Analogize

[jere7my]

To add to my previous post (because, really, it needed to be longer), consider these cases:

• During a time of racial strife in America, a newspaper runs a story about how white people no longer feel safe walking the streets, because blacks are innately violent. As a supporting feature, they publish cartoons illustrating this point. Rioting ensues, and the paper is burned down.


• During the Janet Jackson Superbowl kerfuffle, a major newspaper gets sick and tired of the inanity and publishes a topless group photo of their (partly female) editorial staff. They consider it an act of nonviolent resistance to what they see as an overly oppressive culture. They are fired, the Christian right lines up to try to get the paper shut down, and some nut throws a Molotov cocktail into their offices.
  

Our reactions to these two sets of images would probably be different; the latter is more clearly a free speech issue, I think, and the former more clearly an incitement to violence without any valid point to make. I don't think it's at all clear, given the information we (I) have, which category the Jyllands-Posten cartoons fall into, or if they're somewhere in the middle, or off on a different axis. And that legitimately affects how we'll feel about Jyllands-Posten.

However, it's important to point out that in both cases the newspaper would be exercising their right to free speech, and in both cases the violent reaction would be insupportable. We might feel more sympathy for the second set of editors, and the first set of editors might legitimately be called idiots, but in both cases the line between legally acceptable and inacceptable behavior is clear.

Comments

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

No matter how you see it, the Jyllands-Posten situation is closer to the second example than the first, given how intentionally it was *about* free speech and the right to satire itself, rather than about any substantive issue.

Closer to your point would be if, at a time in racial strife in America, a newspaper complained that it was "impossible to show black Americans in anything but a positive light for fear of racial violence" and then ran a bunch of cartoons showing both indignant black protesters/politicians *and* stereotypical gangsters, pimps, drug dealers, rap artists, and so on, including one cartoon showing a stereotyped black gangster labeled by a racial slur next to a bunch of other stereotyped caricatures of other races (including an ignorant Southern white hick), and so on.

I mean, yes, the bomb-turban thing was quite offensive, but that was the point. The point of the whole exercise was "We're going to show a bunch of different images running the gamut from dumb to kind of cute to downright disgustingly offensive just to see how you react", and it said so in the sidebar accompanying the cartoons. I don't think you can say the editors seriously meant to make a point about all Muslims being terrorists or whatnot.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

See, I don't think we know. Some people have charged that Jyllands-Posten is run by racists, and "we're doing this to demonstrate that there's a problem" was really just a cover story for "we're doing this because it gives us another excuse to label Mohammed a terrorist." If the paper in your example were the newsletter of the KKK, they could very well publish racist stuff that they were going to anyway, then say, "Uh...no, it's a free speech issue! Really! Look, there's a stupid southern hick there too!" when someone called them on it.

I don't think that's what's going on with Jyllands-Posten, but some people are saying that, and I don't have enough information about it to say they're wrong.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

They were fascist apologists in the pre-WWII era (before the Nazis occupied Denmark), sure, but they became virulent anti-Nazis and, in general, anti-nationalists/racialists/whateverists afterwards. There are a number of quotes where they wear the badge of "liberal" proudly, which isn't in the tradition of *philosophical* racialists (racists) in European politics.

That's not to say that none of the editors may have had hidden racist feelings about Muslims, sure, or that their attitude was unbiased. But this set of cartoons certainly wasn't an open salvo in a race war the way your hypothetical "We're scared of blacks" cartoon would be.

And, I mean, they are the highest-circulation paper in Denmark. They occupy the cultural space in Denmark of the New York Times or, perhaps, the Wall Street Journal, not the KKK newsletter. Sure, they could be a bunch of KKK-esque maniacs who've secretly wormed their way into the Danish media, but knowing what I know about how Denmark stands in First-World politics (relative to, especially, the United States) I kind of doubt it.

[megan-powell.livejournal.com]

Based on an NPR interview with a Danish reporter, Denmark tends toward xenophobia, encouraged (or not discouraged) by the government, and the newspaper's pretty far to the right. (Insert your own Hamlet joke here.) I'm not up on specifics beyond that interview, but given the EU's renewed fear of the Turk and the continent's less than stellar record for dealing with minority religions, I don't have a tough time believing the worst as far as the paper's motives are concerned.

That said, there are many correct responses:

a) shrug it off, possibly while noting that They are Assholes
b) follow up with whatever sort of defamation accusations are appropriate
c) publish offensive cartoons featuring the cartoonist, publisher, Danish politicians, etc.
d) start a dialog less litigious or sophomoric than the above

Cutting ties with Denmark is extreme, but I'm okay with that one. Riots are not among the correct responses, nor is organized violence or anti-Semitic backlash.

[ajacs.livejournal.com]

Also, I think a lot of the initial outcry was about the government's response, which was offensive to me as a non-Muslim in its craptitude. In any free speech country where this sort of thing happens, the natural and in my opinion mandatory minimum response from the government (assuming they are asked to comment, of course) must be "the price of having a free press is that sometimes they'll publish things people really hate." Of course, as with most racial issues, once the ball gets rolling, it snowballs (or Katamaris) into something much bigger and harder to stop.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

That was pretty much their exact response: "The Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, 'The government refuses to apologize because the government does not control the media or a newspaper outlet; that would be in violation of the freedom of speech'." (Per Wikipedia and other sources.)

[ajacs.livejournal.com]

'The government refuses to apologize because the government does not control the media or a newspaper outlet; that would be in violation of the freedom of speech'.

I actually consider this to be quite different from my statement:

"the price of having a free press is that sometimes they'll publish things people really hate."

In some ways, they are similar; neither contains an apology, and both reiterate that the press is free to publish whatever they want. However, one expresses, if not direct disapproval, at least recognition that many people disapprove, and the other does not. That's the key, here. One of your earlier blog titles was, as I recall, "defend to the death your right to say it", which of course is the second half of a statement that begins with "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll..." Without the context of the first bit, the second bit has no purpose. It is this omission in the Danish government's responses that I find offensive.