Pope Francis on Paris Attack - "one who throws insults can expect a 'punch'"

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yeah, the idea that the Pope would ever actually mean what the thread title here insinuates him to have meant is ludicrous.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What was the pope supposed to say? 'Blatant hate speech is essential to a free society, let 'er rip surviving Charlie Hebdo people'? As little as anybody short of Julius Streicher deserves to die because of a newspaper they put out, I don't think that would have been a morally responsible reaction. Juvenalian satire going out of its way to offend entire religious groups, in a country where at least some of the religious groups in question are already disadvantaged and marginalized, doesn't feature in legitimate political discourse.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What was the pope supposed to say? 'Blatant hate speech is essential to a free society, let 'er rip surviving Charlie Hebdo people'? As little as anybody short of Julius Streicher deserves to die because of a newspaper they put out, I don't think that would have been a morally responsible reaction. Juvenalian satire going out of its way to offend entire religious groups, in a country where at least some of the religious groups in question are already disadvantaged and marginalized, doesn't feature in legitimate political discourse.

There is nothing hateful about Charlie Hebdo's cartoons. We can argue about the value of mean-spirited sneer and scatological humour in political discourse (and I wouldn't even necessarily disagree with you on that), but the idea that religious symbols should be afforded some kind of special protection against them is disgustingly reactionary.

Well, then, on this particular issue, call me Joseph de Maistre and pack me off to a hermitage, because the idea that those cartoons 'aren't hateful' strikes me as self-evidently ludicrous.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How is the cartoon in my signature for example, hateful?

To be honest, I can't really tell what's meant to be communicated in that one, so for all I know it isn't. I mean I'm definitely not claiming they all are.

What differentiates a vulgar cartoon about a religion from, say, a vulgar cartoon about a political view, or about opinion on a movie? Why is the former "hateful" while the others are just expression of a viewpoint?

I'm tempted to just say 'because I've moved towards an admittedly and self-consciously traditionalist-conservative position on this specific issue' and leave it at that, but that's not really a legitimate argument so I won't. One left-oriented argument that springs to mind is that, especially in Europe, while Islam obviously isn't itself a race, it's rhetorically racialized in a way that lends itself to economic marginalization and political repression, and so, while criticism is certainly warranted in many instances, it's kind of unseemly to satirize it insofar as satire should punch up rather than punching down--id est, while I'm actually really offended by some of Charlie Hebdo's anti-Christian material, I don't think it's as problematic for them to be putting out as the anti-Muslim stuff.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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!!!!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alcon: 'Ideological oppression' was Antonio's term, and I'm using it in response to his post. Personally, I'm not sure I think it's an entirely legitimate concept, but it's the term that he used so I'm using it too. Taking a 'side' was...yeah in this situation it was really not the best thing to say, since the results of the 'ideological oppression' in this case were so wildly disproportionate compared to any presumed contribution to material oppression that Charlie Hebdo could have made.

Antonio: With regards to the last paragraph of your response to my post: I'm inclined to maintain a stance of continued skepticism about whether or not Charlie Hebdo--or any publication coming out of a social environment like the (relative) mainstream of modern European society, really--can fully live up to its self-confessed standards and principles in that regard (not racializing religious arguments, treating different religions with some degree of moral equivalency regardless of the social standing of their adherents--leaving aside entirely for the moment the fact that I think it's stupid and myopic to attempt to treat different religions as morally equivalent or parts of the same 'universally oppressive force' or whatever anyway*). However you're obviously better-informed on what Charlie Hebdo's self-confessed standards and principles actually are in the first place, so...yes, I think the anti-anti-clericalism is what's really worth discussing more here, and I'll respond to your PM about that soon, and maybe post some of it in this thread too if I think I come up with any particularly good arguments or turns of phrase.

*Ask me about my thoughts on the different 'vehicles' of Buddhism some time!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alcon: 'Ideological oppression' was Antonio's term, and I'm using it in response to his post. Personally, I'm not sure I think it's an entirely legitimate concept, but it's the term that he used so I'm using it too. Taking a 'side' was...yeah in this situation it was really not the best thing to say, since the results of the 'ideological oppression' in this case were so wildly disproportionate compared to any presumed contribution to material oppression that Charlie Hebdo could have made.

It would be interesting to hear you expand on the meaning of the other phrase as well. Who was under "material supression" from Charlie Hebdo (?), and how is this defined?

Well, after some of Antonio's posts in explanation of what was going on with this magazine I'm no longer sure that anybody was or was in danger of being. I don't really know how it's possible to deny that Muslim minorities are materially disadvantaged, and have this reinforced by ideological agitation, in Europe (and especially France) in general, though...

I think something that's gotten lost in this conversation is the 'free speech/prudent speech' distinction that somebody made up above, and I think that's probably what the Pope was talking about--I highly doubt that censorship would have been his preferred solution to this, except maybe some kind of voluntary prior restraint, like the Comics Code but for Islamophobia or something. To whatever extent he's calling for that, I'm not sure I agree with him (the Comics Code was flagrantly ludicrous, after all), but I don't think it's an inherently inappropriate or callous or cruel position to take, I think some of our more anti-clerical and/or European* posters are reacting to this as if he'd said that these people deserved to die when that's clearly not the case, and that's all I was really trying to argue in this thread to begin with.

*Like politicus said, there is literally and figuratively an ocean between (most) Europeans and (most) North Americans on the limits of prudent speech with respect to religious beliefs.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I highly doubt that censorship would have been his preferred solution to this, except maybe some kind of voluntary prior restraint, like the Comics Code but for Islamophobia or something. To whatever extent he's calling for that, I'm not sure I agree with him (the Comics Code was flagrantly ludicrous, after all), but I don't think it's an inherently inappropriate or callous or cruel position to take, I think some of our more anti-clerical and/or European* posters are reacting to this as if he'd said that these people deserved to die when that's clearly not the case, and that's all I was really trying to argue in this thread to begin with.

Just out of interest, would this be a two way street? I mean, if I show restraint, should religious figures be required to show restraint and not for example caricature gay people as either being sinful, possessed, threats to society, purveyors of vice or have veiled innuendoes made about them comparing them to paedophiles or pedarasts? (all of which the RC has done - we are after all guilty of a 'moral evil')

Yeah. Of course. They really, really, really should stop doing that, and I dearly hope I would still think so even I were cis and/or straight. I think both religious and non- or antireligious people should avoid resorting to defamatory innuendo and raucous mockery on these kinds of issues.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm going to address afleitch's question first here because I have a ready answer to it. I'm not quite sure what to make of Alcon's point yet. I might have a coherent counterargument. I might lack a coherent counterargument but hold to my original position anyway for emotive reasons, or because we lack a common ethical frame of reference for the value of challenging beliefs, or something. I might also retract 'and raucous mockery' and just limit myself to saying that there's a responsibility to avoid defamatory innuendo, or reverse my position entirely (more sincerely than the last time I claimed to do that). Give me time.

afleitch: Yes, I think the subjective nature of what constitutes ‘mockery’ is indeed the problem with, or at least the difficulty of, holding this position—I think at a minimum I’d say that to constitute mockery something has to be in some way targeted towards addressing whatever the issue is on whose basis it’s claimed to be mocking. The ham sandwich and gay marriage examples are clearly not intended to comment in any way on what they’re purportedly mocking.

I'm aware that this isn't necessarily a sufficient distinction to make and that the question remains subjective and liable to case-by-case judgment calls, in any event. Which, again—the difficulty of holding this position.