|
Racist Propaganda Consequences
There are now at least 12 people dead after struggles about the Muhammad cartoons.
This was utterly predictable. The whole issue is and was not primarily about free speech. The intend of the right wing Danish paper, which first published the cartoons, was to saw exactly this, a clash of civilizations.
When they were offered Jesus cartoons earlier, an editor rejected those, because:
"I don’t think Jyllands-Posten’s readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry."
But a Muhammad with the head painted as a bomb and thereby associating all Muslims with terrorism was fine to print. Enjoyable to the readers of Jyllands-Posten. As it was with the evangelical Norwegian papers that reprinted these and the other fishwraps which followed.
As Digby pointed out, such cartoons are not even satire. The objects of satire are authority figures or ideas within the culture where the satire is formed and published. These cartoons are not even about religion, but about one culture smearing the other, i.e. racism.
Publishing these is a conscious ‘incitement of violence’. An official offense in many western countries. It doesn´t matter which side one incites, provoking a fight with deadly consequences is a crime in many western law books.
Such a law was used today to sentence an extreme but well known Iman in the U.K. to seven years of prison. This only in the third attempt and after stretching the case a bit. Says the U.K. Shadow home secretary:
"It would appear the only reason Abu Hamza was actually prosecuted was because the US was seeking his extradition"
The verdict and the circumstances of the case will certainly fuel the fire.
But the question now is how stop this. I really do not know, but the first step is to stop throwing fuel into the fire. The British court would have been well advised to hold their judgment back for some days.
But if the western culture relly claims to be the more enlightened one, that is the side that should act responsible here and cut back the provocations. Stop publishing anti-Muslim racism and apologize when some idiots in this sphere continue to do so.
This is not giving in to some clerical demand, but an acknowledgment that no right is absolute in the face of the rights of others. Not even free speech.
The Raimondo article is excellent; probably says it better than anyone here has.
The Washington Post article begins with this lead, “The global furor over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad can be traced to one day last September when newspaper editor Flemming Rose smelled a good story.” Well, yes–except that he did not write a story about what he ‘smelled.’ Standard journalistic standards demand a “he said, she said” rendition, interviewing people from both sides of the spectrum. Ideally, a healthy dialogue resulting in greater understanding on both sides would result. Instead, he went ahead and printed what he knew would be inflamatory cartoons, without any mediative or conciliatory explanations. Now he is comparing himself to “a woman who has raped because she wore too short a dress,” in other words, the victim in this whole thing. Well, he has now earned his neo-con “bones.” Still, with business losing this much money, I expect major healing, or at least conciliatory, initiatives to follow.
@ The Truth….-
Regarding freedom of speech in Denmark specifically, following standard practices of analysis, one would need to examine this case against one where the interests of the State of Denmark were challenged. An example would be the debates in the late seventies before Greenland was begrudgingly granted home rule. I think you would find that the press in Denmark at the time, and indeed for many years after, were not so charitable with their depictions of Greenlanders who argued for independence.
Hamza, it has been noted, would be guilty as an accesory to murder if his incitements lead anyone to be killed. But if nobody is killed, then I suppose only hate speech laws would be in effect. Is anyone familiar with British Hate Laws and the penalties they carry, and was Hamdi’s sentence within guidelines?
Second point: Let’s not get carried away comparing what Jylland-Posten did and what we allow on this blog. This is a private space, not tasked with a public responsibility. The Danish paper was. There is no similarity.
You state: People are complaining that the newspaper refused to publish similar cartoons about Jesus in the past, for fear of causing offense. Well, okay, that makes the newspaper hypocritical and nasty. But it has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It’s only a freedom of speech issue if those other cartoons were not allowed because of governmental interference.
Again, more pertinent, is what it has to do with the manufacture of public consent. It is hard to argue with someone who hasn’t digested the most basic principles upon which our society operates. Not to be repetitive, but Herman/Chomsky, in “Manufacturing Consent” postulate five principle filters which govern the way public opinion is shaped by the elite. To quote from the book, “The culture and ideology fostered in this globalization project…tend to weaken any sense of community helpful to civic life.” Now the specific filters have been critiqued and refined and added to over time. The fifth filter at the time of the book’s publication in 1988, ‘anti-communism’, has been essentially superceeded by what the press might term “Islamic Terrorism”, or what Chomsky might more accurately describe as “non-state Muslim reaction to American, and to a lesser extent European, crimes.” If the US bombs Libya or Iraq or Iran or The Sudan illegally causing civilian death, that is refered to in the corporate press as “Defending our interests, with (if admitted to) unfortunate collateral damage.” If after having his house bulldozed or bombed, a Palestinian or Iraqi retaliates with force, that is refered to as Islamic Terrorism.” Until there are equal treatments of both sides of a conflict, there can be no understanding or justice. The same principle obtains in this case.
Posted by: Malooga | Feb 9 2006 6:32 utc | 24
I do think cartoonadrama is very important, because these are the events, mechanisms, processes, that gradually indoctrinate Western (and in this case, particularly European) attitudes towards Muslims, and stealthily create an atmosphere of suspicion, forge prejudice, and finally lead to scapegoating.
Many Eu countries have what they see as being an ‘immigrant’ problem. Too many of them, too expensive, not integrated enough, is the thinking. France is a good example, as everyone knows about the riots. Of course those immigrants were 2nd, 3rd. generation, French Nationals (for the most part). So, that debate is in public properly framed in terms of poverty, education, prejudice, territorial organisation. Elsewhere, however, it is squarely explained by the ethnic/religious/national origins of individuals, as belonging to certain groups. See Denmark, now also discussed in the world press (and blogs.)
In the EU, anti-immigrant attitudes are an outcome of fears that are comprehensible, I was almost going to write ‘rational’:
a) fear of more uncontrolled immigration in a globalised world,
b) envy of high-level immigrants who ‘steal’ top jobs, impose consumer rip offs (say), a dominant language (generally English, sometimes German), new, foreign customs;
c) a perceived ‘shrinking’ of the economy, leading to dashed expectations for the future, or future generations, which immediately raises the question of how much tax is paid, where the tax money is going, and so on
d) the loss of cherished customs, places, habits, ways of doing, easily ascribed to the fact that now the population is ‘mixed’, and also (in a minor key), that it is now too large – pollution, use of ressources, available space, poor Gvmt. policy, etc.
All these beefs and fears, rational or not, are at heart what is loosely labelled “anti globalisation” (anti-capitalist in some places, but not often) attitudes.
— Never mind that Adalbert the grandson has a villa with pool in Europe because he manages a factory in the Ivory Coast – that is just normal! — Hah!
I’m very much afraid that the stew of preoccupations will easily — easily! — be flipped to scape-goating a particular group. That will focus people’s attention, give them a target, suggest a policy, solutions, etc.
The Long War will be fought.
Posted by: Noisette | Feb 9 2006 18:20 utc | 44
So anyone who believes that the Danes have a ‘right’ to publish and libel any other culture/religion they choose, must also allow the right of people of the abused culture/religion to express themselves as well.
Well done, Debs.
First off, everyone should listen to Democracy Now today. Amy really nails this topic and provides additional information which I was unaware of.
Secondly, I got a delivery of heating oil today from a young guy, 27-30 yrs. old, and right off the bat he goes, “What about those muslims?”
So I bit my tongue–took my foot off the gas and pressed down hard on the brake and let the revs slow down a bit, so to say–and tossed it back at him, “What about them?”
“What a bunch of nutcakes,” he said. “I’m sick of hearing their whining. Can’t they shut up? Why don’t we just nuke the whole country and wipe the Iranians (a bit of mental conflation, or confusion going on here) off the map.”
So I explained a bit about the Official Hate and how we always need an enemy in this country. “It’s not their whining you are hearing; it’s the media you are listening to that’s whining about them.”
Consternation.
“It sounds easy to just bomb them off the map, but then the price of oil would go up. Look what I’m paying here, $2.00 a gallon; if we bombed Iran that might go up to $4.00 a gallon. We might slip into a recession. You might lose your job. You’re just a working guy. You should identify with working people, not the desires of big oil companies.”
“But it is so unfair,” he says, “they are shooting at us from inside their mosques, and we’re not allowed to shoot back. (It’s obvious that it is all one big heathen mosh pit over there, in his mind.)
“Don’t you remember when we shot a guy dead inside a mosque, and they played it right on TV?” I replied. “Anyway, we have helicopters and planes; if they shoot at us, we just bomb them to bits, but that is a little extreme, so they don’t cover that a lot over here.”
“In any event, we invaded them, claiming they had WMD, and they didn’t have any. If someone invaded us, wouldn’t you fight back?”
He held back an involuntary nod.
“Besides,” I continued, “we are trying to take control of their oil.”
“But, we’re not getting their oil”, he avered. “It’s the Russians and Chinese that are getting the contracts.”
“Well, it seems we screwed up. Maybe this war stuff is not so easy,” I said, as he frowned.
“Bush should just bomb them all, and the Syrians too. But he’s too soft on them all,” he dismissed. Having let loose, his brow unfurrowed. Situation solved.
“I know that sounds easy when you hear it on the radio,” I rebutted, “but it isn’t. We live in an interconnected world, and we would make a lot of enemies if we did that. China might stop buying our bonds and you wouldn’t be able to afford a house anymore. Maybe they would stop selling us all their shit and we wouldn’t have anything. Remember, we don’t make anything anymore. So we need to get along with others.”
Feeling cornered by common sense, he changed the subject. “I got a friend who just came back from Iraq and he’s all fucked up. He’s got PTSD and stuff.”
“Now you’re talking,” I took up the thread. “That’s what we should be caring about. Do you know, we sent more than 600,000 soldiers over to Iraq for Desert Storm and over half have now filed claims for disability. We’ve sent over a million GI’s over this time. In five to ten years we’re going to have a half million disabled vets wandering around the country, and the VA can’t handle them. We should start thinking about taking care of our own.”
This was easier sledding. “I had a friend who went over for Desert Storm and he got sick from the weapons, and died,” he said.
“That Depleted Uranium is pretty nasty stuff,” I replied. “And it never goes away. And we keep using more and more of it; it’s crazy.”
He was with me on this. I continued, “Meanwhile, my neighbor, he fought in WWII, he was in D-Day, and he can’t get any more help from the VA because they are so overloaded.”
He agreed and then went off talking about the stories he has heard about WWII from customers during his deliveries.
“That was some war,” I agreed. I didn’t have the heart to tell me the truth about that one too.
All in all, it went pretty good. I could have made some better points. But I didn’t hammer him, and I suceeded in planting the seeds of doubt in his mind.
This kind of dialogue is not easy. But I think it is very important. Working on people one-by-one as you meet them in everyday life. I used to be too scared to air my views in public. And, if I did, I would get so attached to my version of the facts that I would end up blowing my top. Now I understand that the best you can do is sow some doubt, puncture a few of their truths, slip in some common sense, defuse the Official Hate, and point out that their priorities are not necessarily the same as Bush’s, or the government’s. That’s really pretty good for one session. Then you have to leave them hanging, before they are overwhelmed, so that you can get them back for another session.
All in all, it’s like being a Jehovah’s Witness, except that you don’t have to go door-to-door arguing culled biblical literalisms. In reality you have a much better case then they do. You just have to do it.
Posted by: Malooga | Feb 9 2006 22:51 utc | 49
The Muslim community was directly and deliberately provoked in a small minded, sneaky, mean way.
It reacted on a symbolic level as well – demos, flag burning. Of course, the reactions may have been provoked by interested parties, and may even have been exagerated by the TV and press, but never mind that now.
That cartoons were used was no accident. The point was to provoke, in the West, the expected counter reaction, outrage and incredulity and the noting of a cultural divide.
That Western reaction could not target Muslims directly but required a channel, a topic or issue of some perceived importance that was about custom, or belief, etc. and not about people directly, permitting the mainstream to play footsie, pundits to pontificate, and the ‘left’ to blame Danish newspapers. That issue is Free Speech.
Its as if Mr. A threw down a pink glove in front of Mr B. Then, when Mr. B somehow refuses the duel, objects to the challenge as inappropriate, or doesn’t understand the act and its symbolics very well, and makes a big deal about the fact that the glove was pink –
Mr A. makes fun of him for objecting to pink gloves! And accuses him of anti-gay prejudice, cultural backwardness, and so on.
Don’t forget, muslim fundamentalists – jihadists – were blamed for 9/11. Millions of muslims worlwide accepted that as a stain. After 9/11, there were vigils of sympathy in many places – the biggest was in Teheran. (From memory of EU papers.) It was very painful. The ‘bad apples’ argument has less (or even no) relevance in communities that are tightly tied, with members responsible for their kin and their kind. Their own.
Millions of others could not believe the official scenario, either because of gut feelings (e.g. like, good Catholics priests don’t rape small boys) or because they had some understanding of 9/11. They soon noted that their Gvmts. rolled over and accepted the US scenario.
So, it had to be accepted, publically. It had to be dealt with. Not in public, but in homes, in private discussions, in workers meetings, girlie kaffe klatsch, offices, mosques.
But enough is enough. No more false blame, no more insults, nothing more, will be accepted.
Add to that, powerless people can object to trivia – clothes, words, cartoons, etc. – but not to the system.
Posted by: Noisette | Feb 11 2006 14:48 utc | 65
|
