Bells
Staff member
Well both.
I find their lawyers complaints that Roussel's comments were venomous, as though they were wholly inappropriate to be ironic. And blaming Nouvel Obs for publishing the opinion piece because it was written so soon after the attack.
He represented a small paper which allegedly lived for freedom of expression and freedom of speech. But he complains that one of the paper's founding members found Charb's behaviour and leadership to have led the staff to their deaths, by continually pushing a particular line, to be something that should not be said.
Yet the paper itself had no issue in posting images that were just as equally offensive about Muslims in general.
It reeked of 'we are for freedom of speech, but just do not criticise us, because that is poor form'.
And the issue with Maurice Sinet is an other example of hypocrisy from Charlie Hebdo.
Glenn Greenwald wrote a very thought provoking piece on the hypocrisy and the double standard surrounding Charlie Hebdo and free speech in general in the West. One line that stood out was:
Maurice Sinet was charged with anti-semitism for his satire in Charlie Hebdo, because he joked that Jean Sarkozy was converting to Judaism to advance his career and financial prospects when he married a Jewish heiress. He was also fired for his anti-semitism. Yet grossly offensive cartoons about Muslims, not just Mohammed, but Muslims and at times even Muslim victims of Islamic radicals was deemed acceptable? For example, Greenwald notes:
This level of bigoted opinions is acceptable. That was the cartoon that depicted women and girls who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram and held as sex slaves. And these women were depicted as being welfare queens because that is the racist ideology often spouted by racists.. That black women are welfare queens. And here they were depicting women who are victims of Islamic terrorism as being welfare queens because they are black.
And yet, a cartoon depicting a non-Jewish son of a former President converting to Judaism when he married so that it helped boost his career and financial prospects (buying into the anti-semitic stereotypes of Jews) saw Sinet fired and charged with anti-semitism. That was not acceptable. That pushed beyond the line of acceptability. But an overtly racist cartoon about even victims of Islamic terrorism? Well, that is acceptable, isn't it? And so were the others.
In fact, people crawled out of all the woodwork demanding that it be respected and how we should support it. As Greenwald notes, the reason for that is because the target of Hebdo's attacks were Muslims and Islam.
I would say the double standards apply through so many layers.
Which is why I find Charlie Hebdo's lawyers complaining about the audacity of someone criticising one of the dead for his role in the lead up to what happened, to be ironic and hypocritical. Richard Malka should come to accept that Charb's argument about Muslims apply equally to Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo was not sacred to everyone and it and its previous editor is open to criticism like everything and everyone else. If it was good for Mohammed, then it should also be good for Charb.
I find their lawyers complaints that Roussel's comments were venomous, as though they were wholly inappropriate to be ironic. And blaming Nouvel Obs for publishing the opinion piece because it was written so soon after the attack.
He represented a small paper which allegedly lived for freedom of expression and freedom of speech. But he complains that one of the paper's founding members found Charb's behaviour and leadership to have led the staff to their deaths, by continually pushing a particular line, to be something that should not be said.
Yet the paper itself had no issue in posting images that were just as equally offensive about Muslims in general.
It reeked of 'we are for freedom of speech, but just do not criticise us, because that is poor form'.
And the issue with Maurice Sinet is an other example of hypocrisy from Charlie Hebdo.
Glenn Greenwald wrote a very thought provoking piece on the hypocrisy and the double standard surrounding Charlie Hebdo and free speech in general in the West. One line that stood out was:
Defending free speech is always easy when you like the content of the ideas being targeted, or aren’t part of (or actively dislike) the group being maligned.
Maurice Sinet was charged with anti-semitism for his satire in Charlie Hebdo, because he joked that Jean Sarkozy was converting to Judaism to advance his career and financial prospects when he married a Jewish heiress. He was also fired for his anti-semitism. Yet grossly offensive cartoons about Muslims, not just Mohammed, but Muslims and at times even Muslim victims of Islamic radicals was deemed acceptable? For example, Greenwald notes:
Some of the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo were not just offensive but bigoted, such as the one mocking the African sex slaves of Boko Haram as welfare queens (left). Others went far beyond maligning violence by extremists acting in the name of Islam, or even merely depicting Mohammed with degrading imagery (above, right), and instead contained a stream of mockery toward Muslims generally, who in France are not remotely powerful but are largely a marginalized and targeted immigrant population.
This level of bigoted opinions is acceptable. That was the cartoon that depicted women and girls who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram and held as sex slaves. And these women were depicted as being welfare queens because that is the racist ideology often spouted by racists.. That black women are welfare queens. And here they were depicting women who are victims of Islamic terrorism as being welfare queens because they are black.
And yet, a cartoon depicting a non-Jewish son of a former President converting to Judaism when he married so that it helped boost his career and financial prospects (buying into the anti-semitic stereotypes of Jews) saw Sinet fired and charged with anti-semitism. That was not acceptable. That pushed beyond the line of acceptability. But an overtly racist cartoon about even victims of Islamic terrorism? Well, that is acceptable, isn't it? And so were the others.
In fact, people crawled out of all the woodwork demanding that it be respected and how we should support it. As Greenwald notes, the reason for that is because the target of Hebdo's attacks were Muslims and Islam.
To see how true that is, consider the fact that Charlie Hebdo – the “equal opportunity” offenders and defenders of all types of offensive speech –fired one of their writers in 2009 for writing a sentence some said was anti-Semitic (the writer was then charged with a hate crime offense, and won a judgment against the magazine for unfair termination). Does that sound like “equal opportunity” offending?
Nor is it the case that threatening violence in response to offensive ideas is the exclusive province of extremists claiming to act in the name of Islam. Terrence McNally’s 1998 play “Corpus Christi,” depicting Jesus as gay, wasrepeatedly cancelled by theaters due to bomb threats. Larry Flynt wasparalyzed by an evangelical white supremacist who objected to Hustler‘s pornographic depiction of inter-racial couples. The Dixie Chicks weredeluged with death threats and needed massive security after they publicly criticized George Bush for the Iraq War, which finally forced them to apologize out of fear. Violence spurred by Jewish and Christian fanaticism is legion, from abortion doctors being murdered to gay bars being bombed to a 45-year-old brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza due in part to the religious belief (common in both the U.S. and Israel) that God decreed they shall own all the land. And that’s all independent of the systematic state violence in the west sustained, at least in part, by religioussectarianism.
The New York Times‘ David Brooks today claims that anti-Christian bias is so widespread in America – which has never elected a non-Christian president – that “the University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality.” He forgot to mention that the very same university just terminated its tenure contract with Professor Steven Salaita over tweets he posted during the Israeli attack on Gaza that the university judged to be excessively vituperative of Jewish leaders, and that the journalist Chris Hedges was just disinvited to speak at the University of Pennsylvania for the Thought Crime of drawing similarities between Israel and ISIS.
That is a real taboo – a repressed idea – as powerful and absolute as any in the United States, so much so that Brooks won’t even acknowledge its existence. It’s certainly more of a taboo in the U.S. than criticizing Muslims and Islam, criticism which is so frequently heard in mainstream circles –including the U.S. Congress – that one barely notices it any more.
Nor is it the case that threatening violence in response to offensive ideas is the exclusive province of extremists claiming to act in the name of Islam. Terrence McNally’s 1998 play “Corpus Christi,” depicting Jesus as gay, wasrepeatedly cancelled by theaters due to bomb threats. Larry Flynt wasparalyzed by an evangelical white supremacist who objected to Hustler‘s pornographic depiction of inter-racial couples. The Dixie Chicks weredeluged with death threats and needed massive security after they publicly criticized George Bush for the Iraq War, which finally forced them to apologize out of fear. Violence spurred by Jewish and Christian fanaticism is legion, from abortion doctors being murdered to gay bars being bombed to a 45-year-old brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza due in part to the religious belief (common in both the U.S. and Israel) that God decreed they shall own all the land. And that’s all independent of the systematic state violence in the west sustained, at least in part, by religioussectarianism.
The New York Times‘ David Brooks today claims that anti-Christian bias is so widespread in America – which has never elected a non-Christian president – that “the University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality.” He forgot to mention that the very same university just terminated its tenure contract with Professor Steven Salaita over tweets he posted during the Israeli attack on Gaza that the university judged to be excessively vituperative of Jewish leaders, and that the journalist Chris Hedges was just disinvited to speak at the University of Pennsylvania for the Thought Crime of drawing similarities between Israel and ISIS.
That is a real taboo – a repressed idea – as powerful and absolute as any in the United States, so much so that Brooks won’t even acknowledge its existence. It’s certainly more of a taboo in the U.S. than criticizing Muslims and Islam, criticism which is so frequently heard in mainstream circles –including the U.S. Congress – that one barely notices it any more.
I would say the double standards apply through so many layers.
Which is why I find Charlie Hebdo's lawyers complaining about the audacity of someone criticising one of the dead for his role in the lead up to what happened, to be ironic and hypocritical. Richard Malka should come to accept that Charb's argument about Muslims apply equally to Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo was not sacred to everyone and it and its previous editor is open to criticism like everything and everyone else. If it was good for Mohammed, then it should also be good for Charb.
