https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
This is a sensitive topic for some people, so please do your best to have civil discussions. Let’s do better than the average social media.
I don’t have any issue or opinion or dog in the race with the prophet Muhammed, but those idiots made it important to say “muhammed the prophet is a giant cunt who should be laughed at and get a pie in the face” every now and then just to remind everybody how getting to talk works.
I think Charlie Hebdo comics are often in bad taste and more shock value than critic, but that’s no legitimate reason to massacre people.
More than the attack on Charlie Hebdo itself, which I can “understand” in the twisted sense of a religious fanatic, it was the overall ruthlessness of the attackers that shocked me. I remember vividly seeing a video of one of the attackers walking up to a wounded police officer and executing him at point-blank range.
I’m with you here, satire should be protected, killing people for satire is awful, and Charlie Hebdo have a really dumb and bad taste humor.
The shooting wasn’t merely about the freedom of satire. Not really. Let’s complicate the story.
The Kouachi brothers were Algerian and you can’t ignore the history of French colonialism in Algeria as the antecedent to this attack. This isn’t just about secularism and blasphemy, that’s only the surface. It’s about racism and colonialism and imperialism. Don’t think of this only as religious fanatics angry because infidels insulted the Prophet Mohammad, think of this as an oppressed racial group lashing out at a racist society and it being channeled through Islam. There’s a deeper tension here than just the religious surface.
Now, as for my opinion?
Racist satire should be illegal and that racists should be put into reeducation camps to be rehabilitated.
Also! Adventurism is bad and people should get organized into a Party, not do vigilante attacks on racists.
Could you provide a source describing how the attack was related to colonialism rather than blasphemy against the prophet of Islam?
What makes you think Charlie’s intentions are racism rather than mocking extremists?Edit: added second question.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/14/laffaire-charlie-hebdo-and-western-colonialism/
These men were fighting with Western-backed rebels in Syria to overthrow Assad, which is where they learned to kill.
And it’s important to note their Algerian heritage because France occupied Algeria as recently as 1962 when it gained independence from France. Their parents didn’t immigrate from Algeria to France in a vacuum.
This was blowback.
Do you think they fought in Syria to promote freedom and democracy or to promote an Islamist system?
How does killing cartoonists, who are notably against conservatives, helps with decolonization? They should hit some far right journal that denies colonization crimes instead.
You sound really excited to put people into camps
Well we can’t just kill them!
Crackkkers don’t know any better, we can help them overcome their racist upbringings.
Yeah. What if we don’t take people’s right to bodily autonomy for indirectly harmful speech, or as I interpret you, beliefs they hold silently
Racism is not a right. It’s a sickness.
Sick people have rights though?
Which is why we need to help them, instead of just leaving them to suffer in their sickness until they hurt themselves or others.
That means removing them from their environment, reeducating them out of bad habits and unhealthy thought patterns, and teaching them new healthier cognitive habits. You just oppose reeducation camps because the term is yucky, but there’s nothing wrong with rehabilitation facilities. We don’t have to leave racists to suffer with their afflictions. They can be helped.
Those rehabilitation facilities already exist. Forced medical treatment. It is restricted to the most extreme cases, I think for a reason.
If you were actually concerned about people’s well-being, you’d at least be consistent about applying forced medical treatment to anybody who has some issues that cause harm to others. Sending alcoholics, narcissists, drug addicts, workplace bullies, etc. to camps? Pretty extreme but at least consistent.
But you are not. You just want an excuse to send people to camps. Typical red fash stuff.
Go read up on what the French did in Algeria and you might understand why some Algerians might want to kill French racists.
Consistently, you always choose the repressive side as you did with China in that thread about lgbt erotica authors being arrested. As a queer socialist, this is depressive to see.
Imagine not believing racists should be repressed. 🙄
Also, in case you forgot, all I did in that thread was point out that China bans all erotica and that it isn’t specifically targeting queer authors. I just wanted to clarify something that wasn’t clear in the title. I never justified China’s outdated laws about erotic literature.
The Kouachi brothers were Algerian
They were both French, born in Paris. Their parents were Algerian.
You’re not saying “but where are they really from?” are you?..
And why were their parents in France and not Algeria? Why did they have to leave their homes to raise their children in France?
Because of French colonialism in Algeria! Because their country was underdeveloped and used as a source of cheap labor and resources and subjected to the horrors of a military occupation by a colonial power! You can’t just isolate immigration in a vacuum without analyzing the impacts of imperialism and colonialism on migration.
The brothers went to Syria to train and attempt to fight in Iraq against the Americans. They stated their motivation were the atrocities carried out at Abu Ghraib by the Americans.
Then they trained in Yemen
They were eventually assoiated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula
They expressed a desire to kill Jews, Chérif Kouachi specifically stating that he wanted to firebomb Jews
Targetting Jews is what their accomplice, Amedy Coulibaly, actually did attacking a Jewish supermarket
Kouachi stated his motivation was “avenging the prophet Muhammad” and retaliating against the “killing women and children in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan”
Jews, America, a media company. Not the French state. They have never cited Algeria as their motivation. You really shouldn’t be erasing their identity and narrative and substituting your own. That’s quite colonial of you…
sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercacher_kosher_supermarket_siege
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/13/world/kouachi-brothers-radicalization/index.html
I didn’t say Algeria was the motivation, I said it was the antecedent. French colonialism is the reason their parents had to leave their homes and the reason that these men were French in the first place. It’s not like this is ancient history.
Now as for hatred for Jews and America, all that too ties back to imperialism and neocolonialism. Their hatred for Jews is obviously tied to the fact that there’s a Jewish-supremacist ethnostate in the middle east (that France supports) and which touts itself as representative of all Jews. Sadly, this results in blowback onto Jewish people who are not Israeli.
But they’re still French so still pay their taxes to France which sends weapons to Israel. It’s only very recently that France decided to stop sending weapons to Israel, but when these attacks happened France was fully complicit in Israeli settler-colonialism.
And most notably, France is a key American ally. America creates blowback that falls onto its allies.
Blowback is complicated, but it’s undeniably the root cause. They even said so! My point: we have to analyze all of the context surrounding the attack. “French” Algeria, the War on Terror, Israeli settler-colonialism, etc etc it’s all connected.
You are the one determined to erase their motivations by just making it about cartoons. It’s not.
Rofl you’re too funny man.
Get real 😋
Reality keeps sliding into absurdity rendering satire mute.
It says a lot that there’s only one religion that I’m scared to criticize.
12 people were killed for publishing a cartoon of Muhammad.
A teacher was beheaded for showing a drawing of Muhammad.
Cartoonist drew Muhammad, leading to Danish embassies being attacked and riots broke out and people died. Later, people broke into his house to try to kill him.
Cartoonist had to live under police protection because of threats.
Creators of South Park were threatened for including Muhammad in an episode of the show.
These were just a few from the FIRST PAGE of a search engine, AND outside of Muslim majority countries.
This is before even considering every other ‘provocation’, leading to incidences like:
Salman Rushdie being stabbed on stage
A teacher forced into hiding for showing a picture of mahammad
It’s time based. Buddhism also had a similar ban on iconic representation of the Buddha. That’s why some early art will just have footprints or things like that. Islam should allow iconic representation of their prophet within 300 years.
Were Buddhists killing people for depicting Buddha?
It was depressing that every newspaper in the developed world didn’t print the cartoon :(
Yes, collective punishment is always a good response that has never backfired.
That has nothing to do with collective punishment
Sorry, I thought you meant as a response to the murder of the Hebdo staff by the two brothers and their accomplice.
How did you mean it?
In respect to their Muslim readers. Whatever you think, for Muslims, including me, it’s profane to picture Mohammad, as much it’s profane to picture Jesus fucking Peter in the ass.
Even if there’s no reasoning behind it, respecting 1.8 billion people’s sensibilities should be the niceness I’d like to see in the world.
Should homosexuality be banned, to respect 1.8 billion people’s sensibilities?
It’s always someone comes to build a strawman whenever one mentions Muslims could have some sensibilities.
Funny, you just did the same thing with your argument about Gaza. So when somebody else uses the same approach, it’s a strawman?
Ah yes. A strawman. 🤔
[…], as much it’s profane to picture Jesus fucking Peter in the ass.
Christians were upset and made a lot of noise about it, but didn’t kill or even beat up anyone:
In respect to my functioning brain it is profane to cater to babies who cry about pictures of their child rapist prophet.
No.
The price of living in a free society is being ready to accept other people’s speech. In the West we had an Enlightenment, so blasphemy is not against the law. Christians would indeed find a picture of “Jesus fucking Peter in the ass” offensive, but they will sigh and move on. Same for all the other world religions.
Only your religion treats offense as a justification for extreme violence. You need to think carefully about that fact.
Thank you very much for informing me about my religion and everyone else’s high and dwveloped society.
But please take a moment to check what you embraced as “the” civilized fellows done in Gaza, breaking 4 years old kids ribs with their knees. You need to think careful about that fact.
The question was not about Gaza.
I’m offended, very offended actually, when Muslims (and not only) suggest that some brutally murdered cartoonists had it coming because of their “disrespect”. At least as offended as you could possibly be offended by some picture. Your religion needs reform. It needs to learn tolerance.
Oh, so when we come into some other religion’s “higher stance” is just being an illusion, a propaganda to see “colonizers superior culture” is why they have free pass on crimes towards the oppressed, suddenly it wasn’t about that, huh. Like, they would never ever do such things. Except they do massacres, daily.
I’d like to see how “developed” MAGAs or AFD people to react to Jesus and Peter published on every “developed” newspaper’s front page, as the commenter I’ve replied suggested. Run over the newspapers stands with a truck? Then step down and shoot around? Maybe they aim to kids. That’ll show’em.
Extremism is everywhere. No belief, religion or politic stance, is exempt from it. I didn’t said a thing about Hebdo, just surprised to see how people in 2025 taking worse stances than George Bush in 2004 when it’s about Islam.
Man you are a lunatic
They sold millions of them here in France though but yeah you’re right. Especially the Danes who backed down then and again.
It is hard to make satire now when we seem to be living in an age that satirizes itself.
In the words of Sam Harris: “People were murdered over cartoons. End of moral analysis.”
I’m sure there are folks here who have listened to a lot more Sam Harris than I have, but I’ve listened to several audiobooks and probably 40-50 hours of his podcast. He has some smart things to say about neuroscience and mindfulness, but my god he has some toxic, middle-school-ass takes on Islam. I haven’t heard that quote before, but I’m not surprised he said it. He’s Ben Shapiro with a PhD who makes deliberately obtuse, reductive, bad faith statements about Islam and Muslims.
For the record, I’m a white atheist. I think religion has been the source of immeasurable violence in the world. I don’t think anyone should be shot over something they say or draw, but to declare “end of moral analysis” is ignorant.
Well, he may have a point there, bit this is the same guy who promotes racial screening in airports in spite of repeated refutations of the usefulness of such measures by a security expert, so…
I’ve listened to maybe 10-15 hours of Sam Harris and I’ve never heard him say that. Can you source that?
Satire should be free. Hate speech should not. People shouldn’t be killed for either. I don’t particularly cry when bigots die though.
All that said, there’s reasons some jokes just aren’t worth telling. There’s times and spaces, and for some jokes there’s neither and that’s ok.
Yeah but what is hate speech when it comes to religion? For hardcore religious people blasphemy is hate speech. Like when that French teacher just showed drawings of Muhammed in historical context it was enough reason for a Muslim to kill him.
If you don’t know what hate speech is I don’t know what to tell you. Or are you doing the equivalent of the “what is a woman” nonsense?
I made a few statements.
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Satire is fine. Agree/ disagree? I think we agree
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Hate speech is not. Agree/ disagree? I don’t know if we agree
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Neither should come with a death penalty? Agree disagree? I hope we agree
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I personally don’t cry over dead bigots. A personal statement. Undebatable unless you want to call me a liar.
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There’s a time and space for jokes. For some jokes there’s neither. Agree/ disagree? I don’t know if we agree.
I think his response was clear. Hate speech can be twisted into anything you want as it’s just an opinion.
I thought they were disagreeing with point two, I don’t want to jump to conclusions though. Social media is full of “so you think [extreme nonsense here]” I am trying to be better than that.
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Is making fun of a religion hate speech? Like religion is a choice to embrace so its kind of weird that it’s a protected class, despite the pilgrims fleeing it.
As in most things: it depends. Your question is too broad for an answer lacking nuance. But why did you ask?
Ohh was just musing on it from a legal perspective. It’s the one thing I can think of that’s a decision driven protected class.
It is funny how attacks on the protected classes seem to rhyme. Homosexuality is presented as being a decision to try attack it. Gender identity is presented as being a choice to try and discredit it.
Now I’ll agree that religion is a class someone can move through, from Christian to muslim, to atheist and finally Buddhist for example. But I don’t think that particularly matters. Someone can realise their sexual identity later in life, then realise they are wrong and it was something else. I don’t think that’s them making decisions, so much as learning more about themselves and the world. So how someone can move around a religious space doesn’t really interest me in terms of what it means as a protected class.
Muse away, transphobes have trodden a lot of ground if you want a head start.
Don’t really understand your last sentence there. Seems inflammatory though. Religion is something you are not born with that’s my point. It’s akin to your favorite sports team as far as I’m concerned.
“There is no gay gene, people arent born gay” it rhymes. Lately it’s being used to question trans-rights to suggest they aren’t born that way either.
All moot though, born that way, not born that way, doesn’t matter at all. It’s a way of making one protected class feel lesser than another in order to discredit them.
This was my “are we the baddies” moment, some 15 years ago btw. Someone pointed out that my anti-thiest rhetoric and the “just asking questions” I was asking were incredibly reminiscent of the other bigots. Of course, in the moment “they were wrong”, “I was right”, “yada yada yada”. But, later when I had time for some introspection, I asked myself why do anti-thiests quack like the other bigots, and more importantly why was I quacking too.
Well I’d say being anti religion is not the same. For one it’s punching up at the moment. I don’t care what you practice with yourself but growing up in a system that uses Christianity as a cudgle has really pissed me off. I also don’t agree with those morons saying homosexuality is a choice, that’s categorically false imo. To be honest I don’t feel that religion should be a protected class when I see it solely used to hurt others. I think you’re also just trying to associate me with those bigots for some weird reason and honestly I don’t appreciate it.
Is making fun of a religion hate speech?
Many believers seem to think so. Then again, they think it’s “hate speech” to show the contradictions of their “holy” book, so…
It depends. If they have blatant hypocrisy and hatred towards others or they’re manipulating laws based on their weird beliefs, or using their religion as an excuse to abuse people then yeah, it’s open season on that. If you’re just making fun of someone because of their funny looking hat, then you’re just being an AH.
Even a scientist on the bleeding edge deals the game of life in error bars. Absolutes do not exist anywhere except idealized fantasy. Anyone driven to violence because of belief is not human;/only primitive animal.
More dehumanizing rhetoric is definitely not the answer. The attackers were human, as reprehensible as their actions were.
I think the people’s presumption that they have some right to be free from offense has done way more damage than anything.
Hebdo was super racist and their criticism came from a glass house. If a Nazi dies I am not losing sleep over it.
Edge lords, but not even close to Nazis.
French culture is more racist-y than US culture, and a history of trait-blindness is starting to catch up with it and having ripples across French society.
What makes you think they were super racist or Nazis?
Their cartoons were similarly racist to Nazi propaganda.
Do you mean Charlie’s cartoons were as racist as Nazi propaganda?
As in everything in life, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
If you don’t like the satire of Charlie Hebdo, your right is to not read it. If you don’t like a comedian who makes pedo jokes, your right is to not buy their tickets. If you don’t like a TV show that shows drug use, your right is to not watch it.
That’s it. That’s the end of your personal rights on that issue. You do NOT have the right to tell other people what they personally view, watch, read, etc…
If enough people share your view, that publication/comedian/show will either change or go out of business naturally because of lack of subscribers. That’s how it works.
I personally find Charlie Hebdo to be racist twits. But that doesn’t give me any right to kill them. I have the right to just ignore them.
What makes you think Charlie Hebdo is racist?
This cover
Not sure what it says, but as Charlie Hebdo makes fun of everyone, and usually for a good reason, what is the problem?
I was curious too:
Boko Haram sex slaves angry
Do not touch our allowances!
This is a satire of right wing politics (which Charlie notably opposed) claiming that poor people make more babies to get more social welfare, with denounciation of islamist organization Boko Haram using women as sex slaves, both mixed to create absurd comedy.
Explain what you find racist about this.
“Racist” is probably too strong a word, you’re right.
I think “Tasteless” is more fitting. Racist would imply that they “satirise” some groups while protecting others, while Charlie Hebdo paints everyone with the same tasteless brush.
Reminds me of something my coworker was telling me about Leah Michele from the show Glee. A black cast mate accused her of being racist and the the rest of the cast essentially said “nah, she’s a total bitch to pretty much everyone”
Aka, the South Park defense.
A week ago I was in line to check out and there was a young woman in a hijab. When she turned to help me I saw her entire face and hands (all I could see really) had acid burns all over.
The paradox of tolerance will never be something I struggle with once The Fall happens.
once The Fall happens
What’s that?
One of the four seasons
I thought they stopped making music in the 60s.
My god are there people who think like this? Hahaha
The “Paradox of Tolerance” is only a paradox if one starts with the ridiculous assertion that tolerance is a universal good.
How did you know they were acid burns as opposed to the many other things that could burn someone?
