it would look bad since that viewpoint is total bullshit
12 dead in shooting in Paris
- Thread starter Bubble181
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subtlety is lost on charlie
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
I don't know about this. He doesn't really make the argument that mocking everyone serves the powerful, he just says that.
I also think there's a significant difference between American satire and European satire. Over here, satire is almost always ideological, which isn't the case in Europe, especially France, where satire is much more whimsical. It's easy to see Charlie Hebdo in our own terms, in our own culture of satire, but that's unfair to the history of French satire. The French don't make the argument, which he says at the end, that satire is a 'courageous' art; they make the argument that it is a free art.
I do think the "Je suis Charlie" stuff is nonsense though. There was a good comment on Twitter, approximately, "I am not Charlie, which mocked my culture; I am Ahmed, the cop who died protecting Charlie's right to do so." I liked seeing this:
You are amazingly dense.
Your article was bullshit.
Anything else I say to you in this discussion is a waste of my time.
I don't agree with @Tress. That article does not say satire should have limits. Rather, it says satire is already self-limited due to the satirists own worldview, and asks for self-reflection on what that might mean.
Joe Sacco drew a comic in a similar vein to Charlie's article, but approaches it better IMO.
The way I see it, the point is being an asshole just because you can is amusing, but pointless. And so I find it ironic that Charlie posted that first article, since that's basically his entire MO outside of the movie/tv threads.
Joe Sacco drew a comic in a similar vein to Charlie's article, but approaches it better IMO.
The way I see it, the point is being an asshole just because you can is amusing, but pointless. And so I find it ironic that Charlie posted that first article, since that's basically his entire MO outside of the movie/tv threads.
Necronic
Staff member
That is a very insightful point. And it is a bit disturbing.
I don't think you mean it like that, but this reads a lot like endorsing genocide
Yeah. Again, the content of the cartoons doesn't matter. Had this happened to the Westboro Baptist Church, I would still be appalled, because while I think they're lowlife scum and wrong about everything ever, they don't deserve to be murdered for those views.
I think Charlie Don't Surf's grievance is not that they deserve censorship (and certainly not murder) but that they also don't deserve publication for their views.
Dave
Staff member
More free speech in France!
http://www.thejournal.ie/dieudonne-arrest-1880765-Jan2015/?utm_source=shortlink
Oh wait. No. A French comedian put on his Facebook that he was more aligned with the guy who shot a French policewoman. Which is totally offensive. But why is this offensive statement (or print) illegal but Charlie Hebdo's cartoons are not? Could it be because one is anti-Islam and the other (however tenuously) is pro-Islam?
http://www.thejournal.ie/dieudonne-arrest-1880765-Jan2015/?utm_source=shortlink
Oh wait. No. A French comedian put on his Facebook that he was more aligned with the guy who shot a French policewoman. Which is totally offensive. But why is this offensive statement (or print) illegal but Charlie Hebdo's cartoons are not? Could it be because one is anti-Islam and the other (however tenuously) is pro-Islam?
Dave
Staff member
You are correct, of course, but his was only one of 50+ arrests over the same charge, which is a stretch of a charge to begin with. His comment about the suspect in the policewoman shooting is only notable because he's famous. Well, French famous, which means nobody else has heard of him.
Dieudonné is a very well known comedian, who's been arrested several times for several similar things. He's the "inventor" of the Quenelle (which is pretty much the Hitler salute downwards), he's said the Holocaust was vastly exagerated and doesn't deserve the attention it gets, he's supported antisemitic publications. In shows he's publicly called for people to go and attack orthodox Jews (throw off their hats, pull their curls, cut their beards).
On one hand, sure, I'm in favor of freedom of speech and he should be allowed to be an ass. On the other hand, he's still breaking a French law; you can argue the law should be changed, but as long as it isn't, he's....well, duh. Breaking the law.
Note that he's been arrested and convicted 10 times, and tried and found innocent 5 times. And remember the French/Belgian judicial process is different from the American/British one. Napoleonic code and all that.
Necronic
Staff member
Apparently a lot of those arrests were for threats, so those arrests are justifiable. The others though....It may be against the law, but that is a very dangerous law to have as it brings a lot of subjectivity into play. This is one of the very few things that I think America gets right and Europe really misses the thread on.
To each their own.
Live right now: big police action in Belgium, 2 potential terrorists shot, several arrested, house searches in progress all over; some just a few blocks from here, hurray. Plans and weapons found as they were apparently planning a similar strike in Brussels, in or around the European quarter...Which I live way too close to for comfort (I live about a 10 minute walk from the European parlaiment and a 10 minute drive from NATO HQ)
Live right now: big police action in Belgium, 2 potential terrorists shot, several arrested, house searches in progress all over; some just a few blocks from here, hurray. Plans and weapons found as they were apparently planning a similar strike in Brussels, in or around the European quarter...Which I live way too close to for comfort (I live about a 10 minute walk from the European parlaiment and a 10 minute drive from NATO HQ)
Here's an interesting article that argues French Jews should oppose Dieudonne's arrest: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/01/14/not-fight-anti-semitism-france/
Nope; that's where the dead were, but there's house searches all over the place - Verviers is a 2 hour drive or so awayFrom Verviers, are we?
I was wondering a while ago (before I saw the news) why there was so much activity - I live right next to the biggest police depot/training facility/staff building in Belgium. Luckily the bomb threat made and the building being evacuated right now is the main operational station, which is a few miles down. I'm safely in my house so I don't care, but I can't help but think of some of my colleagues out right now O_O
It's frankly a terrifying debate with idiots on all sides here right now. Big-name Muslim leaders "not condoning" the attack on Charlie but saying that what they make is "akin to the Jude drawings in Nazi-Germany, slowly perverting the minds of a generation"; leftist politicians calling for "acceptance and understanding" of other opinions and "being careful not to offend - self-censorship is not wrong but merley politeness"; on the other hand right wing idiots claiming "this just goes to show our culture has already been infiltrated by Muslim extremists forcing their agenda on our media", .... Blegh.
The same kind of cartoons are acceptable about the Pope or Buddha, they're not when it's about Jews or Muhammed; being able to laugh with and about certain things is a necessity; being vulgzr and crude and stereotyping "the other" is bad. There's no clear line that can be drawn between what"s "good" art and "bad" art, and having the term "entartete Kunst" being bandied about on both sides is just ridiculous and horrifying.
Some lines are very clear, to me at least, but they've been drawn over and over and seem to be stepped over by all sides - don't kill for opinions. Don't offend merely to offend. Don't consider "not being offended" a right.
Anyway, some 15 people arrested around here; they're being questioned right now. We'll see, though police remain on high alert.
The same kind of cartoons are acceptable about the Pope or Buddha, they're not when it's about Jews or Muhammed; being able to laugh with and about certain things is a necessity; being vulgzr and crude and stereotyping "the other" is bad. There's no clear line that can be drawn between what"s "good" art and "bad" art, and having the term "entartete Kunst" being bandied about on both sides is just ridiculous and horrifying.
Some lines are very clear, to me at least, but they've been drawn over and over and seem to be stepped over by all sides - don't kill for opinions. Don't offend merely to offend. Don't consider "not being offended" a right.
Anyway, some 15 people arrested around here; they're being questioned right now. We'll see, though police remain on high alert.
https://www.europol.europa.eu/conte...ion-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-2014 for trends and influences in 2013. As they note themselves in the foreword, therse numbers can't be read in a vacuum - which is exactly what some left politicians are doing right now. The beheading of a soldier in the UK? Not a terrorist act. Myeah. Stuff like that. Anyway, those are the numbers the article I saw were based on.
GasBandit
Staff member
The word christian does not appear even once in that document. Muslim appears 25 times, and islam 23 times. The word behead does not appear, nor decapitate. The word soldier appears 8 times but does not mention any christian-inspired terrorist attacks in their uses. The word catholic appears once, but it is in reference to the bombing of a catholic school in Spain. I'm having a hard time seeing how this document is evidence of an underreported wave of religious-based christian terrorism that is killing more people than islamic terrorism.
Now you're deliberately twisting my words. I never said there was a wave of underrepoted Catholic terorrism. I said a large part of terrorism wasn't carried out by muslims. Leftist Belgium uses that document to say "only 2% of all terrorism was by Muslims" which is, itself, also a deliberate misinterpretation of the numbers. But the idea that "most" terrorism is muslim-extremism is false, though. Also, that's only the 2013 report. Take the same for the years before (same site) and enjoy.
GasBandit
Staff member
Am I? You said:
"In the Western world (so not counting the Middle East and Central Asia), there have been more deaths by Christian fundamentalists than by Muslim fundamentalists in the last 20 years - but they receive far less attention from the media."
To which I replied:
"I'd like some links to more info about that."
You then sent me a report that predominantly gives examples of islamic terrorism.
No, I threw that in there because of the earlier discussion in this thread about the IRA, so I was trying to see if that figured in at all.
There you're twisting your own words, and moving the goalpost. You've gone from "more deaths by christian fundamentalists" to "the idea that most terrorism is muslim-extremism is false." That's two different positions because the latter includes political/secular terrorism, whereas the former directly compares two specific brands of religious terrorism.