For the last few days I've been faced with a quandary. How to denounce murder, defend free-speech and a free press and how to "not be Charlie," (Je ne suis pas Charlie) even while expressing my disgust with much of their imagery.
This isn't a particularly new question, except for the Charlie part. How do we protect freedom of speech, even speech that targets you and yours and is by any stretch of the progressive imagination "hate speech?"
For many decades I have fought for freedom of the press, sunshine laws, the Freedom of Information Act, and have worked as part of collectives that have offered alternatives to mainstream media control and hegemony—Pacifica radio, underground newspapers, and indie documentary film groups. That freedom has given me the right—even when being repressed in the U.S.—to speak up, speak out and fight back.
So I am speaking up now.
The content of much of the Charlie Hebdo body of work—from my perspective as a black woman, as a person with Muslim family members, as an anti-racist, feminist, LGBT person—is mind-numbingly racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, sexist and homophobic.
As an observer of the increasingly rancorous and dangerous rise of right-wing fascist movements in Europe I am alarmed by the idea that rejecting terror might also include me with those who are pushing to eliminate immigrants and even native born Europeans who are not-white. This isn't just a movement in Europe, since we have our own home-grown Tea Party xenophobes, nativists and birthers to deal with. Some of those rabid followers of Stormfront and other sites that are "free to spew" have blown up federal buildings, reproductive heath clinics, shot doctors, burned churches, slaughtered Sikhs, and targeted for extermination politicians and members of the public, who are the wrong color, or gender-identity.
So I support #JeNeSuisPasCharlie. I am not Charlie.
I join with many other voices in rejecting the #killallmuslims, that has resurfaced, piggy-backing onto the #JuisSuisCharlie twitter trend.
No one should be murdered, or tortured for their beliefs, speech or actions.
So I can, and do condemn the murders. The same way I condemn the man who shot and killed cops in NYC, but denounce the NYPD and PBA as part of the systemic oppression of my communities.
Follow me below the fold for more.
We spend a lot of time here at Daily Kos educating. As a community, we've looked at the history and present-day status of racial stereotypes, and we have rejected them. The most rec'ed diary by Black Kos illustrates that, as do diaries listed under the tag R*dsk*ns.
I send checks to the ACLU, in spite of the fact that my gut churns when KKK members and Nazis march in my community. I've argued for more hate-speech laws, and more legislation to deal with racial hate-crimes, violence against women and LGBTs, but have also supported those who are strict first amendment rights advocates.
Why? Because here in the U.S. I do have the freedom of speech to push back against hate. I can teach against it, write against it, organize against it, demonstrate against it and vote against it.
I make choices. I choose what to buy, and who to boycott—like Flush Rush. I chose to blog here at Daily Kos specifically because even though there has been historical meta over questions of what is and isn't racist, and it is hard to deal with for some of us, most (not all) of that kind of garbage that surfaces here heads directly to the bone pile.
It has not been easy.
Writing this was not easy.
I spend a lot of my time reading news sources and blogs that may not be on the radar, or blogrolls of many readers here. Many are in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. I pay attention to comments from people of color in Europe. Thankfully I can read French and Spanish (and struggle with Portuguese), and have a friend who translates news in Arabic that I cannot really grasp (which google translate fails with). I've also had the direct experience of being discriminated against in Paris, when it was assumed I was North African, because of how I look.
Some of the immediate responses from various sources were intense discussions of why the writers, readers and posters rejected being "Charlie."
Take this image for an example - which has been discussed repeatedly on many forums.
There are many things we can critique in it.
How many of us here have repeatedly and vociferously denounced Ronald Reagan and all his ilk for his depiction of black women as "Welfare Queens?"
This warped cartoon depicts pregnant 'welfare queens in Islamic garb' waiting for their 'allocs' (family allocation payments). What makes it even more horrific is its adding in the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram and raped, as if somehow the movement to free the girls will find them all in France, pregnant and demanding money.
(On a side note, Nigeria: 2,000 feared killed in Boko Haram's 'deadliest massacre' is not at the top of standard newsfeeds.)
Oh—and the artist's rendering of African women follows the timeworn bigotry of "what Africans look like" through the eyes of racists.
I have read many people's excuses for this, and quite a few mention "context." Doubtful many American readers are aware of the issue in France about family allocations, which French socialism makes available to all families, no matter their economic status, and the current drive by the government to cut them back. The French Right has worked very hard to present these allocations as being abused by foreigners and Muslims (sound familiar? Think of the Faux News drum beat of "illegals abusing food stamps").
There was the incident of the photo-shopped picture, posted below, that incited a facebook frenzy and twitterstorm of hate—against immigrants/Muslims.
Femmes voilées devant une CAF : la photo truquée qui fait le tour du web
(translation from google translate)
the original
This image of a group of fully veiled women queuing in front of a family allowance fund spread on social networks in recent days. The site MetroNews investigated this picture. They explained that it is actually rigged.
The photograph circulating on Facebook and Twitter is usually accompanied by Islamophobic comments denouncing the "dramatic consequences" of immigration in France. According to MetroNews, this picture posted by aiglemalin on Twitter on October 2 is false. With the tool Tineye, the newspaper found the original photo. This is actually a picture taken in London, in which one can see the group of women not in front of a CAF, but what appears to be a police station. The deception recalls the importance of taking a step back with the information circulating on social networks.
BFM TV returns to the faked photo of women in niqab in front of a family allowance building family allowance (video)
This is a clip from a
much longer piece on net manipulation from BMF-TV, a French news channel.
You do not need to speak French to get the gist.
In Black Kos yesterday, I posted a link, to one of the most insightful pieces I have read on "not being Charlie." It is by human rights and LGBT advocate Scott Long, posted on his blog, A Paper Bird: sex, rights and the worlds. I would like to cite more of it, but due to copyright constraints cannot, so suggest you read the whole thing at the provided link.
Why I am not Charlie
...
There’s a perfectly good reason not to republish the cartoons that has nothing to do with cowardice or caution. I refuse to post them because I think they’re racist and offensive. I can support your right to publish something, and still condemn what you publish. I can defend what you say, and still say it’s wrong — isn’t that the point of the quote (that wasn’t) from Voltaire? I can hold that governments shouldn’t imprison Holocaust deniers, but that doesn’t oblige me to deny the Holocaust myself.
It’s true, as Salman Rushdie says, that “Nobody has the right to not be offended.” You should not get to invoke the law to censor or shut down speech just because it insults you or strikes at your pet convictions. You certainly don’t get to kill because you heard something you don’t like. Yet, manhandled by these moments of mass outrage, this truism also morphs into a different kind of claim: That nobody has the right to be offended at all.
I am offended when those already oppressed in a society are deliberately insulted. I don’t want to participate. This crime in Paris does not suspend my political or ethical judgment, or persuade me that scatologically smearing a marginal minority’s identity and beliefs is a reasonable thing to do. Yet this means rejecting the only authorized reaction to the atrocity. Oddly, this peer pressure seems to gear up exclusively where Islam’s involved. When a racist bombed a chapter of a US civil rights organization this week, the media didn’t insist I give to the NAACP in solidarity. When a rabid Islamophobic rightist killed 77 Norwegians in 2011, most of them at a political party’s youth camp, I didn’t notice many #IAmNorway hashtags, or impassioned calls to join the Norwegian Labor Party. But Islam is there for us, it unites us against Islam. Only cowards or traitors turn down membership in the Charlie club.The demand to join, endorse, agree is all about crowding us into a herd where no one is permitted to cavil or condemn: an indifferent mob, where differing from one another is Thoughtcrime, while indifference to the pain of others beyond the pale is compulsory.
Max Fisher, at Vox, has addressed another aspect of this issue. He writes:
Stop asking Muslims to condemn terrorism. It's bigoted and Islamophobic.
...
Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: "As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form."
This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.
This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry. It is also, by the way, the very same logic that leads French non-Muslims, outraged by the Charlie Hebdo murders, to attack French mosques in hateful and misguided retaliation. And it's the same logic that led CNN host Don Lemon to ask Muslim-American human rights lawyer Arasalan Iftikhar if he supports ISIS, as if the simple fact of Iftikhar's religion — despite the fact that he is exactly the sort of liberal human rights activist whom ISIS hates most — made him suspect.
This piece by Fisher echos some earlier thoughts from Canada.
Ottawa shooting: Idrisa Pandit is tired of apologizing for being Muslim
"Somehow we seem to conflate, [an act such as this] with a 1.7 billion people’s faith, as if there’s something inherently wrong with that faith, something inherently wrong with people who follow that faith. As much as Muslims are at a very difficult crossroads…somehow they’re expected to issue a statement…an apology…somehow every Muslim is supposed to take responsibility for that [individual’s action], whereas we don’t expect that of people of any other faith or culture."
As a Muslim herself, Pandit said she’s experienced both support and "deep-rooted hate" in Waterloo Region, where she regularly volunteers and attends community events.
"There is a lot of fear-mongering. I think when people are afraid…and there have been enough feeding of that fear…it is a natural reaction. People that attribute anyone as the Other, as a possible threat, as a danger to the country, as something needs to be done to stop people from coming here."
Fear of "the other" is something I experience in the U.S. I often wonder how many more centuries will my family have to be in the states, before we are simply "Americans". We have had many discussions right here on Daily Kos about the fear of young black men, hoodies (not hijabs) as symbols of that fear, and I know the feeling well—ask any black person in America what they think quietly—when there is breaking news about some heinous mass murder...immediate thought "...oh please don't let it be a black person." Usually it isn't and there is a deep sigh of relief. No one expects white people to be responsible for, and apologize for right-wing shooters, school children slayers and refrigerated body-parts eaters. Yet we as a movement addressing #blacklivesmatter are being blamed for the recent NY police murders.
Before this latest atrocity, there was also a more tongue-in-cheek look at apologies from Muslims on Twitter.
Tired of Being Demonized, Muslims on Twitter Apologize for Algebra, Coffee, and Soap.
To counter prejudice, some followers of Islam have taken to Twitter with a new hashtag: #MuslimApologies.
Muslims this week began apologizing on social media for algebra (named after a book by mathematician Abu Jaf’ar Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi), shampoo (first brought to England by a Muslim merchant), “amazing architecture,” and other innovations made possible by members of the Islamic faith throughout history. The point? That Muslims, of whom there are about 1.6 billion, shouldn’t be blamed for the heinous crimes of a few.
But to the not-funny-if-you-are-the-minority-community images from Hebdo are being written off as simply "equal opportunity satire."
This ironic comment from a young person struck me:
"it’s not racism it’s satire"
ancient white people proverb (via irl-magical-girl)
Too many of the excuses for blatantly racist sexist images like the one I posted here (and only one—plenty more are available on the internet) have been, "ohh, but its satire."
I appreciated seeing this at the Guardian:
Joe Sacco: On Satire – a response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks
Arthur Chu writes in Trolls and Martyrdom: Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie:
The whole reason the concept of responsible satire has been summed up as “punch up, don’t punch down” is to acknowledge that not all your targets of satire start out on an equal footing. Francois Hollande is not on the same level as girls who have been kidnapped into sexual slavery, and having the same “no-holds-barred” attitude toward them both is not the same as treating them fairly.
I mean, Muslims in France right now aren’t doing so great. The scars of the riots nine years ago are still fresh for many people, Muslims make up 60 to 70 percent of the prison population despite being less than 20 percent of the population overall, and France’s law against “religious symbols in public spaces” is specifically enforced to target Muslim women who choose to wear hijab—ironic considering we’re now touting Charlie Hebdo as a symbol of France’s staunch commitment to civil liberties.
Muslims in France are clearly worse off overall than, say, Jean Sarkozy (the son of former president Nicholas Sarkozy) and his wife Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, but Charlie Hebdo saw fit to apologize for an anti-Semitic caricature of Ms. Sebaoun-Darty and fire longtime cartoonist Siné over the incident while staunchly standing fast on their right to troll Muslims by showing Muhammad naked and bending over—which tells you something about the brand of satire they practice and, when push comes to shove, that they’d rather be aiming downward than upward.
One of the other excuses for their "satire" has been that they are "leftists." Imho, no true radical leftist uses racist images to combat racism. Sadly, what they have produced has also fueled French fascism, along with the agenda of terrorists.
So before you enshrine Charlie's "satire," I ask you: Do you also approve other racist imagery (Racist images, Jim Crow, and monkeys) which is a part of our own ugly history? These images are legion, and are not just about black people, they attack and demean Native Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Jewish peoples, among others.
I condemn killing, just as I condemn the death penalty.
Alongside that, I will not countenance the many-headed hydra of bigotry.
I am not Charlie. Je ne suis pas Charlie. Yo no soy Charlie.