Ross Douthat in the NYT this afternoon, linked approvingly by Chris Hayes on Twitter:
“If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more.”
I don’t get this. At all.
An odious piece of writing doesn’t become not-odious because it offends someone odious. A pointlessly crappy cartoon remains a pointlessly crappy cartoon even if the cartoonist is targeted for murder.
It’s true (and important) that the murder of people who express stupid ideas stupidly is a threat to free expression more generally. Violence against bad speech can chill good speech, and even bad speech should not be greeted with lethal violence.
But the cure for violence against bad speech isn’t more bad speech.
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January 8, 2015 at 1:35 am
dannyman
You care to finish that last sentence?
“But the cure for violence against bad speech isn’t more bad speech.”
“The cure is…” … What, exactly?
I think what Charlie Hebdo is saying, at its core, is that fundamentalists need to chill the duck out and stop trying to kill anyone who offends them. If a pointlessly crappy carton drives you to homicide then the point of the cartoon is no longer that it is pointless or crappy it is that your belief system is fricking toxic to yourself and the modern world and needs to be exposed and revised. The point of this pointlessly crappy stuff is that there are jackasses out there who will murder you for pointless crappy stuff.
…. In the name of God.
We are all Charlie Hebdo and we need to stand together and not allow the wackadoodles to censor our speech with violence. We should be able to draw pointless crappy cartoons that people can find offensive and the second people want to kill us for it we need to make it clear that toleration even for pointless crappy cartoons that allegedly defame your religion have a place in modern civilization alongside tolerance for your religious belief that crappy cartoons somehow hurt your god.
What, exactly, are you advocating? We aren’t Charlie Hebdo? If I threaten to kill you for offending my religion you’ll just change your point of view? Allah Akbar, I guess.
January 8, 2015 at 7:54 am
Angus Johnston
Danny,
As for the last sentence, it’s a riff on “the cure for bad speech is more speech.” I flipped it into the negative because mere speech isn’t a full cure for violence. But given that caveat, you could rephrase it as “The cure for violence against bad speech is good speech,” and you wouldn’t be far off.
And I don’t think that violence against bad art redeems the art. It remains a crappy cartoon. If yesterday’s violence had been against a magazine that published cartoons of children being sexually abused, we wouldn’t all be declaring ourselves child pornographers.
I’m happy to stand in opposition to violence against bad art, but no, I’m not Charlie.
January 11, 2015 at 12:02 pm
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[…] an early and succinct response to “#JeSuisCharle, Angus Johnston stated […]
January 12, 2015 at 12:23 am
Ernst Rodin MD
You are correct and most of the people who today proclaim je sui Carlie probably don’t have the faintest idea what that publication really stands for. Free speech does not allow you to scream fire in a crowded movie theater and to deliberately provoke a large segment of the world’s population at a time as volatile as the current one is not only bad judgment but border on criminal conduct.