Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
two antagonistic evils
...which are, in any case, mutually interdependent. Symbiotic.
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two antagonistic evils
"Some in France have already complained that the novel fans right-wing fears of the Muslim population, but that is to miss Houellebecq’s deeply mischievous point. Islamists and anti-immigration demagogues, the novel gleefully points out, really ought to be on the same side, because they share a suspicion of pluralist liberalism and a desire to return to “traditional” or pre-feminist values, where a woman submits to her husband – just as “Islam” means that a Muslim submits to God."
For instance, when the IRA was carrying out political assassinations in the '70s and '80s its targets were generally high-profile members of the British establishment (MPs, royals) or symbols of state power (police stations, army barracks).
Anders Breivik committed his outrage because he thought socialists were betraying his beloved Christian Norway to Islam, not because of a perceived blasphemy by an artist/humorist/writer. Not that that makes it any less bad, if I have to spell that out - but it is a different phenomenon.
Mr tea is a tribalist. Tribal loyalties matter to him.
OK, fine, clearly Islamism does not have a monopoly on the use of political terror. But then I never said it did.
None of the types of terrorism you've mentioned is exactly analogous to what I'm talking about. For instance, when the IRA was carrying out political assassinations in the '70s and '80s its targets were generally high-profile members of the British establishment (MPs, royals) or symbols of state power (police stations, army barracks). Whereas Charlie Hebdo is clearly no more a part of the French establishment than Private Eye is of the British. And in any case, I'm talking about the present day, and with the exception of a couple of atrocities committed against members of the general public, the IRA has been virtually inactive the last 20-odd years.
As far as white far-right or Christian fundamentalist terror goes, the analogy to the CH killings (or the Jyllands-Posten murders and attempted murders, Theo van Gogh's murder, Hirsi Ali's death threats, the Rushdie fatwa, the scores of people killed in protests at The Innocence of Muslims...) would be someone trying to kill the remaining Monty Python team, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Jerry Springer, anyone involved in the making of Father Ted, Andres Serrano, Chris Ofili...
Anders Breivik committed his outrage because he thought socialists were betraying his beloved Christian Norway to Islam, not because of a perceived blasphemy by an artist/humorist/writer. Not that that makes it any less bad, if I have to spell that out - but it is a different phenomenon.
Pure whataboutery. Abuses of state power are bad and are to be resisted as well - so what? I'd rather be able to exercise my right to free speech without having to worry about being incarcerated by the state or murdered by ultra-reactionary religious shitheads. It's not compulsory to side with one of two antagonistic evils.
You're still not getting it. An equivalent would be a comedian getting killed for telling Irish jokes, or a cartoonist for mocking the Catholic church.
Tea, I don't think making judgements based on the supposed reasons for terrorism is a worthwhile thing to do.
I specifically mentioned IRA attacks on journalists, not on the 'establishment'. Republicans are far from inactive sadly. CIRA are still involved in all kinds of shit.
As I've said above, what other cultural or ideological group is so quick to react with violence to a perceived slight?
Bollocks, the principle is absolute or it is nothing.
[L]et us consider, in order to make the general issues [surrounding abstract conceptions of freedom commonly made use of during the Cold War and battles against totalitarianism] a little clearer, just one small example: the freedom of speech. It is obvious that there cannot be freedom of speech in any healthy society, if by freedom is meant the absolute untrammelled right to say what one wishes and utter one's views on anything, at any time, and anywhere. And it requires little knowledge of law to see that there is no absolute freedom of speech in the United Kingdom. Liberal thinkers have always recognized this fact. But they have seen the constraints on freedom as arising only negatively and in response to individual rights. Freedom should be qualified only by the possibility that someone might suffer through its exercise. For the conservative, constraint should be upheld, until it can be shown that society is not damaged by its removal. Thus the constraints on freedom arise through the law's attempt to embody (as for a conservative it must embody) the fundamental values of the society over which it rules. I shall argue that this vision of law is both more coherent and more true to the facts than its individualistic rival.
There is no freedom to abuse, to stir up hatred, to make or publish treasonable, libellous, obscene and blasphemous utterance. In England, as in every civilized country, there is a law which forbids the production and distribution of subversive material - the law of sedition. Now this law also makes it an offence voluntarily to stir up hatred between different sections of the community. Proper application of that law -which makes not only the manipulation of racial hatred but also that of class hatred into a criminal offence - would have made the first Race Relations Act (the Act which still required some element of mens rea for its statutory crimes) more or less unnecessary. It was not applied. This was not only because the symbolic gesture of a law specific to racial relations appeared immensely powerful, if not in quelling racial antipathy, at least in appeasing the middle-class conscience over its existence. It was also because the application of the law would lead at once to the curtailing, not only of what was said on the rostrum of the National Front, but also of what used to be said at every radical demonstration, and at many a Trades Union Congress.
This decline in the very idea of sedition has been brought about not by popular agitation, but by the politics of power. The fact is, not that our society believes in freedom of speech and assembly, but rather that it is afraid to announce its disbelief. This disbelief is so entrenched in English law - in the common law just as much as in statutory provisions - that it is possible to doubt that it could be eradicated without wholly overthrowing the social order which the law enshrines. But it is now principally judges and juries who respond to its demand. Politicians, and especially politicians of the 'moderate' Right, have lost their nerve.
This is not to deny the reality of some less absolute ideal of freedom, according to which it would be quite true to say that there is and has been more freedom of speech (and more freedom of every kind) in the United Kingdom than in most other countries of the world. And this Anglo-Saxon freedom is rightly valued by all of us who share its benefits, including the benefit of writing and reading the present book. But this freedom is not identifiable apart from the institutions which have fostered it. It is a freedom to do precisely what is not forbidden by law, and what is forbidden by law records a long tradition of reflection on the nature and constitution of British society.