We are not all Charlie

[drwex]

minkrose posted her thoughts on speech in the wake of the criminal attacks in France. She linked to an essay that tries to explain "Why We Are Not Charlie". At the end of that essay is a quote from Teju Cole from Cole's New Yorker opinion piece. This struck such a chord with me that I want to quote it and talk about it, though I'm not sure my thoughts are entirely coherent:

[I]t is possible to defend the right to obscene and racist speech without promoting or sponsoring the content of that speech. It is possible to approve of sacrilege without endorsing racism. And it is possible to consider Islamophobia immoral without wishing it illegal. Moments of grief neither rob us of our complexity nor absolve us of the responsibility of making distinctions.

Cole's essay points out that the treatment of Muslims in France (including in the pages of Charlie Hebdo) is far too often pervasively and systematically racist and hateful, and that the murders of satirical cartoonists is part of a complex of anti-free speech actions. Cole further notes that we chose to treat some victims of anti-free-speech acts specially. To treat this attack as a singular point is a mistake, not because any amount of racism justifies murder but because our reaction to this moment of horrible violence serves to obscure daily systematic threats to free expression (see for example the PEN Web site) that too often emanate from the very same leaders and countries we saw marching in memory of the Charlie victims.

Cole's essay also mentions a pivotal moment in my own life: the day a neo-Nazi group chose to try to stage a march through the American town of Skokie, Illinois. That town was heavily Jewish and included families of Holocaust survivors. The ACLU chose to defend the marchers' rights to assemble and express their hateful views. It was the first time I can remember having a serious adult fight with my father. I thought the ACLU was right and as Cole says:

The extreme offensiveness of the marchers, absent a particular threat of violence, was not and should not be illegal. But no sensible person takes a defense of those First Amendment rights as a defense of Nazi beliefs.

In fact my father and many others took a defense of those rights as a sign of agreement with the viewpoint of the marchers. I became a student member of the ACLU using my own money, and the topic was forbidden from discussion at my parents' house.

I cannot find words better than those others have written to condemn the murders of the cartoonists and editors at Charlie Hebdo, the hostages killed in subsequent days, and the police who attempted to defend these victims. But I am no more in sympathy with this racism and Islamophobia than I was in sympathy with the neo-Nazi's racism and anti-Semitism.

Comments

[meadmaker.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I've been struggling for a few days to say something to this effect - partially because I suspected but had no experience of Charlie Hebbdo's attitudes. Eventually I came down to the point of saying that while the executions are horrible, I hope we don't lionize the cartoonists for the simple reason that somebody decided to execute them.

This is better researched and better written than what I had been thinking.

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

The police officer who was outside the Charlie office, and was shot in the street? Was Islamic. I am not Charlie, but I will defend to the death Charlies right to publish dreck. And defend other peoples rights to peaceable protest Charlie and to make a Pro Muslim/homophobia/or what ever - magazine.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I think what must be most important in our response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre is that the attackers not be seen having succeeded. There are thousands of aspiring terrorists watching. If the "martyrs" who killed cartoonists change the conversation in the West they'll be seen as successful and more terrorists will use those tactics. If the response is more mockery (mixed with drone attacks) they'll hopefully be diverted to less violent methods.

[drwex]

Mockery and drone attacks have not deterred them thus far; I'm not sure what logic says that more of the same will suddenly start working.

It's pretty clear that the attack failed. Charlie Hebdo went from printing 60,000 copies to printing 1,000,000 copies. They went from begging subscribers for money to getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from new rich patrons.

I think the audience for this stunt was the millions of disaffected Muslims in France and neighboring countries. AQ needs bodies for its gore machine and if it can make inroads in the large population of Muslims in western Europe it will have scored a victory. Thus I believe that combating Islamophobia and racism are important weapons in winning this fight.