Balloon-Juice:
Yup.
Cheers,
Scott.
29 Chris says:
January 15, 2015 at 1:04 pm
@Amir Khalid:Not everyone is a free-speech absolutist.
And the French certainly aren’t, and neither is most of Europe.
That’s the thing. There are already more or less stringent laws in much of the continent against anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, Nazi slogans et al – and people like the leaders of the FN have been successfully sued and fined under them. If I’m raised in that society as part of a marginalized group (e.g. French Muslims), I’d be more than a little inclined to wonder, if X, Y and Z are banned because they offend and demean Jews, why isn’t the same being done for things that offend and demean my group?
I, personally, very much prefer the American position on free speech – e.g, “if this offends you, if it’s sick and wrong and racist, you’re welcome to sulk, write a letter to the editor, start a boycott or write your own counter-cartoons, but we’re not shutting it or fining it just because it’s offensive.” But that’s not the way things work in France. In that light, there’s something disingenuous about the whole “we support free speech!” movement that’s sprung up around Charlie Hebdo.
Yup.
Cheers,
Scott.