Free Speech and When To (Not ) Use It

[andrewducker]

I'm somewhat torn over the recent events with the Islamic comics. In case you haven't been following it, the story goes something like this:

A Danish newspaper, covering a story that a writer had been unable to find an illustrator for their children's books about Mohammed (for fear of Islamic extemists), asked a group of cartoonists to draw something about Mohammed. They then published the resulting cartoons, as part of a piece on freedom of speech and the problems of people fearing reprisals for said speech.

This had the expected effect of causing mass uproar across the Islamic world, because (a) Islamic tradition is against images of any of the prophets and (b) one of the images implied Mohammed was a terrorist.

Now, on the one hand, I firmly stand behind people's right to any speech that isn't directly causing harm (i.e. shouting "fire" in a packed cinema, giving out the addresses of people to those that want to kill them, descriptions of how to construct nuclear weapons, etc.). On the other hand, just because you have the right to free speech doesn't mean that you ought to go around insulting people.

I have several comics that are deeply offensive - Preacher is deeply offensive about Christianity, for instance. Many Northern Irish people of the Unionist persuasion wouldn't be impressed with Troubled Souls. Obergeist is unlikely to go down well with people who lost family in the German concentration camps, and Faust is pretty much offensive to anyone in a 50 foot radius. Should I give them all up and toss them on a pyre?

I was deeply offended that people campaigned against Jerry Springer the Musical. And I'm deeply offended that they are trying to suppress the cartoons. Should the Muslims stop trying to get them banned because _I'm_ offended that they want to?

Should it matter that many Islamic newspapers routinely publish pieces referring to Jews as dogs and eaters of shit? Should we really care if they're offended by other people's imagery when they're publishing their own? Or is that like saying that all British people are responsible for the terrible nonsense published in the Daily Mail?

I think, in the end, that in one sense I wish they hadn't published the cartoons, largely because they mostly aren't any good - they're not that clever, and they aren't saying anything that couldn't be said in a less offensive way. In another sense, I think that not doing something _purely_ because someone out there will be offended will lead to people doing nothing. Everything will offend someone, and people should publish what they feel is right, without worrying too much about their audience.

Free speech includes the right to offensive speech, and much as I'm against the recent attempts to make "reckless" (i.e. accidental) incitement to violence illegal, I'm against any restraint on speech just because it will offend someone. Doing things _just_ to be offensive is generally the resort of the childish, and it doesn't interest me, but I'd rather that people were allowed to be childish than that they weren't.

Comments

[andrewducker]

You have to remember that a vast number of people who _aren't_ demonstrating are also feeling hurt by it.

If you published cartoons in every paper saying "Jesus is a Cunt" then you'd get a few tens-of-thousands of people protesting worldwide. And millions who felt hurt by it, and unjustly treated by the media.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but there was a T-shirt saying precisely that, and while people were offended by it, they were trying to get shops to stop selling it rather than stop it being made, and it never became a huge political scandal. Although I think the difference is that you're not meant to have pictures of Mohammed at all, whereas Christianity's big into pictures of Jesus.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

yeah well boo hoo. personally i'm more offended by the hanging of two muslim adolescent boys for kissing; the stoning to death of women; the removal of property and fiscal rights from women; the removal of job rights from women; the assumption that womens bodies (not male desire) are the root of all evil; i find dignifing this medieval, agrressive, patriarchal power structure with the name of religion offensive. i find the way any criticism is met with the threat of violence offensive. Besides all that, a cartoon is pretty small beer. they can get over it, i'm sure Mohammed is big enough to take it. the dead boys and the women, on the other hand, are still in a pretty bad way.

[andrewducker]

I agree that it's small beer. But I'm not sure that antagonising people is going to be the way to change their society for the better. It seems much more likely (to me)to have a polarising effect and push them further away.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

as a rational liberal, you are assumng that this process is amenable to rational change, i dont believe it is. Christianity and Judaeism made the transistion into modernity only with a great deal of screaming and bloodshed. they had to be offended into it, if you like, by a few rationalist martyrs willing to do what most of us aren't. Satirists, heretics, artists, scientists, maybe even a few cartoonists, people willing to risk their lives and not to kottow to bullying, censorship and torture. The Muslim religion doesnt seem to be transitioning any easier, no reason to expect it will. But boy does it need to. This is not a polite conversation we are having.

[andrewducker]

Christianity did its reformation from the inside. I think that the way to "sort out" the Muslim extremists is with time and carrots. Corrupt them from within. You can't make a society change from the outside any more than you can make a person change from the outside.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

the reformation was indeed from the inside, the enlightenment, on the other hand, the real begininng of the end for christianity as hegemony, was extrinsic, from science, from principled atheism, from we aint listening to this superstitious bullshit no longer. People died for that. Like people, no system changes WITHOUT some outside pressure. Ask the black panthers, ask the suffragettes.

To stand aside whilst people are abused and killed in the name of ideology, to stand by and say "give the poor dears time and try not to bother them, they'll sort it out" seems just like....well i don't know. Like saying slavery was what the blacks really wanted or deserved, that women wouldn't know what to do with the vote, like fascism was a matter for the germans, like we shouldn't intervene in Rwanda because its a tribal conflict. Like cowardice, like complacency. Like the way the police used to treat domestic disputes. The elephant in the room here that the liberals are studiously ignoring is a regressive and barbaric ideology. I want that to get as much offense and opposition as possible.

[andrewducker]

The Black Panthers and the Suffragettes are two great examples of groups _inside_ a society demanding rights.

And I'm not advocating standing aside. I'm saying that pointing at people and shouting "You're a bunch of cunts" at them is likely to make them worse, not better. As I've made clear in the original post, I fimrly believe people should be allowed to say what they like. I just wish they'd say things that were insightful or constructive, rather than just taking people who are only mildly offended by the West and pushing them away.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

sorry, but thats either really naive or willfully stupid, the whole point about the call for universal sufferage was that half the population felt they were excluded, external, had no power within, no place within, were not excepted as a part of, etc. society. Ditto blacks, see also gay liberation circa 1968. The only sense in which these groups were within society was that they lived in the same country. If thats your argment, use "country" not society. If thats not your argument, well see the first sentence.

Lets go back to the cartoon, and it's context then i'm leaving you to your "if only every one was reasonable we could all get on and the bad things would stop " fantasy. Lets look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali, someone who is genuinely "within". escaping from the forced (sexual and domestic) servitude of many muslim women she decided to speak out against this in the Netherlands. She made a film about the widespread abuse of muslim women. One image showed passages from the Koran projected onto a womans whiplashed body. For daring to voice this, very oblique, critique of female abuse she is now under 24 hour police guard. The filmmaker she worked with, Theo Van Gogh, was shot dead in holland. Pinned to his chest was a note addressed to Ayaan, it said, "we are willing to die for our beliefs, are you?". (Really, google her)

Now, lets go back to the cartoon. I'm guessing that there may be some people within the Muslim world who, far from being offended, might actually feel a little bit of hope that someone has stood up against the bullies, the murderers and abusers, the men who run these societies in the name of God. I' thinking that for every protester burning down Ikea there will be a thousand silenced women who can't fucking wait for the day when this edifice crumbles. Who would be pleased with any show of solidarity. That anyone from the outside or inside was daring to provoke the bullies, the murderers and the abusers, to provoke them and not back down. Because they really are a bunch of cunts.

[andrewducker]

your "if only every one was reasonable we could all get on and the bad things would stop " fantasy.

If you're going to wildly attack me, you can at least do so in ways that match something I've said rather than just making shit up.

I' thinking that for every protester burning down Ikea there will be a thousand silenced women who can't fucking wait for the day when this edifice crumbles. Who would be pleased with any show of solidarity. That anyone from the outside or inside was daring to provoke the bullies, the murderers and the abusers, to provoke them and not back down.

"Look," the silenced woman cries, "they've called Mohammed a terrorist! I feel freeer already! Now that the Westerners are insulting everything we hold dear, the moves towards more Western-style thought are bound to increase!"

I believe someone was talking about naivety earlier.

Pretty much _every_ Islamic country is moving towards democracy, allowing in outside influences and opening up so that new ideas can at least be seen inside. All of these things are affecting the way that ordinary people think in these countries, and they are demanding more democracy. Even Saudi Arabia, bastion of Wahhabism and religious-backed dictatorship has started having limited elections and allowing more rights for women. All of this is great - and all of this should be encouraged. Criticism of Islam goes on all the time, and there aren't massive riots, because it's not all done in ways designed to cause massive offense.

But if you want to push the Islamic countries away, and make them think that all Western/Liberal society has to offer is insults, then go for it. I, personally, can't see how screaming insults at them helps at all.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

ok one final angle, the idea of "the subject supposed to believe", the fictional other who believes what we no longer do. The idea that whilst we in the west are sophisticated, post-modern, cultural relativists, "they" are all sitting around believing, thinking thoughts like:

"Now that the Westerners are insulting everything we hold dear"

I really wonder if "they" do think that, or if thats not just another western cartoon, one that functions to distance us from the real human suffering that happens under these regimes, by designating them "other". I wonder if in fact the silent but very scared majority could give two fucks about idolatory.

[andrewducker]

I wonder if in fact the silent but very scared majority could give two fucks about idolatory.

Good question. And the answer is that "I dunno". I _do_ know that the Iranians recently elected a fairly hardline Islamic president, who believes in the destruction of Israel - what I don't know is whether they did that because of other promises he made to do with jobs, etc. and whether they would have voted that way if there had been less societal pressure.

[andrewducker]

*some time later, after much reflection*

It suddenly occurs to me that we also shouldn't make the opposite mistake - assuming that if we wave liberal democracy at them they'll suddenly go "Yes, that's what we all wanted all along, how could we be so silly - please sign us up for income tax and a national train service at once!"