direction:
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The “movie” has not one goddamned thing to do with this. It was a preplanned attack, timed to 9-11 for dramatic effect, using the movie as a pretext to stir up their cover (rioters).
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The “rioters” did not kill anybody. AQ terrorists handled that bit
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The fault (if you insist of laying this at somebody’s doorstep) lies with Hillary Clinton for failure to provide adequate security for her people. Can’t wait see how that part turns out.
And as far as ANY appeasement feelings go, as yogi south suggested - no thanks. There may be 2 billion Muslims on the planet, but only about .02% of them are inclined to along with this bullshit (rioters) and an even much smaller number need to continue to be rooted out and killed in their tracks.
No biggie. Just an ongoing little vermin extermination project.
I think there’s an interesting philosophical/theoretical discussion concerning responsibility/blame in cases where there’s an intermediary person.
If a pastor in Florida burns a Koran, and there is violence in the ME in response, and people are killed, does he bear responsibility?
If a politician uses charged “2nd amendment solution” rhetoric, and someone actually shoots one of his opponents, does he bear responsibility?
If a talk show host says “damn, someone should just kill all of those fucking rich people”, and someone sets off a bomb on wall street, does he bear responsibility?
All interesting topics, none of whose answers really “matter”, at least as pertains to free speech.
So just to be a billion percent clear here, at the risk of repeating myself…
Suppose you are the writer or producer of a TV series and you have an episode that is scheduled to air which contains what you think is a powerful message about race in America, but which contains a lot of fairly raw language, stuff that at first glance might seem insensitive of offensive, but which you believe works together to make an important and meaningful point.
And suppose your episode is scheduled to air the first week of May, 1992, and wouldn’t you know it, in late April 1992 the Rodney King riots break out.
And you decide to go ahead and air your episode. And just when the riots were starting to calm down your episode is broadcast, and there’s a renewed flurry of rioting, and the janitor at the local NBC affiliate is beaten to death. (Ironically, your show aired on CBS.)
The question is… would you feel even the slightest tiny bit responsible? When that janitor’s mother tracked you down and said “you unfeeling bastard! Couldn’t you have waited a month!!! My son is dead!!!” would you feel a single twinge of remorse?
So this is now being used as an excuse for an intellectual exercise in 1st amendment revisionism. Are you fucking kidding me?
Congratulations! Here’s your sign.
I found this. :eek: