Pope Francis on Paris Attack - "one who throws insults can expect a 'punch'"
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  Pope Francis on Paris Attack - "one who throws insults can expect a 'punch'"
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Author Topic: Pope Francis on Paris Attack - "one who throws insults can expect a 'punch'"  (Read 13215 times)
politicus
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« Reply #50 on: January 16, 2015, 05:49:27 PM »


Best post on Atlas in 2015 Wink
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #51 on: January 16, 2015, 06:24:41 PM »

Well wow, I certainly didn't expect so much praise. Thanks all! Smiley
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Nathan
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« Reply #52 on: January 16, 2015, 06:46:52 PM »
« Edited: January 17, 2015, 12:40:09 AM by sex-negative feminist prude »

There used to be an obviously melodramatic and insincere retraction of my position here. It is or was in memphis's signature. I'd encourage anybody who has followed memphis's signature here to reflect upon his habits of quote-mining, systematic mendacity, and going out of his way to frame anybody with whom he disagrees in the worst possible light regardless of the context.
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angus
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« Reply #53 on: January 16, 2015, 07:14:13 PM »

Ah, the embedding tactic.  Okay, I'll give it a go, then I'm going to stop arguing with you because much of what you have said seems absurd.  


1) You made a clear parallel between your sons lack of social filter and the satirists work.

2) Proper political satire is not "cute and quirky". It has bite.


1.  Yes, in an attempt to be generous, I did.  Perhaps I should not forgive adults as easily as children.  Certainly these "grown-ups" really don't have any excuse for what they're doing.  

2.  I disagree with the first sentence, although I'll agree that biting makes it more enjoyable. 
Still, satire is not properly defined as "being offensive just to be offensive" which at this point is what the Charlie people are doing.  As for whether any of their work was actually entertaining, I cannot reasonably say that it is.  Of course I recognize that it may be funny to Frenchmen.  I do read enough French to read most of the short cartoon sentences, but I also respect that there are some subtle cultural differences that I might not catch.  In this regard, I may be in the role that Chinese poster who is always asking "what does the red mean?" when he posts English paragraphs that he can more-or-less read, but cannot quite get the gist of it, or "can somebody please tell me why this joke is funny?"  Well, if you have to ask...  Anyway, I'm not asking.  I do get some foreign jokes well enough, just not these ones.  They are not amusing to me.  They are, however, deeply offensive.  They go far beyond what I'd consider satire.


1) It is not hate speech to mock religion (and I say that as a religious person myself).

2) Charlie Hebdo did not generally mock religion. They mocked the abuse of religious authority and the reactionary views and norms of many religious people. There is a clear difference.

3) There is nothing wrong with having an agenda if that agenda is fighting for freedom and against abuse of power.


1.  As astonishing as I find your pronouncement to be (and I say that as an irreligious, agnostic person myself), I find it morally reprehensible to mock religion in the way that they were doing it.  Every fiber of my being tells me that such mockery is crude and wrong.  I will not argue with you because at this point it's all normative.  We will simply have to agree to disagree.  

2.  Heuristic and misleading.  First, mocking the way religion is implemented is mocking religion.  Second, they weren't just mocking implementation, and they are quite open about their anti-religious bigotry.

3.  Having an agenda is not, in the abstract, wrong.  It was the hateful agenda specifically to which I was referring.

They were not bigots in any meaningful sense of that term.

Okay.  Right.  Our newsmedia also call the publication "satirical" rather than "hatemongering."  If the TV says it's so, it must be, right?

I am not attacking the French generally or their treatment of Muslims.  As crude as their mentality toward muslims have been, I know that US society is just as nasty when it comes to treatment of muslims.  We have given radical islamic recruiters just as much fodder as the French have.


I said nothing against Muslim students and I respect their views. Do not put words into my mouth (this seems to be totally out of left field).


Of course, we have both taken the thread a bit off course, as have many others.  It's really about a statement made by the pope on an airplane in response to a reporter's question.  A statement, by the way, which contains no inaccuracies as far as I can tell.  

  

Perhaps not.  Has anyone claimed that you did?


All I asked for was a little respect for the dead...


Seriously?  Give us a break.  It is not as though the pope said that the families of these pseudo-intellectual "journalists" should be exorcised.  In fact, he condemned the violence immediately and called upon muslim leaders to condemn them as well.  Of course we all have sympathy for their families, many of whom are probably thinking, "WTF?  I told him not keep provoking them like that!  Now how in the hell am I going to raise little Pierre and little Georgette on my milkmaid's salary?"

I agree that murderers should be apprehended and tried, when possible.  It is a matter of public safety.  I do not think anyone, including the pope, is claiming that any of this violence is justified.  Nevertheless, these "journalists" acted stupidly.  It's really hard for me to feel sorry for them.  They spread hatred, and what's worse, they claim not only to be above prejudice but also to oppose it.  They also claim to be against oppression.  Highly ironic considering the vitriolic attacks against those with whom they disagree.  Of course they are free to mock religion, if they want.  They are free to curse and spit and claim that they are better than anyone else because they are above everyone else.  I for one will support the right of all US citizens to mock religion.  I'm not well versed on French law, but one assumes that the French have a right to do so as well.  Still, I will not object to Darwin Awards all around for those stupid enough to continue to do what these Charlie Hebdo people are doing.  


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politicus
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« Reply #54 on: January 16, 2015, 07:23:12 PM »

Ah, the embedding tactic.  Okay, I'll give it a go, then I'm going to stop arguing with you because much of what you have said seems absurd.  

No need to be condescending.
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angus
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« Reply #55 on: January 16, 2015, 07:31:17 PM »

Ah, the embedding tactic.  Okay, I'll give it a go, then I'm going to stop arguing with you because much of what you have said seems absurd.  

No need to be condescending.

What?  That really wasn't meant to be the condescending part.  (I actually tried very hard to remove all the condescending, and animated, parts of my post before I posted it.)


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Alcon
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« Reply #56 on: January 16, 2015, 07:41:01 PM »
« Edited: January 16, 2015, 07:58:18 PM by Grad Students are the Worst »

As astonishing as I find your pronouncement to be (and I say that as an irreligious, agnostic person myself), I find it morally reprehensible to mock religion in the way that they were doing it.  Every fiber of my being tells me that such mockery is crude and wrong.  I will not argue with you because at this point it's all normative.  We will simply have to agree to disagree.  

That's the problem with your argument in a nutshell.  Every fiber of your being is bothered by an action, so you apparently conclude it's wrong and immediately stop thinking about it.  You apparently don't think about the consequences of deeming a certain action unacceptable, or the consequences of living in a world where it's popularly considered unacceptable to offend someone's sensibilities about their sincerely-held beliefs.  This isn't just a matter of varying sensibilities.  This is a problem where you stop thinking several iterations before the moral repercussions of your conclusion stop.

Also:

Okay.  Right.  Our newsmedia also call the publication "satirical" rather than "hatemongering."  If the TV says it's so, it must be, right?

When you're being sarcastic about someone's argument, maybe you should actually use an argument  they made, instead of a random argument you think of.

They also claim to be against oppression.  Highly ironic considering the vitriolic attacks against those with whom they disagree.

Explain why making vitriolic attacks against ideas they disagree with is "ironic" if they're against oppression.
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angus
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« Reply #57 on: January 16, 2015, 08:06:11 PM »

You used the word unacceptable many times.  You'll notice that I never used it.  (To quote politicus, don't put words in my mouth.)  I accept all of it.  I suggest that you learn to accept as well.
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Alcon
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« Reply #58 on: January 16, 2015, 08:15:15 PM »

You used the word unacceptable many times.  You'll notice that I never used it.  (To quote politicus, don't put words in my mouth.)  I accept all of it.  I suggest that you learn to accept as well.


I used "unacceptable" twice, not many times, and I meant morally unacceptable, so just replace it with "wrong."  There you go.  Now you can reply to my post.
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angus
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« Reply #59 on: January 16, 2015, 08:28:30 PM »
« Edited: January 16, 2015, 08:42:32 PM by angus »

I do not suggest that making vitriolic attacks against ideas with which one disagrees is ironic.  I am tempted to say "learn to read, man" but it occurs to me that at that point I was not completing sentences.  Politicus has mastered English well enough to convince me that she understands vernacular.  One would assume that you do as well, being as how it is your native language.   

Irony occurs whenever the actual result contradicts the expected result.  For example, on Phineas and Ferb when Phineas says something like, "It's not like a giant anvil is going to fall out of the sky" and then a giant anvil falls from the sky.  Similarly, it occurs when those who say that they will not tolerate intolerance show such intolerance toward perceived intolerance that they will not tolerate it.  Certainly it occurs when a self-ordained anti-religious publication is so religiously devoted to stamping out all religion, as well as when those who claim to be so deeply devoted to the cause of freedom that they feel they are free to so attack the freedoms those immigrants who emigrate from lands seeking economic or other freedoms.  

I cannot find any other substance in your post, but perhaps that is my shortcoming so in the spirit of polite debate I will ask:  Is there anything else that you need explained?  If you need French-English translations of the many spiteful pieces of "literature" created by Charlie Hebdo, you might first try google translate.  The sentences are generally simple, meaning that they do not contain subordinate clauses, so google does a pretty good job in translating them.  You may have to be imaginative once in a while because cartoon writers, like me, often do not write proper and complete sentences, but I bet you are smart enough to figure it out if you try.

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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #60 on: January 16, 2015, 08:56:27 PM »

There is nothing wrong with insulting religions either. Insulting a religion is not the same as insulting believers.
You couldn't be more wrong about that, and I feel the same way in regards to non-thiestic religions such as atheism and humanism.  That said, insulting religious leaders is in general not the same as insulting their religion or their followers.  I say in general because in a very real sense, Muhammad, Jesus, Gautama , etc. have transcended being people who are leaders of a religion to becoming symbols of that religion.  That's a distinction that many secularists have difficulty grasping the concept of, let alone acknowledging the validity thereof.

Bullsh*t. Jesus, Muhammad etc. are only sacred figures to believers, but nonbelievers may say whatever they want about them. It's not that secularists don't "get" it. They simply understand that their liberty is not limited by other people's beliefs.

This. Plus Ernest's definition of 'religion' extends to things such as state Communism. If you have a philosophical worldview, with or without a god head it should be subject to criticism and ridicule because those two observations often overlap; how they are interpreted is often subject to the observer. If I ridicule the fact that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus flew up into the sky, at what point would me saying 'Virgin birth is impossible as is flying literally or metaphorically into heaven' cross the line from criticism to ridicule? I'm belittling that belief either way.

It depends on how you say it.  Obviously a simple statement of disbelief in the beliefs of another is criticism and not an insult.  Something like "Only an unfeeling ignoramus who thinks physics can explain everything would deny the existence of the Divine," would be an insult.
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angus
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« Reply #61 on: January 16, 2015, 10:18:56 PM »

I, too, thought it was bizarre to post the thread in the US General Discussion thread, and thought that the OP might have considered more wisely.  Now, you have given the OP yet another reason to think more carefully about thread placement in the future.  If you're not careful, it gets moved into the graveyard known as the "Religion & Philosophy" section.  I'm sure your intentions were noble, Ernest, but you realize, I assume, that removal of a thread to this board amounts to a death sentence for the topic.



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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #62 on: January 16, 2015, 10:22:29 PM »

True, but as it had developed, it was more an R&P thread than an IGD thread.
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politicus
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« Reply #63 on: January 16, 2015, 10:27:27 PM »

I, too, thought it was bizarre to post the thread in the US General Discussion thread, and thought that the OP might have considered more wisely.  Now, you have given the OP yet another reason to think more carefully about thread placement in the future.  If you're not careful, it gets moved into the graveyard known as the "Religion & Philosophy" section.  I'm sure your intentions were noble, Ernest, but you realize, I assume, that removal of a thread to this board amounts to a death sentence for the topic.


Which may be for the best, we were going nowhere productive. There literally is an ocean between Americans and Europeans on this issue. I will return briefly to address some of the worst garbage you threw at me, but I think Alcon has made most of the points I wanted to.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #64 on: January 16, 2015, 10:44:37 PM »

You might consider if that was my precise motive in pestering Ernest to move the thread here.

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« Reply #65 on: January 16, 2015, 10:47:54 PM »
« Edited: January 16, 2015, 10:52:48 PM by sex-negative feminist prude »

Okay, so, uh, about what I was saying earlier.

First of all, I definitely shouldn’t have made a flouncy, insincere retraction of my position like I did.

Antonio, I'm...really not used to being accused of moral relativism, so I'm not sure how I can respond to that very well-argued and beautifully-written post except to say that I certainly don't consider analysis of issues and allocation of resources in terms of oppression axes a relativistic value. I think it needs to be remembered that groups who are at one end of the gun barrel in one way can be at the other end of it in another—there is obviously oppression going on within the Islamic world and presumably within the Muslim minority in France as well—the idea that 'everything a disadvantaged minority does to its own members is above criticism' is not one that I'm (intentionally) advocating at all. (So, since it's not as if there's some sort of universal hard and fast binary of 'these people are oppressed, these people are oppressive', we do have to hold some sort of values outside of that framework. What the values outside of that framework that I hold tell me, though, is that the framework is necessary to take into account and is rich in moral implication.) What I am arguing is that I don't think it's altogether appropriate for people very high up in the league tables, so to speak, to exercise some sort of weird noblesse oblige in using ridicule or satire to intervene in the power dynamics between those lower down.

I think in situations in which material oppression is going in one direction and ideological oppression is going in another (which, yes, is a reasonable characterization of the situation here) it’s my general preference to take the side of those experiencing the former. Call it Marxist influence—I’d certainly rather cop to that than to bog-standard American liberal ‘social justice’ thinking. The takeaway, the historical example that has most influenced my views on what happens when oppression flows back and forth, and how that relates to the concept of revolutionary violence, is probably the history of 下克上 gekokujō as an idea. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was one of the best and most revolutionary concepts in Japanese political history. In the twentieth, it was one of the worst.

What I concede might be going on here—and I think afleitch has verged on exposing this by pointing out that I don’t actually have the best command of French—is that I may have developed a misapprehension of what Charlie Hebdo is all about based on what Inks might call my ‘anti-anti-clerical’ views and my tendency to believe the worst about people or publications that seem like they might be racializing antireligious arguments (which I would hope most of us can agree is something that occurs from time to time and is a real problem when it does). I'm never going to view vituperative attacks on people's religious views in a positive light but, with regards to why, if it is the case that I've misapprehended this then we're back to the conservative side of my views on the issue, which I don't think is really something I'm comfortable attempting to defend cogently in a public thread at this particular remove (we can discuss it via PM if you have any interest in hearing about it).

I hope to make it clear that said anti-anti-clerical views are not the same as just blindly supporting whatever religious order I perceive would be best for me or for my other values. In my capacity as a trans person I would probably fare a lot better under a traditionalist Muslim regime than under a traditionalist Christian one, and better in some varieties of traditionalist Muslim regime than in some varieties of modern Western democracy! In my capacity as a lesbian…not so much.
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patrick1
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« Reply #66 on: January 16, 2015, 10:50:26 PM »

Interesting exchanges here.  One thing I've grown quite intrigued over my decade of posting on this forum is how the medium can dictate behavior.  An internet forum, or in Hebdo's case print, provides a a distance and detachment from how people would normally interact with each other in person.  I think I've singled out BRTD on this several times, in that how he engages on the forum may get him popped in the jaw in real life. However, I think all of us behave differently from behind a keyboard and say things we may not otherwise.

As a thought exercise, how many of you would print out the phallic Mohammed cartoons and stroll down to the local mosque and  stick them in the worshipers' faces. I'd say that that was provocative or more crudely dickish behavior.  You are intentionally mocking people's most firmly held beliefs and conception of themselves.  In most instances, more important to them than their race, gender or nationality. When you push people's buttons, you will get a reaction. Of course, I support people's right to be a dick in print and person. It is the mark of a mature and self assured belief that you not let yourself be antagonized and react.
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Storebought
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« Reply #67 on: January 16, 2015, 11:02:34 PM »

I truly expect to be put on a lot of ignore lists of posters I otherwise respect for this, but I will say it anyway:

Islamophobia is the height (depths) of cheap populism and political-correctness in Europe right now. There is no quicker way to gain mass popularity in Europe than by playing to the rafters.

Charlie Hebdo was a publication that produced cartoons as witty and subtle, and thought provoking, and insightful, as a Jack Chick tract. Both are scurrilous, but whereas Jack Chick aimed to convert, Charlie Hebdo aimed to demean. Demean whom? Ridiculous, hate-spewing Saudi clerics? -- no. The French Muslims living in the environs of Paris -- yes.

Jack Chick and Charlie Hebdo are both protected by freedom of speech, freedom of belief, and its corollary "freedom to offend". But it is ugly and unfair to imply that anyone who disagrees with the "comedy" or "social value" of Charlie Hebdo and the like has failing reasoning ability or is a bad citizen. People have the right and obligation to refuse demagoguery of that sort.
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anvi
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« Reply #68 on: January 16, 2015, 11:24:56 PM »
« Edited: January 16, 2015, 11:40:36 PM by anvi »

What I understood Pope Francis to be saying, in a nutshell, is that free speech and prudent speech are not alway the same thing.  I understood him to be saying that the murders of the Charlie Hebdo satirists was indefensible, both on the level of the murders themselves and on the basis of the fact that they were incited by mere speech, and speech is everyone's right.  But I also understood him to be saying that, when anyone says something that openly ridicules the most deeply held beliefs of others, then angry responses, and sometimes responses that go way beyond anger, are probably inevitable sooner or later.  I don't think the latter qualification is controversial at all.  The way people respond to one another, including the ways I sometimes respond to others, on this very forum every day proves that, doesn't it?

But ultimately, in a broader sense, I don't think Francis' diagnosis of the whole situation was correct.  To me, I think one unfortunate thing about this whole incident is that the murderers of the Charlie Hebdo satirists didn't themselves care about the contents of the cartoons.  If they did care, then it was just an add-on to a laundry-list of grievances that they either nursed themselves or were persuaded by others were worth dying for.  I don't think the people in the organizations that directed and supported the murderers' activities really cared about the content of the cartoons at any rate.  Killing the satirists was bound to provoke precisely the social, political and quasi-religious polarization that it has.  Creating that polarization makes it easier to depict westerners as anti-Muslim to the core, and in turn makes it easier for these organizations to recruit disaffected immigrants that they couldn't recruit otherwise.  I myself wish that westerners would stop jumping as fast as they can at the bait--and demonizing one another in the process--and treat a monstrous crime as just that, a monstrous crime.
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angus
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« Reply #69 on: January 16, 2015, 11:54:49 PM »

What I understood Pope Francis to be saying, in a nutshell, is that free speech and prudent speech are not alway the same thing.  

Of course, but that headline wouldn't sell newspapers, would it?

What I understood Pope Francis to be saying, in a nutshell, is that free speech and prudent speech are not alway the same thing...   Killing the satirists was bound to provoke precisely the social, political and quasi-religious polarization that it has.  Creating that polarization makes it easier to depict westerners as anti-Muslim to the core, and in turn makes it easier for these organizations to recruit disaffected immigrants that they couldn't recruit otherwise.  I myself wish that westerners would stop jumping as fast as they can at the bait--and demonizing one another in the process--and treat a monstrous crime as just that, a monstrous crime.

yes, it's probably good to keep such things in perspective.  We seem to have devolved into two camps:  one in favor of free speech and one in favor of being nicer to muslims.  In fact, none of that remembers the fact that some murders were committed.  Some widows were created.  Some fathers and one mother were lost.  So, before we go back into our camps and argue--and I know we probably will because that's more interesting than all this serious shit--I just wanted you to know that I enjoyed reading your post. 
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patrick1
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« Reply #70 on: January 17, 2015, 12:00:27 AM »

Anvi, I disagree with the last bit about not caring about the content.  Within the so called Islamic state people are getting their heads lopped off for all sorts of blasphemy, sorcery and assorted haram activities on a daily basis.  I dont think they are very sophisticated or rational in their tactics and strategy. Al Qaeda 1.0 seems to have been a more rational actor and that was  due to their more centralized command and control.  I think the France attacks are more in line with the new diffuse nature of things.
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« Reply #71 on: January 17, 2015, 12:29:03 AM »

I dont think they are very sophisticated or rational in their tactics and strategy. Al Qaeda 1.0 seems to have been a more rational actor and that was  due to their more centralized command and control.

Yeah. I think this is the difference to keep in mind, not the potentially technically correct but in presentation usually sensationalistic idea that the Un-Islamic Non-State is TOO RADICAL FOR AL-QAEDA!!!!
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Alcon
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« Reply #72 on: January 17, 2015, 05:48:12 AM »

I do not suggest that making vitriolic attacks against ideas with which one disagrees is ironic.  I am tempted to say "learn to read, man" but it occurs to me that at that point I was not completing sentences.  Politicus has mastered English well enough to convince me that she understands vernacular.  One would assume that you do as well, being as how it is your native language.  

I have no idea why you're talking on attacks on people, considering I initiated this conversation in response to you objecting to attacks on ideas...I read fine.  I just wrongly assumed you weren't randomly shifting the conversation.

In that case: I want to talk about your claim that it's "morally reprehensible" to attack ideas (in this case, mock religion) in a way that's "crude and wrong," or what that means.  I just reject your claim that something being "crude" or offputing or whatever ("wrong" could mean anything) means it can't be useful and productive.

I cannot find any other substance in your post, but perhaps that is my shortcoming so in the spirit of polite debate I will ask:  Is there anything else that you need explained?  If you need French-English translations of the many spiteful pieces of "literature" created by Charlie Hebdo, you might first try google translate.  The sentences are generally simple, meaning that they do not contain subordinate clauses, so google does a pretty good job in translating them.  You may have to be imaginative once in a while because cartoon writers, like me, often do not write proper and complete sentences, but I bet you are smart enough to figure it out if you try.

Like I said before and above, I want some idea of whether you think "crude" conduct is inherently wrong, and whether it's inherently wrong to offend sensibilities.  I doubt you do, but when you write things like "every fiber of my being tells me such mockery is crude and wrong," and then respond to a critique of that claim by claiming this is just a subjective reaction, you make it seem like you're seriously not thinking beyond that level.  That's what I've been pushing back against since my first response to you.

*** Random digressions that I don't think matter (feel free to skip) ***

Irony occurs whenever the actual result contradicts the expected result.  For example, on Phineas and Ferb when Phineas says something like, "It's not like a giant anvil is going to fall out of the sky" and then a giant anvil falls from the sky.  Similarly, it occurs when those who say that they will not tolerate intolerance show such intolerance toward perceived intolerance that they will not tolerate it.

In that ridiculously strict sense, merely opposing intolerance -- if you're going to define "tolerance" that broadly -- is intolerant.  Yes, one of the big ironies of tolerant liberalism is that it can't tolerate intolerance.  Obviously, liberalism/pluralism/etc. have a more nuanced approach to (in)tolerance than just "for tolerance, against tolerance," because that's definitionally self-defeating.  You're acting like you're the first one to think of this, and this isn't an issue liberal democracies have been wrestling with for years.

Certainly it occurs when a self-ordained anti-religious publication is so religiously devoted to stamping out all religion, as well as when those who claim to be so deeply devoted to the cause of freedom that they feel they are free to so attack the freedoms those immigrants who emigrate from lands seeking economic or other freedoms.  

This reminds me that you never responded to the post where I was arguing with you on what "religion" is after you were a royal jerk based on something you misread.  I believe that qualifies as irony, considering the rest of this post.

Your use of "religion" is an equivocation.  You're using "religious" in a colloquial sense to prove any irony about people who oppose religion in a literal sense.  If you're going to condescend to me, [something arrogant here].
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Alcon
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« Reply #73 on: January 17, 2015, 05:57:11 AM »

I think in situations in which material oppression is going in one direction and ideological oppression is going in another (which, yes, is a reasonable characterization of the situation here) it’s my general preference to take the side of those experiencing the former.

Hey, I don't want to do hit-and-run here at all, but I'm too tired to respond to the rest of your post, and this sentence really struck me.

Could you define what situation you're speaking of?

And from whom, and how, is ideological oppression "flowing"?

And why you believe a "side" must be taken between the two 'oppression flows'?

I'm not playing gotcha here, but this is a statement that makes sense to me in the abstract/theoretical sense, but when I start thinking about what it actually means materially...I mean, I'll let you go for it without poisoning the well.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #74 on: January 17, 2015, 06:47:26 AM »

Okay, so, uh, about what I was saying earlier.

First of all, I definitely shouldn’t have made a flouncy, insincere retraction of my position like I did.

Antonio, I'm...really not used to being accused of moral relativism, so I'm not sure how I can respond to that very well-argued and beautifully-written post except to say that I certainly don't consider analysis of issues and allocation of resources in terms of oppression axes a relativistic value. I think it needs to be remembered that groups who are at one end of the gun barrel in one way can be at the other end of it in another—there is obviously oppression going on within the Islamic world and presumably within the Muslim minority in France as well—the idea that 'everything a disadvantaged minority does to its own members is above criticism' is not one that I'm (intentionally) advocating at all. (So, since it's not as if there's some sort of universal hard and fast binary of 'these people are oppressed, these people are oppressive', we do have to hold some sort of values outside of that framework. What the values outside of that framework that I hold tell me, though, is that the framework is necessary to take into account and is rich in moral implication.) What I am arguing is that I don't think it's altogether appropriate for people very high up in the league tables, so to speak, to exercise some sort of weird noblesse oblige in using ridicule or satire to intervene in the power dynamics between those lower down.

I think in situations in which material oppression is going in one direction and ideological oppression is going in another (which, yes, is a reasonable characterization of the situation here) it’s my general preference to take the side of those experiencing the former. Call it Marxist influence—I’d certainly rather cop to that than to bog-standard American liberal ‘social justice’ thinking. The takeaway, the historical example that has most influenced my views on what happens when oppression flows back and forth, and how that relates to the concept of revolutionary violence, is probably the history of 下克上 gekokujō as an idea. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was one of the best and most revolutionary concepts in Japanese political history. In the twentieth, it was one of the worst.

What I concede might be going on here—and I think afleitch has verged on exposing this by pointing out that I don’t actually have the best command of French—is that I may have developed a misapprehension of what Charlie Hebdo is all about based on what Inks might call my ‘anti-anti-clerical’ views and my tendency to believe the worst about people or publications that seem like they might be racializing antireligious arguments (which I would hope most of us can agree is something that occurs from time to time and is a real problem when it does). I'm never going to view vituperative attacks on people's religious views in a positive light but, with regards to why, if it is the case that I've misapprehended this then we're back to the conservative side of my views on the issue, which I don't think is really something I'm comfortable attempting to defend cogently in a public thread at this particular remove (we can discuss it via PM if you have any interest in hearing about it).

I hope to make it clear that said anti-anti-clerical views are not the same as just blindly supporting whatever religious order I perceive would be best for me or for my other values. In my capacity as a trans person I would probably fare a lot better under a traditionalist Muslim regime than under a traditionalist Christian one, and better in some varieties of traditionalist Muslim regime than in some varieties of modern Western democracy! In my capacity as a lesbian…not so much.

Let Memphis be the jerk he is - as for me, if you have any objection to what I said, I am glad to hear about them.

I knew that bringing up moral relativism would be somewhat controversial because, in abstract terms, we share the same aversion toward it. My intention wasn't to outright accuse you of holding a relativistic viewpoint, but rather to point out that you were borrowing an argument that could easily lend itself to it. You are right that "analysis of issues and allocation of resources in terms of oppression axes" (a concept that I shortened and will continue to shorten as "social justice", since I think it fits quite well) isn't necessarily, or isn't entirely a morally relativistic school of thought. The main categorical imperative of social justice is contained in the phrase "check your privilege". It's often derided even in liberal milieu, but I personally fully embrace it. The way I see it, "check your privilege" means "be aware of the injustices of society; realize that you might benefit from them; see the way in which other people suffer from it; take that into account when passing a judgment on their actions or character; deconstruct the way in which your own views are biased by these oppressive mechanisms". It is a powerful and useful guide to being a real progressive (and a decent person as well).

Other tendencies in social justice, however, clearly verge toward moral relativism - and  in my opinion, this includes some of the notions you have put forward here. Despite the qualifications you have given to your stance, it still comes down to the idea that a universal principle (anticlericalism) should be applied according to different standards depending on the material conditions of the believers of a particular religion. I don't see how this notion can be reconciled with a universal principle. It's certainly not contained in the "check your privilege" imperative, which only condemns ideas who play an active role in sustaining material oppression. You cannot honestly accuse anticlericalism itself of being part of the ideological construct that sustains the oppression of Arab immigrants in Europe (the way, for example, gender-essentialism is a construct that sustains patriarchy).

The key point, ultimately, is your assertion that "material oppression is going in one direction and ideological oppression is going in another". I don't actually believe that's the case here, because, in fact, material oppression is altogether irrelevant to this issue. As I already said, when Charlie Hebdo weighs in the debate on ethnic issues, it always takes the side of the oppressed. But when it talks about Mohammed and Jesus, it sees them through the same lens because they are all, in the end, the same thing. They certainly don't "exercise some sort of weird noblesse oblige in using ridicule or satire to intervene in the power dynamics between those lower down", because their goal is to fight against what they see as a universally oppressive force, regardless of material context. The only way their drawings could be oppressive is if they made this connection between Islam as a religion and French Arabs. Your third paragraph seems to concede that, if this connection isn't made, your argument doesn't stand. If so, we might not actually be in disagreement (anti-anti-clericalism aside).
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