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.
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?
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Rofl you’re too funny man.
Get real 😋
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.
Go read up on what the French did in Algeria and you might understand why some Algerians might want to kill French racists.
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.
I’m all for satire, but I also think this was kind of bullying in that they did something that was offensive specifically to a particular marginalized minority group.
So it’s not something that should be illegal or warrant a shooting, but I’m not exactly surprised. Just as if they published a story like “Fuck this one guy’s mother” showing a drawing of some random guy’s mother being fucked.* That guy doesn’t then have a right to shoot them and should go straight to prison if he does - but I wouldn’t be surprised and I don’t think we all need to identify with the paper or anything because they were being total pricks.
*And I know the response will be along the lines of “You can’t compare that drawing with a mere drawing of mohammed”. But that betrays a failure to take another perspective. Who’s to say that in a society even more liberal than our own, “fuck your mother” might be seen as not particularly insulting? After all, take away expectations of women being pure and you basically have “fuck your dad” which really doesn’t seem too insulting, it’s like sure if that’s what you’re into weirdo, but let me check with my dad first.
Do you think they wanted to bully the minority rather than the islamists?
What was the satire here, then? How is portraying her as a gypsy anything but racist?
Didn’t really get the gypsy reference, so I looked it up, Charlie directly answered to the emotion it caused here: https://charliehebdo.fr/2018/06/societe/ je-ne-suis-pas-charlie-halep / (the paywall can be bypassed with reading mode). Basically, they are saying that what they did is a satire of French people prejudices against Romanian people. They often do that, they reuse the words/prejudices of the people they criticize in a satirical setting to mock it, though without knowing Charlie’s culture, it’s difficult to interpret. Consider it as the equivalent of “/s” at the end of a comment here.
They could’ve at least framed it as a “le monde” title or something to imply that it’s the media framing her as such… there’s nothing there to imply those are other people’s words…
So I can make a comic of Obama with some fried chicken and some watermelon at a desk with a plaque that says POTUS and just be like “it’s a joke! I’m making fun of the racists!” ? That doesn’t sound right to me, but whatever.
The framing is having it on Charlie Hebdo and knowing what is their style. When people take it out of this context and with no knowledge of local politics, it will easily look racist. The same happens with a satirical comment here, take it out of context and present it at a family dinner, it will not be received the same.
Let me take an up voted comment from here as an example.
Ugh. Bougie homeless. Just sleep in your car like normal people. 🙄
I’m religious, and I think that people should be absolutely free to satirize religion if they want to. What someone else believes isn’t my affair, I definitely think my faith has lots of room for improvement from an organizational perspective, and there are plenty of religious ideas I think are toxic and wrong. Why shouldn’t we have nuance and differing opinions? Why should anyone have the right to hurt others through their religious practices? We should be criticizing those things and calling them out and trying to make them stop, whether we practice religion or not. I think the treatment of women and queer people by a great deal of religious groups is wrong and should be criticized. I don’t think government and religion should be intertwined at all. Just because I practice in a faith doesn’t mean my faith is the authority on anything, but universally we should not be hurting others.
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 is a necessary way to call out impropriety in Democratic society. The humor softens the blow of the reality of horrible acts and makes less horrible but still bad acts easier to understand. As long as it’s not saying things that are just totally without merit or using it purely to spread hate, it should be staunchly defended regardless of who is offended by it.
Example of bad satire is something like a cartoon of an LGBTQ+ person going to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist saying it’s a mental illness and their head explodes. This is pushing the narrative that being gay is something to be cured and that gay people just can’t accept it. This can be considered satire, but like any type of speech it’s stating something designed to harm others. Satire is meant to over-exaggerate a problem, not make up a problem that doesn’t actually exist for the express purpose of hate.
Would you support killing a person who published such a cartoon?
Social ostracization or ridicule is an appropriate response to bad statements, not violence
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.
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?
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.
I am legally obligated not to have an opinion
I don’t.
Fuck terrorists, fuck terrorists sympathizers and fuck people who kill others over a cartoon
Murdering humans over a drawing is a sensitive topic for me. Please do not expect civility when discussing ancient barbaric pre-scientific belief systems.
By that same thought process, don’t expect civility when you’re making fun of and disparaging people’s religions.
🤷🏼♂️
Just saying, you might want to think about what your advocating for and the hypocrisy behind it.
There is no hypocrisy. Murdering in the name of god is not the same as being critical of religion.
Adults who are afraid of sky Grandpa are never civil. I think your statement is intended as a roundabout threat.
Honestly? That I would rather have Meta (and a bunch of Western countries, while we’re at it) lift restrictions on that front first before they go against LGBT people.
I’m not on board with the idea that edgy or offensive humor is valuable in itself, but I absolutely abhor the scenario where offended conservative and traditionalist views are treated in their own terms while marginalized groups are considered needy or nagging if they ask for the same treatment.
Also not on board with comedians assuming that noting their ignorance or bigotry is the same as not having a sense of humor, incidentally. Everybody sucks, is my point.
It was depressing that every newspaper in the developed world didn’t print the cartoon :(
They sold millions of them here in France though but yeah you’re right. Especially the Danes who backed down then and again.
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.
In respect to my functioning brain it is profane to cater to babies who cry about pictures of their child rapist prophet.
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
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. 🤔
No.
[…], 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:
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?
We pull back too much because Islamic nutjobs will get violent because you dared draw a picture that resembled their stupid prophet. By doing that, we are giving them what they want and telling other religious groups that if they get violent enough, we’ll stop to appease them too.
You can mock Jesus, Moses, Krishna and any other religious figure because their followers, at worse, are going to verbally protest, if they do anything at all. But draw fucking Muhammad and people will tell you to knock it off because we don’t want to upset the assholes who will riot and kill people because they can’t handle someone having a differing opinion. Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.
In response, we should have doubled down. Make more cartoons, get more vulgar with it…go all in, not stopped to appease them. Some people did for a while immediately after the attack, but not enough and not long enough, imo.
Would your response be the same if an outright racist or transphobic comic was murdered? Would you spread racist and transphobic content to assert your free speech?
Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.
Not drawing cartoons is not bending over backwards. If they were trying to get women being veiled, or ban abortions or homosexuality then yeah we should tell them to fuck off. But if they’re just asking to not say a word or draw something that isn’t necessary to political dialog then it’s fair for society to respect that. It should be enforced by being ostracized not killed though.
People shouldn’t be shot for saying the n word but if someone did get shot for saying it we shouldn’t all go around saying the n word because being intentionally offensive is still a dick move. Again not one that should be punished with death.
Would your response be the same if an outright racist or transphobic comic was murdered? Would you spread racist and transphobic content to assert your free speech?
Sure, why not? I feel that way about Dave Chappelle and the crap he got for making jokes about “the t” in LGBT. We can make jokes about everyone else but as soon as it comes to transgender people, that’s off limits? No. Don’t think so. Carry on, Dave. He did exactly what I recommended here by doubling down when people made a big deal over it.
But if they’re just asking to not say a word or draw something that isn’t necessary to political dialog then it’s fair for society to respect that. It should be enforced by being ostracized not killed though.
There are Christians who ask for this and it is absolutely not respected. There were protests for things like “The Last Temptation of Christ” and many other media since and instead society continues to poke fun at Jesus.
So why is it respected when it comes to Muhammad but not for Jesus despite a portion of the population asking for him to not be satirized? Is it because they’re not vocal enough? Or is it because people fear for their lives because psychos murder over a cartoon?
On the other side, if you do double down and get vulgar then you’ll find lot of racists joining in with you. That’s the dilemma of criticizing or satirizing Islam while also staying away from xenophobes.
Why doesn’t the same happen for Hinduism? It’s mocked relentlessly and is predominately practiced by non-whites, perhaps even more so than Islam, but we never hear any worries of racism for it. Why do we worry for one religion and not another? What about Judaism? It’s perhaps the most mocked/satirized religion throughout history and the only one that actually shares its background with a race, but we never worry about racism towards it like Islam?
Why doesn’t the same happen for Hinduism?
Are you sure about that? Do you even know what is happening in India ever since Modi’s party got into power? Please don’t talk out of your ass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_cow_vigilante_violence_in_India
Oh okay I missed one example lol you got me.
What about Judaism? You left that question unanswered. If we’re really that worried about racism, I would think we’d be more cautious when it comes to mocking anything Jewish-related, wouldn’t we? But that’s not the case at all as their religion is mocked and satirized freely.
What about Judaism?
Uhm look at Zionists? Seriously?
Just because you think these religions are fine with comedy (they’re not but those voices are miniscule) doesn’t mean they’re fine with everything you say about those religions.
