Below are the key documents giving rise to the controversy that has erupted inside PEN America over the award the group is bestowing on Charlie Hebdo, which you can read about here. They include the key correspondence between the writer Deborah Eisenberg (pictured, above left) and PEN’s Executive Director Suzanne Nossel (above, right), which sparked the controversy, as well as the full comment given to the Intercept by the writer Teju Cole, who has withdrawn as a table head. The Intercept has also submitted several questions to Nossel, which are posted below; we will prominently post PEN’s responses as soon as they are received.
Eisenberg letter to Nossel, March 26, 2015
What a wonderful thing to give an award to some person or institution that courageously exemplifies freedom of expression – and how entirely in keeping with the objectives of PEN. But as a member, up until now anyhow, of PEN, I would like to express myself freely on PEN’s decision to confer the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on the magazine Charlie Hebdo.
It is clear and inarguable that the January slaughter of 10 Charlie Hebdo staff members as well as 2 policemen in the Charlie Hebdo offices is sickening and tragic. What is neither clear nor inarguable is the decision to confer an award for courageous freedom of expression on Charlie Hebdo, or what criteria, exactly were used to make that decision. Indeed, the matter is fraught, complex, and very troubling.
I doubt there are many who consider the Charlie Hebdo cartoons to be models of wit, but what is at issue is obviously not the value of the cartoons. What is at issue are the various – confused, vague, and sometimes contradictory – symbolic meanings with which the magazine has been freighted in recent months, and exactly which of those symbolic meanings PEN is intending to applaud.
An award for courage is inevitably an award for the value in whose service courage has been exercised. In the case of the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award that value is “freedom of expression.” But freedom of expression too, is a very broad designation. Anything at all can be expressed, and just because something is expressed doesn’t ensure that it has either virtue or meaning.
I have read – and heard – that “equal opportunity offence” is the aspiration of Charlie Hebdo. But how is such an aspiration to be fulfilled unless the disparate “targets” of offence occupy an equal position and have an equivalent meaning within the dominant culture?
I don’t doubt that the Charlie Hebdo staff is, and was, entirely sincere in its anarchic expressions of principled disdain toward organized religion. But although the magazine apparently disdains all organized religion, certain expressions of anti-Semitism are illegal in France, so Judaism is out of bounds for satire. In fact, the author of a purported anti-Semitic slur in a 2008 Charlie Hebdo column was fired. Therefore, in pursuing its goal of inclusive mockery of large organized religions, at least those that have a conspicuous presence in France, Charlie Hebdo has been more or less confined to Catholicism and Islam.
But those two religions hold very different positions in France, as well as in most of the Western world. Catholicism, in its most regrettable European roles, has represented centuries of authoritarian repressiveness and the abuse of power, whereas Islam, in modern Europe, has represented a few decades of powerlessness and disenfranchisement. So in a contemporary European context, satires of Catholicism and satires of Islam do not balance out on a scale.
Additionally, an insult particular to Islam lies in a visual portrayal of the Prophet, which is in itself interdicted. Christianity, on the other hand, not only condones, but actually encourages visual portrayals of the sanctified – in fact, for hundreds of years Christian artists painted little else but Jesus and His mother.
I can hardly be alone in considering Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons that satirize Islam to be not merely tasteless and brainless but brainlessly reckless as well. To a Muslim population in France that is already embattled, marginalized, impoverished, and victimized, in large part a devout population that clings to its religion for support, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.
Was it the primary purpose of the magazine to mortify and inflame a marginalized demographic? It would seem not. And yet the staff apparently considered the context of their satire and its wide-ranging potential consequences to be insignificant, or even an inducement to redouble their efforts – as if it were of paramount importance to demonstrate the right to smoke a cigarette by dropping your lit match into a dry forest.
It is difficult and painful to support the protection of offensive expression, but it is necessary; freedom of expression must be indivisible. The point of protecting all kinds of expression is that neither you nor I get to determine what attitudes are acceptable – to ensure that expression cannot be subordinated to powerful interests. But does that mean that courage in expression is to be measured by its offensiveness?
Apparently according to PEN it does. Apparently PEN has reasoned that it is the spectacularly offensive nature of Charlie Hebdo’s expression in itself that makes the magazine the ideal recipient for the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award – that awarding Charlie Hebdo underscores the very indivisibility of the principle of freedom of expression and the laws that protect it.
But in that case, one has to ask, is Charlie Hebdo really the most tasteless, brainless, and reckless example of free expression that can be found? Is it more deserving of the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award than other example of tasteless, brainless recklessness?
What about the racist chapters of SAE and other fraternities right here in our own country? I would say that they meet the criteria. We have our own reviled population, under constant threat of police brutality, prison and the like. So, are our racist fraternities not equally deserving of the Award? We are PEN America after all, not PEN France, and the fraternity brothers have expressed their views – even in humorous (to them) song – with great clarity and force.
And France itself offers compellingly meritorious alternatives to Charlie Hebdo for the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award. What about those recently responsible for the desecrations of a Jewish cemetery? Were there no virulently anti-Semitic graffiti to be found in that ravaged cemetery that should be considered outstanding examples of courageous free expression? Or what about giving the award retroactively to Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer and its satirical anti-Semitic cartoons? Streicher’s actual purpose was to mobilize popular sentiment against a vilified demographic, so perhaps those cartoons could be considered even more valorous than the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, which, although they do mobilize popular sentiment against a vilified demographic, are intended merely as representative mockery of any and all religions.
In short: is there not a difference – a critical difference – between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable and enthusiastically awarding such expression? Maybe not – maybe I’m confused. To me, in my confusion, the decision to confer the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on Charlie Hebdo almost looks less like an endorsement of free expression than like an opportunistic exploitation of the horrible murders in Paris to justify and glorify offensive material expressing anti-Islamic and nationalistic sentiments already widely shared in the Western world.
In these times when provisions of the amorphous Patriot Act can be invoked to stifle and severely punish the dissemination of information, PEN could have chosen to confer its PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award upon any of a number of journalists and whistleblowers who have risked, and sometimes lost, their freedom in order to bring information to the rest of us. Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden are familiar examples, though there are many others. There are also those who have courageously served as conduits for the information such people have unearthed, such as Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. And there are the many journalists who have gone to the Middle East in an attempt to clarify the tangle of horrors that has been unleashed there over the last 20 years or so, including the American, Japanese, and British journalists who have been brutishly beheaded by raging fundamentalist Islamic State terrorists.
Certainly no one could assert that the Charlie Hebdo staff are not, and were not, courageous. They had been threatened for years with violence at the hands of fundamentalist Islamic extremists, and yet they continued to pursue what they considered be their mission. Thus they expended their courage, and ten of them lost their lives, in what was essentially a parochial, irrelevant, misconceived, misdirected, relatively trivial, and more or less obsolete campaign against clericalism. It is also courageous to bait a hallucinating and armed soldier, to walk around naked in the dead of winter, to jump off a roof, to drink from a sewer, or to attempt sexual intercourse with a wild boar.
Those journalists and whistleblowers who exemplify the principles of free expression are also supremely courageous, but their courage has been fastidiously exercised for the good of humanity. Evidently, however, PEN seems to have reasoned that it would undermine the fundamental principle of free expression and cheapen the Award to give it to those whose purposes are noble, intelligent, and selfless rather than pitiful, foolish, and immensely destructive.
Sincerely,
Deborah Eisenberg
Jew and atheist
Nossel reply to Eisneberg, March 27
Dear Deborah (if I may):
Thanks for your note and your thoughtful reflections on our decision to confer the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on Charlie Hebdo. I’d be happy to talk through your concerns by phone, but I am taking the opportunity to respond in writing so that you and those on your cc list can see the points as well. I very much appreciate the thought and rigor that went into your message and want to try to give it its due. As you say, these questions are certainly complex and matters on which reasonable people disagree. At PEN we have never shied away from controversy. I am not sure I can convince you that this was the right decision, but I do want to share just some of our thinking.
We believe that honoring Charlie Hebdo affords us an opportunity to inflect global opinion on an issue of longstanding concern to PEN and to free expression advocates worldwide, including many in the Muslim world: namely, efforts to devalue, ban, or punish acts deemed to constitute the defamation of religion. Such assaults come both from governments and from vigilantes, and they are not acceptable in either context. Moreover, the actions of governments have sometimes served to enable or urge on vigilantes, and vis-versa, an interplay which is particularly concerning. I worked on this issue for more than 18 months as an official of the U.S. State Department during the Obama Administration. At the time, certain delegations, led by Pakistan, were waging a powerful global campaign to try to secure an international treaty banning the so-called defamation of religion.
Their efforts, they explained to me, were fueled by a sense of deep grievance by ordinary citizens in their countries toward the West and toward insults against their religion. This sense of frustration and anger fueled the deadly protests in Afghanistan after copies of the Koran were disposed of inappropriately at Guantanamo as well as the assassinations of several moderate figures promoting religious reconciliation in Pakistan, including the Minister of Minority Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti. Bhatti was murdered in 2011 because he was a “blasphemer of Mohammed.” In private discussions with diplomats from multiple Islamic governments, including at the Pakistani foreign ministry in Islamabad, I heard from officials who admitted that they did not believe that international bans on blasphemy were the right answer to the problems and pressure they were facing. They shared concerns that campaigns for such bans gave a kind of license to those assailants, including rioters in Kabul and assassins in Islamabad, who treated insults to Mohammed as grounds for violent reprisals. In making an award to Charlie Hebdo, we call attention the fact that such policies are abhorrent and extremely dangerous.
There are a range of views about the prohibition on depictions of Mohammed. In a position that has emerged fairly widely in the aftermath of the Hebdo attacks, even some Muslim government officials I spoke to rejected the notion that such a prohibition is universal or enshrined in Islam. Some did say, however, that they thought that insults to the Prophet should be unlawful, and that banning them was perfectly consistent with free speech. Their understanding of the principles of free speech was different than our own. They were willing to listen, and over time we found common ground. The Organization of the Islamic Conference ultimately decided to work very closely with us in trying to steer the debate in a new direction, precisely because they thought that banning and protesting such offensive speech was contrary to free expression and was contributing to violence. Our diplomatic efforts also took me to places such as Paris, London, Geneva, Brasilia, Santiago and Buenos Aires. At the UN, changing course on a human rights issue requires very broad consensus: the Europeans had to bend on their unwillingness to recognize legitimate concerns about respect for religious differences; Islamic delegations had to back off their proposals to ban speech; and moderate Latin and African delegations were needed to provide a measure of political cover to both sides. We worked to convince delegations that the right answer to the efforts to ban defamation of religion was not to vote the Pakistani-backed resolution down and defeat it, but rather to work with all delegations on a compromise approach that would unite the international community behind practical measures – like interfaith dialogue, education, effective hate crimes (as distinct from hate speech) prosecutions, etc.—in place of the proposed bans.
This effort at compromise was successful, culminating in passage of a consensus resolution to replace the defamation of religions resolutions in 2011. This piece recounts some of what happened. Unfortunately, while the compromise has held the matter cannot be said to be resolved. Efforts to ban insults to religion have continued to rear their heads in other places:
The reaction to the Charlie Hebdo killings, which united many governments, religious leaders and civil society organizations in a joint expression of solidarity, drew global attention to the dangers of intolerance for criticism of religion. It awakened even some devout Muslim leaders with poor track records of respect for free speech to the dangers of declaring such insults out-of-bounds, or condoning open season on those who draw or publish them. The idea that no words, no matter how offensive or insulting, can ever justify violence seems basic to us here, but is honored in the breach in many parts of the world. We see honoring Charlie Hebdo as a potent way to affirm and elevate that principle at a moment when the world is paying attention. We see a chance to promote and defend a global definition of free speech that is broad enough to encompass all speech except that which falls outside the U.S.’s First Amendment, namely incitement to imminent violence; speech such as the calls to genocide over the Rwandan airwaves (the European standard is different, and there are some prohibitions on speech – such as bans on Holocaust denial and blasphemy laws still on the books in places like Ireland – that we reject). Our doing this protests the rash of attacks on others such as Kurt Wetgaard and Finn Nørgaard in Denmark and Avijit Roy in Bangladesh.
We also believe strongly in upholding and defending the role of satire in free societies. Satire is, by definition, disrespectful and often insulting. Based on Charlie Hebdo’s history, their statements and the accounts of those within PEN who have personally known and worked with the magazine, we believe that it sits firmly within the tradition of French satire (see in particular http://www.wsj.com/articles/charlie-hebdo-is-heir-to-the-french-tradition-of-religious-mockery-1420842456). They mocked religions, but also prejudices against religion, racial prejudices, ethnocentric attitudes and a whole range of other targets: Boko Harm, Brits, Jews (while I don’t know all the facts but I think the incident you described did happen, but they also published other cartoons targeting Jews. Including quite a few by Stephane Charbonnier, the murdered Hebdo editor), gays etc. They defined their role as pushing boundaries, questioning orthodoxy, casting light on obscured motives and ensuring that nothing was above comment or debate.
We have spoken since the attacks to several American cartoonists who have said that, in contrast to Charlie Hebdo, they see their role as to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” meaning that they would not publish cartoons that could be seen as offensive to Muslims, precisely because Muslims are discriminated against, targeted and marginalized within Western societies. In my own view, it is a very good thing that many or most cartoonists and satirists feel that way in that it allows Muslims to feel a greater sense of comfort and acceptance. But a commitment to free expression must make room for those who do not accept rules of prudence or political correctness, and who define their own moral obligations differently. A rule that all satirists must only target for offense those who enjoy a concomitant or equal level of security or prestige within a society would surely take too much off limits.
The new editor of Charlie Hebdo has said that in mocking religion their aim has been not to attack religion itself, but rather the role of religion in politics and the blurring of lines in-between, which they see as promoting totalitarianism—an argument some have made about the incursion of religion into American politics. As we look through the cartoons we think most if not all can be understood in that context.
In pushing the boundaries of discourse as the best satirists do—American, European, or otherwise–Charlie Hebdo broke taboos, raised questions and sparked debates that expanded the space for expression and the exchange of ideas. They paid a heavy price for doing so, and then pressed on despite heartbreak and devastation. We think that shows a powerful commitment to free expression no matter the costs, and it is that commitment that we wish to honor. We don’t see this award as legitimizing or applauding everything Charlie Hebdo has written or depicted; the very premise of their own magazine is that nothing enjoys sanctity and everything is a fair object of critique.
We also don’t believe, on the basis of written statements from and interviews with the magazine’s surviving staff, and on the opinions of PEN members who know them, that the editors of Charlie Hebdo intended to cause humiliation or suffering by printing the cartoons. The outcry by a great many Muslim groups in the aftermath of the attacks also reflects a view that satirists should have liberty to express their views, and that these cartoonists were not motivated by cruelty. We have heard from Muslims, many of whom reject the prohibitions on the depiction of Mohammed, actually decrying the discussion about Muslim grievances in the wake of Charlie Hebdo. They believe this line of discourse legitimizes Muslim extremism, which they see as a far greater danger to Muslims than Western anti-Muslim sentiment. This segment on Chinese TV displays two diametrically opposing Muslim views on the topic. (For what it’s worth, the man rejecting the discourse on marginalization is a former officer of Canadian PEN). Personally, I do think it is important to talk about Hebdo in the context of the precarious position of Muslims in French society; I reject the idea that such points should be off-limits in an explication of Hebdo. But I am very cognizant of the diversity of Muslim views on these questions so don’t see those very real issues as grounds not to honor Hebdo. Above all and vitally, we don’t accept the characterization of Hebdo as merchants of hate in the vein of a Streicher or a cemetery vandal; you may disagree but that’s not who we believe they are.
The January attacks also made vivid the types of threats that cartoonists and writers around the world face daily; these issues suddenly became front page news of concern to a much wider constituency than tends to be the case when individual, unknown writers are jailed or killed in far off places. Part of our job here at PEN is to put free expression issues front and center in the global debate. Charlie Hebdo’s notoriety and the impassioned global response evoked by the attacks thus offers the opportunity to draw into PEN’s mission new supporters who have been moved by the attacks and their aftermath. This can be a point of entry that leads new people to explore and become involved with our other work. We saw this in our membership trends, online and social media campaigning after the attacks. For those directly involved in planning the Gala and Awards there was a feeling that including Charlie Hebdo would have a mobilizing effect on PEN’s work more broadly. I understand that it can seem self-serving for an organization like ours to build on a high-profile event to generate support for our cause. But we only do it when we judge that the events and those involved are firmly consonant with our mission.
The evidence that the Hebdo attacks have energized PEN’s core constituency of writers is tangible. Here are a few examples of what new PEN members wrote as part of the spike in membership applications that we received in the immediate aftermath of the attack:
“In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, I am reminded that freedom of expression is a vital element of our humanity.”
“I have had “join PEN” on my calendar for awhile, but the tragedy in Paris at the offices of Charlie Hebdo this past week reminded me of the importance of being part of this community.”
“After reading a Facebook post from a colleague who shared the message of PEN in the wake of the Paris terror attack, I was moved to join.”
“I have meant to join for several years but the recent tragedy in Paris was a catalyst.”
“I’ve been meaning to join PEN for some time but after the tragedy at Charlie Hebdo I believe we need to support freedom of expression more than ever.”
“While I have long written about freedom of speech issues, the recent massacre of staffers at Charlie Hebdo was a real wake-up call. I figured that purchasing an overseas subscription to the newspaper (in spite of my shaky French) and joining PEN were the least I could do.”
In sum, we are honoring Charlie Hebdo not because of the material you find offensive, but because of their fearless defense of their right to express themselves, a defense that has made our spines stiffen here at PEN and throughout the free expression community as we recognize the depth of our obligation to stand firm in the force of powerful and dangerous interests.
There are indeed a great many other great examples of courageous champions of free speech worldwide. It has not yet been announced, but this year’s PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award will go to Khadija Ismayilova, an intrepid Azerbaijani journalist now in jail. Her bravery is extraordinary and will be a focal point of the Gala and the advocacy action we all take there together. As Pussy Riot helped do for Ilham Tohti, so we hope Charlie Hebdo will help raise Khadija’s profile and make her the 36th winner (out of 40) of the Goldsmith prize to be released from prison. Last year Laura Poitras accepted our invitation to give the Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture (long before she won the Pulitzer or the Oscar) but then withdrew to our great disappointment because she was finishing the documentary and did not feel she could travel. We have held panels on U.S. whistleblowers and are doing a forthcoming report on the topic. Glenn Greenwald was, via Skype, the keynote speaker at a major symposium we held 18 months ago on NSA surveillance. We are inspired by them all. We have also stepped up significantly our work here at PEN spotlighting free expression challenges here in the United States, ranging from an original report on press freedom violations in Ferguson to two landmark reports on NSA surveillance to a series of events on Guantanamo to a new lawsuit filed two weeks ago challenging the U.S. intelligence agencies’ Upstream program.
Deborah, I hope this very long note helps shed light on our reasoning. I appreciate very much your taking the time to read it, and to consider our logic. We very much value you as a member of PEN, and are especially grateful for your involvement in our upcoming Guantanamo event in Montclair which will be amazing. A great friend of mine, Diane Archer, had the privilege of sitting with you at last year’s Gala and had such a wonderful time. We definitely don’t want to lose you here at PEN.
I am happy to discuss any and all of the above by phone.
All my best,
Suzanne
Suzanne Nossel
Executive Director, PEN American Center
Eisenberg reply to Nossel, April 10
Dear Suzanne,
I’m sorry to be so long getting back to you about your detailed response to my letter of March 26 – I’ve come back home to New York after long travels, and have been swamped by chores. In any event, thank you very much for your letter and for your generous offer to talk through my concerns by phone. Unfortunately, though, allaying my concerns would entail altering the state of the world, which I doubt you and I could manage to do on the phone.
But I do want to clarify a few things about which I evidently expressed myself confusingly and to try to disentangle various considerations that have inevitably come up in our correspondence about the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award.
On many or most points I’m in complete agreement with you. I agree unreservedly that an expression of views, whether satirical or not, and however disagreeable, is not to be answered by murder. I agree unreservedly that the free expression of views should not be banned. And I agree unreservedly that threats of violence let alone actual violence against people who express their views must be vigorously and vociferously opposed.
You made the very interesting point that laws against blasphemy might encourage independent vigilantes; that certainly seems plausible to me, but, as I’ve never thought there should be laws against blasphemy, I’m not sure how it applies to what I said, unless I gave you the impression that I do think there should be such laws – which I assure you is very far from the case.
But here is a point on which we differ. Or at least as I understand it, this is something that you and PEN are asserting: that people who are murdered for expressing themselves are automatically deserving of praise.
Really? Why is that? A person who is murdered (or threatened or harassed) for his or her views is by definition a victim – but not by definition a hero. He or she may be a hero or not. Let us say that a man considers his wife to be inferior to him and derides her repeatedly, and that she then murders him in his sleep. I think most of us would agree that it is wrong to murder the husband, but I hope few of us would agree that the husband deserves an award.
Your account of international negotiations regarding the differing concepts underpinning laws that regulate limits on expression is interesting and informative, but insofar is it applies to my letter to you, it seems to underscore rather than contravene my conviction that satire is largely dependent for its meaning and effect on context and cultural norms.
You say: “A rule that all satirists must only target for offense those who enjoy a concomitant or equal level of security or prestige within a society would surely take too much off limits.” I agree with that statement, too, as far as it goes. But in actual practice the matter goes very much farther than that wholesale abstract formulation, and the potential ramifications and nuances occasioned by any concrete instance of satire are likely to be ample.
Satire might be thought of as sort of a free zone, where potentially dangerous or destabilizing ideas can be safely sent out to play, or to perform for us, and social inequities are implicitly an element in most satire – though it is the parties thought to be holding disproportionate power or prestige who are the usual object of successful satire. It seems to me that power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire, and that to ignore very real inequities between the person holding the mighty pen and the subject fixed on paper by that pen, risks making empty and self-serving nonsense of the discussion. In any case, your apparent assumption that I fail to recognize the value of satire is puzzling, given that I made liberal use of it in my letter of March 26.
Even leaving aside the vast and murky area that concerns freedoms, satire, and norms, at the basis of our discussion, I suppose, are – also vast and murky but urgent – questions of how to confront terrorism. And there, too, you and I are bound to stand on some common ground. Terrorism seeks to inhibit and control behavior and even ideas through the simple and very effective expedient of violence, so it is critical to respond by maintaining our autonomy, both in refusing to be silenced by threats or acts and also by refusing to let fear and intimidation interfere with our ideas and responses to the world around us -which is of course a subtler, vaguer, and more easily manipulated business.
Like you, I greatly admire the courage of those who retain their autonomy and hold fast to reasoned ideals in the face of intimidation. But by the same token, I do not believe that a repudiation of terrorism obliges me to join forces with prejudices I find repugnant. If I were to follow PEN’s line of thought in this instance – the equating of free expression with offensiveness – to its logical conclusion, I would have to distort my own inclinations and convictions and devote myself to drawing incredibly offensive magazine covers. And that, in my view, would be as much a capitulation to terrorism as silence would be.
The issue of objectives you raise in the case of Charlie Hebdo seems to me be critical, and I believe that confusion about it has obfuscated the general discussion. You inform me that the “new editor of Charlie Hebdo has said that in mocking religion their aim has been not to attack religion itself, but rather the role of religion in politics and the blurring of lines in-between, which they see as promoting totalitarianism . . . “ and that the editors (I believe that’s who you’re referring to) “defined their role as pushing boundaries, questioning orthodoxy, casting light on obscured motives and ensuring that nothing was above comment or debate.”
These are truly laudable objectives. And I am quite willing to accept your characterization of the Hebdo staff. But my belief, as I’ve indicated, is that Charlie Hebdo’s objectives are entirely beside the point.
It is the work available to us, not the objectives behind it, which we experience and judge. If, for example, I read a book that strikes me as worthless, my opinion of it will not go up simply because the author tells me that she had wanted it to be better than War and Peace. And further, the subjects of a satire are bound to have a different relationship to that satire than those who are only peripherally involved or who have the same set of cultural assumptions as the satire’s author. The Muslim population of France, so much of which feels despised and out of place in their own home, is very aware that the non-Muslim population of France is reading and enjoying mockery of their religion, and they are very unlikely to care what objectives Charlie Hebdo ascribes to itself, however lofty those objectives may be. A person wounded by ridicule is unlikely to much care what the ridiculer intended – to care whether the goal of the ridicule was to stimulate insight or to inflict humiliation.
But presumably the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award is being awarded to Charlie Hebdo for its actual publications, not for its stated aspirations. So those aspirations are as immaterial to PEN’s choice as they are irrelevant to the Muslim population of France. What actually matters most in this instance, in my opinion, is what people believe is being awarded: What does PEN wish to convey by presenting this prestigious award to Charlie Hebdo? And that is still not one bit clear to me.
Charlie Hebdo is undeniably courageous in that it has continued irrepressibly to ridicule Islam and its adherents, who include a conspicuously and ruthlessly dangerous faction. But ridicule of Islam and Muslims cannot in itself be considered courageous at this moment, because ridicule of Islam and Muslims is now increasingly considered acceptable in the West. However its staff and friends see it, Charlie Hebdo could well be providing many, many people with an opportunity to comfortably assume a position that they were formerly ashamed to admit. This is not a voice of dissent, this is the voice of a mob.
Here I am, piping up again, and re-stating some of the things I’ve already said. And how good it would be if you and I could sort out and settle all these issues and those that are attached to them in the exchange of a few letters! But obviously these matters are not easily sorted out, let alone settled – and they are not easily discussed, either. They do, however, call for discussion – for examination, for re-examination, for endless, painstaking vigilance and continual efforts at clear thinking.
You seek to persuade me that Charlie Hebdo was a judicious choice to receive the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award by telling me people are flocking to join PEN because of its support for Charlie Hebdo – but that only redoubles the anxieties I described in my first letter. I can only wonder what exactly is so alluring to these new dues-payers: are they indeed demonstrating enthusiasm for PEN’s long-standing support of free and courageous expression, or are they demonstrating enthusiasm for a license that is being offered by PEN to openly rally behind a popular prejudice that has suddenly been legitimized and made palatable by the January atrocities?
In short, it is not Charlie Hebdo I’m writing to you about, it is PEN. I would be very sorry if this essential organization were to alter radically in character, from one that supports and protects endangered voices of dissent to one that encourages voices of intolerance.
All the best,
Deborah
Teju Cole comment to The Intercept
I am a member of PEN, and a supporter of its work and causes. I agreed to
be a table host at this year’s PEN Literary Gala. Later on, in March, it
was announced that Charlie Hebdo would be honored with the the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award in response to the January 7 attacks that claimed the lives of many members of its editorial staff.
I’m a free-speech fundamentalist, but I don’t think it’s a good use of our
headspace or moral commitments to lionize Charlie Hebdo in particular.
L’affaire Rushdie (for example) was a very different matter, as different
as blasphemy is from racism. I support Rushdie 100%, but I don’t want to
sit in a room and cheer Charlie Hebdo. This distinction seems to have been
difficult for people to understand, and any dissent from the consensus
about Charlie Hebdo is read as somehow “supporting the terrorists,” or
somehow believing that they deserved to be murdered.
I would rather honor Raif Badawi, Avijit Roy, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea
Manning, who have also paid steeply for their courage, but whose ideals are
much more progressive than Charlie’s. I would like an acknowledgement of
the Kenyan students who were murdered for no greater crime than being
college students. And, if we are talking about free speech, I would rather
PEN shed more light on the awful effects of governmental spying in the US,
and the general issue of surveillance.
I have withdrawn from my role as table host at the PEN Literary Gala this
year, as have a number of my fellow writers, including Peter Carey, Rachel
Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi. But in my
notes above, I speak for myself, not on behalf of anyone else.
Questions submitted by The Intercept to PEN America:
1) How many writers or table heads have withdrew from the PEN event in
protest of the Charlie Hebdo award? Has anything on this scale happened
before at PEN?
2) What’s your response to those who are withdrawing? Do they have any
valid grievance?
3) Given that PEN is supposed to stand for unpopular and marginalized
views that are under assault, what purpose does it serve to simply echo
the overwhelming consensus among western governments: that Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are heroes?
4) In deciding to call them “heroes,” did PEN evaluate the content of
their cartoons? Would PEN consider anyone who is killed for their views
a “hero” without regard to the substance of those views?
5) Is there any validity to the concern about former Obama
administration officials running human rights and similar groups that
are supposed to be adversarial to the government?
Photo: Eisenberg: Brad Barket/Getty Images; Nossel: Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images
It is the same old story, European values versus American values. They look the same, but are not. All the misunderstandings and the cultural difference are connected. In Western-Europe (The Netherlands, France, Scandinavian countries, Germany) freedom of religion comprise two interconnected sides. 1) The freedom to practice religion. 2) The freedom to criticize religion. In Europe it is not customary to criticize believers, but the power structure of religious organizations do not remain unaffected. Not to ban or deliberately annoy them, but to help to find the human scale.
The six -and more- American writers with an American perspective on Europe are piling various misunderstandings on each other. 1) They follow the American way in not or barely criticizing religions and don’t seem to understand criticism of religion in Europe is widely accepted. 2) They missed the point Charlie Hebdo (perhaps because of their poor knowledge of foreign languages) does not criticize believers, but the power structure and the political inclination of islam. 3) They missed the point Charlie Hebdo directs its arrows in all directions: Catholics, right-wing extremists, animal cruelty, socialists, Sarkozy etc. 4) Satire can only be satire if there are no restrictions in advance.
The lesson I learned from the six writers in search of a character to parafrase Luigi Pirandello and Salman Rushdie? Criticism of religion is culturally determined. In the end the US is a religion country and Western-Europe is not. And never the twain shall meet. The writersunion of the country I live in, PEN Nederland (The Netherlands) supports awarding the prize to Charlie Hebdo as most progressive Dutch citizens do because of their experiences with religion. As everyone argues from their own street, another old story.
Leftists continue to disgust me. The elite academics and “art” world of the West should experience real oppression, maybe then they’ll get their heads out of their collective asses.
I can’t say I see any remotely good argument for any OTHER conclusion than that those who have been martyred for their exercise of free speech should be recognized and honored by an organization supposedly devoted to the cause of free speech. But, Ms. Eisenberg’s priorities become crystal clear in her equating of Charlie Hebdo with “racist organizations,” and her protests that there are “more progressive” and, one assumes, therefor, “more worthy” recipients.
Ms. Eisenberg, shame on you. You are no friend to freedom, of speech or otherwise. Mr. Cole, apparently, is a moron. Certainly he writes like one. Ms. Stossel, on the other hand, appears fit for her post. Good for her, and good for PEN!
Ironically, I am going to quote (or rather, paraphrase) another Frenchman. “I may not agree with your opinion, sir, but I will fight to the death for your right to have one.”
Selective support of free speech is not support of free speech. Most things in life are not that clear but it is here. If you condemn anyone as not being worthy of free speech then you condemn yourself as well. You can rationalize or justify your condemnations but at the end of the day what you have said is that some opinions are good enough to be heard and some are not. Agendas like protecting disenfranchised minorities doesn’t mean only hearing their voices and not their critics. Or that they don’t have to live up to the same set of standards we hold other groups to (a common but demeaning practice). That seems to be the sum total of the condemnations of CH, that they said things that shouldn’t be said about people who cannot be held to that same level of accountability as others?
Free speech is a separate issue from the morality of one’s opinions. Free speech implies that one should be able to voice their opinions regardless of what they are, who they are about, and what they have to say. When you bring your own morality into a discussion of free speech you automatically bias your argument and make it circumspect. The consequences of free speech are also a separate issue, whether it leads to violence based on the idea of ‘fighting words’, whether it leads to revolution, or whether it leads to something socially unpopular that “…cannot be defined but I know it when I see it…”. You can’t have your free speech without protecting everyone else’s. And perhaps more important, you can’t give up other people’s free speech by giving up your own. Think about that, all you who practice self-censorship and feel that gives you the right to censor others.
All that said, CH’s opinions are not my own on all things but it does not mean I would ignore Voltaire’s example because of it. Acknowledging CH’s right to free speech is a separate issue from the morality of their opinions or the consequences of their publishing said opinions. If PEN has members that can only support free speech when it is saying what they want then I suspect PEN is not the champion it wants to be. More irony is that is that I completely support PEN members’ right to an opinion even when it involves condemning CH because I support free speech and I see the difference between those PEN member’s opinions and their right to have one. Protest CH in another venue where the morality of opinions is on topic or intolerance is tolerated but keep it away from free speech. The more you try to infuse morality into free speech the more likely it is that we will have too much of the former and none of that latter.
“Selective support of free speech is not support of free speech”. First of all, this “support” is not disputed by the protesting authors (in PEN talk it is called ‘defense’ of F.S.). It is about the additional PEN awarding. Nothing in the Defend F.S. chapter says the Award is required to be made. It is a choice by PEN, and therefor open to discussion.
Still, I take the invitation, and will turn this argument against your point. I counter-question: What happened to those who satirized CH? (that is, those making satire of the satire?). French performer Dieudonné was arrested for writing a variant “#JeSuis…”. Does PEN have a list of those? Did PEN speak up for those?
Another example. In January, the Berliner Zeitung published ‘Angriff auf die Freiheit’ with five Hebdo-covers – one picturing an orthodox Jew (‘see, CH does them all’). But that one was not a CH cover, it was a CH-satire (or parody). The paper felt the need to excuse. http://www.timesofisrael.com/german-paper-apologizes-for-fake-charlie-hebdo-anti-semitic-cover/
Here a former editor of Charlie Hebdo, Olivier Cyran, describes how a satire and humour magazine turned into a racist rag: “Charlie Hebdo, not racist? If you say so…” http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm
And THIS is what PEN wants to award! Something wrong with this picture…
Here a former editor of Charlie Hebdo, Olivier Cyran, describes how a satire and humour magazine turned into a racist rag: “Charlie Hebdo”, not racist? If you say so…” http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm
And THIS is what PEN wants to award! Shortage of truly deserving ones, who would be brave but not racist?
When you boil it down, what Eisenberg is saying is: “Its not okay to mock Islam, because Muslims are losers”.
Kind of like thin people making fun of fat people. That’s just mean, as Chris Rock would say.
Nossel is a joke… and an enemy of the 99%.
Obama gave CIA free rein for drone assassinations in Pakistan
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/28/dron-a28.html
About Nossel’s career (govt-AI-PEN duplicities), I found this descriptive:
http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/04/03/an-appeal-to-pen-exec-director-suzanne-nossel-must-go/
Thanks, Glenn for the article and for these accompanying documents.
I diligently read through your article and the correspondence and Intercept questions for Ms. Nossel. This is one time when I feel (Ms. Nossel’s background notwithstanding) both sides have raised valid points. I’m just glad I’m not a PEN member who would have to make such a decision. I do thank you for putting this all in front of us; sometimes it’s good for our brains and hearts to confront dilemmas, even if we can’t totally resolve them.
Honouring Hebdo would be tantamount to rewarding a false flag event. Anyone who disagrees with the mainstream is simply branded a terrorist or conspiracy nut. The level of critical thinking is at an all time low and questioning anything …well that is just not done. There is no free speech left. To speak freely is to invite a visit from someone or an audit…or your car kills you. Sickening really. I have watched it unfold right in front of my eyes. It must be the bad food and lack of proper nutrition.
I completely agree with Eisenberg’s comments. Nossel’s response circumvents Eisenberg’s (well-supported) claim that Charlie Hebdo is racist, and that its courageousness is more in the vein of recklessness than a valid propagation of well-supported political opinions.
” (well-supported) claim that Charlie Hebdo is racist, ”
Sure thing. The claim is *so* well supported that they removed it from their protest letter when they decided to solicit signatures, and replaced it with meaningless stuff like accusing CH of “contributing to anti-Maghreb sentiments”. They (correctly) understood that they can both have their cake and eat it: remove racism as an accusation which is impossible to actually substantiate in a reasoned debate, and rely on their mindless, functionally illiterate supporters – like you – to incessantly repeat the slander about racism anyway.
H/t to Don Midwest and Suave for these:
Don Midwest USA 27 Apr 2015 at 9:27 am
Chris Hedges on why I resigned from Pen after Suzanne Nossel was appointed head
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10019
There probably is a Chris Hedges column on this also but in a quick search I didn’t find it
From the transcript of the interview
And suave who at 27 Apr 2015 at 10:21 am wrote:
Chris Hedges Resigns From Human Rights Organization PEN
truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/chris_hedges_resigns_from_human_rights_organization_pen_20130401
VEREERY interesting. Thanks for posting the excerpt and thanks to Don Midwest USA and suave.
I am even more disgusted and disappointed with Eisenberg’s opinions than I expected to be. “A person who is murdered (or threatened or harassed) for his or her views is by definition a victim – but not by definition a hero. He or she may be a hero or not.” She seems simply ignorant of the pre-existing threats and attacks on Charlie Hebdo, including the November 2 2011 firebombing and the listing of Charb in Inspire’s “Wanted Dead” list. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo ) I reject her claim that if a group is oppressed that you can’t parody its religion, and wholeheartedly reject her apparent implication that if Islam is particularly sensitive to images of their “prophet”, this gives them some special right not to be pilloried.
Muslims should have equal rights, yes, and should be free to practice any religion, even a bad one. But Islam is a set of ideas and beliefs, and like any set of ideas and beliefs it should be subject to relentless scrutiny and criticism by whoever wishes to do so. The fact that opponents of the religion have been killed for their words since the days when Muhammad was giving orders to kill poets personally – that may make such criticism unfamiliar, but it most definitely does not make it unnecessary. I would have vastly more respect for a religion believing in Charlie Manson as the son of God with claims he worked miracles and gave wise advice than the religion of Muhammad, simply because Manson killed fewer people. We want to do what is right for Muslims, but no sugar-coating! As a group, the best thing we can do for them is to persuade them to look for a better religion, one that could guide them toward a better society as the better beliefs of our ancestors led them to lay down the better aspects of our own. That said, I recognize, of course, that our ability to do so is tremendously hindered if not outright sunk by the hypocrisy and brutality of our own society in its dealings with the Islamic countries, and that we ourselves need to find some faith to make the changes we need to make in our own lives before we can accomplish much there.
“Muslims should have equal rights”…
Gee, have you wondered why they don’t?
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/06/many-countries-islamic-world-u-s-bombed-occupied-since-1980/
Read: http://johnpilger.com/articles/spoils-of-a-massacre
workers.org/indonesia/chap1.html
wsws.org/en/articles/1999/07/indo1-j19.html
counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/who-should-be-blamed-for-muslim-terrorism/
Your links are well worth reading; the first is especially eloquent. I have some confusion between the WSWS statement that Muslim groups worked hand-in-hand with the army to hack Communists to death, and the Counterpunch statement that a pro-Christian minority ended up in control, but it isn’t actually a direct contradiction. My feeling though is that these top of the 1%, the Kissingers of the world, aren’t really Americans, don’t have loyalty to America; they just live here because we have better hospitals than Indonesia. Detesting what they have done there, I resist taking all the blame for their actions; even among consumers, Americans are no worse than the Europeans who buy the same products under the same situation.
The question is, why haven’t they made America as awful as Indonesia? Surely they would like to reduce the average worker to the same state. And I think the hindrance is that American soldiers have some sense of honor that makes it problematic to ask them to kill a million countrymen, and even the fringiest fundamentalists still aren’t all that comfortable swinging a machete. Even ordinary McCarthyism troubled a lot of people. We are all tools in the Devil’s hands, but some people seem less well-suited for the purpose – weak instruments, confused, shot through with cracks of morality, they fall short of the goals set aside for them. I think that we might acknowledge that the religious ideals people have had in the U.S. may be to blame for that.
Maybe you’re disgusted by them because you obviously misread or skimmed them, and failed to grasp her point? It’s amazing so many people in the comments section have done so, given her lucidity. Obviously reading anything suggested to you that might explain her point, or making the smallest effort to understand some basic distinctions is out of the question for you. Perhaps you should emphasise your belief is primarily in the freedom of speech and not the freedom to listen, read or think. But in an attempt to pander to your attitude I’ll do neither and simply ask you why Charlie Hebdo over Robert Faurisson? Surely a serious French academic has as much right to freedom of speech as racists satirists. Or is the right to offend more important and honorable than the right to research and understand our history?
View some of the “cartoons” here:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-massacre-a-tragic-universal-failure/#comments
Charlie Hebdo Massacre: a Tragic, Universal Failure
by Richard Silverstein, January 8, 2015
The mass murder yesterday in the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which 10 staff members and two policemen were gunned down, represents a gross failure of so many. Most obviously, it represents a failure of the French security forces who failed miserably in their job. It represents the failure too of Francois Hollande and the nation’s political class, which have done little to address both Islamophobia, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments that seethe just beneath the surface of French life.
Now let me say a few controversial things: it represents a failure of the French Muslim community from which the killers sprang. It represents a failure of the French press and public which fostered the puerile satirical farce represented by the magazine’s portrayal of Islam. It represents the failure of the French right which simmered the cauldron of Islamophobia to which the killers, at least in part, responded.
Elaborating on the failures I listed above: one of the mass-murderers served a three-year prison sentence for recruiting French Muslims to join Middle East jihad. It’s now being reported that one of the brothers trained with Al Qaeda in Yemen in 2011. Why didn’t the security services raise his level of threat assessment to the highest one possible? Why wasn’t he monitored and surveilled intensively? Why did they not ensure he didn’t get access to firearms?
Charlie Hebdo was under constant threat from Islamists. Yet the police offered two officers to guard the offices, both of which gave their lives doing their duty (one of the murdered policemen was a Muslim). And is it possible that two men can commit mass murder in broad daylight in France’s capital and manage to get away without any security force (except the two guards) intercepting them?
Remember the same lapses that occurred in the case of the Toulouse Jewish school attacked by a different Islamist gunman. That individual managed two separate attacks which killed both French Jews and soldiers. He too had a history of association with Islamist terror which should have flagged him and drawn much greater attention from the authorities.
As for the failure of the French political class, Angela Merkel last week nationally denounced anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant fever which was gripping her country. She stood up for what was right. What have French politicians done in the face of the surge in racism from the National Front?
No doubt, this attack will draw even stronger support to this Party which thrives on hatred of the Other in French society. The blood of these French men and women fertilizes the soil of racism and hatred on which Marie Le Pen thrives. We shouldn’t forget that Israel’s far right too has made common cause with her in their joint jihad against the “Muslim hordes.”
The statement above in which I noted the failure of the French Muslim community was not made to cast blame on all Muslims. I understand that there are killers in the name of God among all religions and ethnic groups. The acts of the psychopathic few aren’t the fault of the many. But just as I do soul-searching when I read of the murders committed by mad-dog settlers Jews, and mourn their perversion of Judaism as I know it, it becomes more important than ever for the real Muslims to rise against this hate and fight it with every fiber of their being.
Regarding Charlie Hebdo itself…during the Jyllands Posten controversy, I wrote critically about the deliberate provocations of the cartoonists which led to the attack. Not that I dismissed their right to draw what they liked. Not that I dismissed freedom of speech and the press. But both the Danish and Hebdo cartoons were perverse provocation for its own sake.
Political satire through the medium of cartoons is a hallowed tradition, which I both admire and support. Think of the moral, social crusades fostered by such distinguished satirists as Honore Daumier, Thomas Nast and Herblock. And the power and empathy that Art Spiegelman brought to the Holocaust in Maus. But why waste such a sharp instrument on such a dull subject as Hebdo did? Why employ this exalted art in the service of base, degraded sentiments?
For example, there is much in Judaism and especially some of its adherents which I criticize. I regularly display cartoons that ridicule and lampoon not just Israeli policy, but the religious tenets of settlers and their ilk. But why would I attack the founders of my religion: Moses, the Biblical prophets? There are plenty of anti-Semites to do that. Similarly, unless you’re the equivalent of an anti-Semite, why would you debase the founder of Islam and its foundational tenets? Why would you not distinguish between Mohammed and those of his followers who’ve deviated from the right path, unless you hated all Islam and all Muslims? And if you do, what right do you have to the support of the news-consuming public?
Satirize Islamist terror? By all means. Criticize sects of Islam like Wahabism? Certainly. But imagine if Charlie Hebdo drew a big-nosed Moses sitting amid buckets of cash. Does no one understand why if one is wrong the other is as well? In fact, a Hebdo cartoonist derided Nicholas Sarkozy’s son for “doing well” by converting to Judaism to marry a wealthy Jewish heiress. The cartoonist was fired. But cartoonists ridiculing the Prophet are now folk heroes (see Latuff’s cartoon above).
Let me clear, nothing I’ve written above justifies in any way the murder of ten French journalists. But I am questioning the value, wisdom and quality of their enterprise as they pursued it before this attack.
The final and equally sad failure in this tragedy is that Bibi Netanyahu will, if he hasn’t already done so, release a statement to the French and the world saying: I told you so. He’ll dance a silent hora and thank his lucky stars that carnage like this has been thrown into his electoral campaign.
The real reward for tasteless political exploitation of mass slaughter goes this time to Tzipi Livni, who said this:
“We [Israelis] feel the same anger when terror hits us – and that is why we will not accept any attempt to sue our soldiers in The Hague.”
If you think this is overly cynical, not at all. If you can think that, you don’t understand the way his mind works. After 9/11 he publicly said that that sort of attack was what it would take for the world to understand what Israel faces every day. In a perverse way, he was right. The Israeli right has reaped a bitter harvest from Islamism and the west’s war on terror. It put back the Palestinian cause by years if not decades. Islamist terror is the bitter fruit on which Israeli extremism feeds.
I’ve been noting a significantly different response in progressive circles between the earlier Mohammed cartoon controversy and this one. Back in 2006, I felt like I was one of the few progressives trying to walk a fine line between denouncing the threat to Jyllands Posten while also denouncing the disgusting taste and Islamophobia of the cartoons. As I recall, reaction in some quarters especially among Jews was extremely hostile. But in the aftermath of the Hebdo attack, there have been thoughtful, nuanced pieces written both by cartoonists themselves like Joe Sacco and political journalists like Glenn Greenwald. This piece in The New Yorker is also terrific. That may be because the world has more distance from 9/11 and more sensitivity to the danger of Islamophobia.
Finally, it’s interesting to remember that way back in 2006, in response to an Iranian Holocaust denial cartoon contest, Israeli graphic artist Amitai Sandy created the Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest. Despite what you might think, it was mostly hilarious and dead-on (with some nasty exceptions of course). It’s worth revisiting it. The point is: there are ways to satirize religious traditions that are sharp, cutting and honest without being gratuitously hateful.
Nossel writes:
So remember, kids, it’s not what Washington and its collaborators do to people in the Global South that’s the problem… These backwards, barbaric mud people need to abandon their superstitions, and inferior, miserable ways, and their irrational, emotional gibberish and get them some of that European enlightenment and tolerance!
“Withdrew?”
There is an extremely long history of denigrating, fustigating, and demonizing Islam in the West; viewed in that light Charlie Hebdo looks hoary and traditional, nothing radical about it. Albeit it does strike me as daft that they should expose themselves (for such a false and bankrupt cause) to the violent ire of demented and malleable socioeconomically marginalized individuals in their midst, for who is more likely than the psychologically disturbed to kill others (and indirectly themselves) over a transparent, even desperate, caricatural provocation? Such acts imply giving privileged and expert provocateurs the further privilege and importance of a determining value, and power, over life and death, your own as well as theirs. This ‘very serious’ signifying dance of life-entwined-with-death, in which both the magazine staff and attackers reciprocally participated, is quite obviously a folie, but ultimately a folie à tous.
There is an extremely long history of denigrating, fustigating, and demonizing Islam in the West; viewed in that light Charlie Hebdo looks hoary and traditional, nothing radical about it. Albeit it does strike me as daft that they should expose themselves (for such a false and bankrupt cause) to the violent ire of demented and malleable socioeconomically marginalized individuals in their midst, for who is more likely than the psychologically disturbed to kill others (and indirectly themselves) over a transparent, even desperate, caricatural provocation? Such acts imply giving privileged and expert provocateurs the further privilege and importance of a determining value, and power, over life and death, your own as well as theirs. This ‘very serious’ signifying dance of life-entwined-with-death, in which both the magazine staff and attackers reciprocally participated, is quite obviously a folie, but ultimately a folie à tous.
“I’m a free-speech fundamentalist, but”
It’s good to see the guy who gave one of the great examples of whataboutism in his response to the initial attacks continues with the unintentional humor here.
“I’m a free-speech fundamentalist, but I don’t think I deserve an award just for being one?”.
Or “I’m a free-speech fundamentalist, but I don’t think that necessarily gives me license to be an asshole”.
Or “I’m a free-speech fundamentalist, but I’m not going to go out into the street and provoke someone until they attack me and announce myself a hero”.
Teju Cole writes, “any dissent from the consensus about Charlie Hebdo is read as somehow “supporting the terrorists,” or
somehow believing that they deserved to be murdered”
Gee, I wonder how anyone could get that idea? Perhaps from the comment of Deborah Eisenberg, who writes,”Let us say that a man considers his wife to be inferior to him and derides her repeatedly, and that she then murders him in his sleep. I think most of us would agree that it is wrong to murder the husband, but I hope few of us would agree that the husband deserves an award.”
“Wrong” to murder the husband, but not so very wrong – she was sorely provoked, wasn’t she? This is what Eisenberg thinks: that it is not very nice that the CH cartoonists were murdered, but after all, they were asking for it.
I have to wonder if Suzanne Nossel–being a former functionary of the US govt, defending and promoting US policy in international organizations–would so willingly support Charlie Hebdo if the magazine had repeatedly and persistently published cartoons and text dehumanizing, denigrating, insulting American soldiers murdering civilians in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere – with covers of US soldiers raping girls and women, drenched with blood and wearing body part trophies of their victims. Or if she and her supporters would believe so passionately in Hebdo’s mission if it had repeatedly, consistently (constantly) published insulting, denigrating cartoons depicting Jews and Judaism as hook-nosed blood-drenched monsters. Yes , Hebdo published an occasional cartoon or text insulting to Judaism–but hardly anything that matches its fixation on insulting Muslims.
That is the bottom line for me–you cannot get around this simple basic fact: if the Jewish Defense League had bombed Hebdo’s headquarters and killed 12 cartoonists after the magazine had spent more than a decade publishing denigrating, insulting, anti-semitic cartoons and text, I do not for one moment believe the magazine would have received the passionate support and praise it has received in the west. It would not be receiving any award for “courage” by PEN America. Likewise, if it had routinely, persistently published cartoons and text depicting the the US military as blood-drenched, slavering rapist monsters – I do not for one moment believe it would receive any kind of “courage” award from PEN America.
It is clear to me that this is all about selective support of WHICH TARGET the magazine has chosen to attack, insult and denigrate in far far greater proportion to any other group that it has satirized. It is incredibly easy to declare one’s passionate love for free speech when the target of such speech is a group you have absolutely no problem seeing insulted and demonized.
I’ll take all this seriously when PEN America awards a “courage” award to Palestinian journalists, writers, artists who have been and continue to be jailed, tortured, murdered for expressing their opposition to Israeli occupation.
Interestingly enough, all of your “rhetorical questions” can be answered with just one single google search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=charb+gaza&tbm=isch
Please. Read one copy of Charlie-Hebdo. Just one copy, front-to-back. Just one! That will make you better informed on the subject than 99% of the pundits who comment on it.
Are we to believe that it is a big coincidence that the Charlie Hebdo staff were murdered, Salman Rushdie was hunted down, Raif Badawi is continuously being lashed, etc.?
I reject that entirely. It’s just obvious that CH was attacked for the same reason Rushdie was: some Islamic fundamentalists have a violent intolerance to poignant critique of Muhammad. Talk about marginalizing Muslims in France is just a non-sequitur. These cartoonists and editors were not killed for marginalizing Muslims in France. They were killed for mocking Muhammad, plain and simple. Whether wittingly or not, if you fail to defend Charlie Hebdo on this point, you are failing to defend against the violent enforcement of some interpretation of Islamic law.
Charlie Hebdo regularly satirizes Judaism, Islam in the contemporary world is far more repressive than Catholicism, there are no countries where you can go to jail for mocking Catholicism but in most Muslim countries you do go to jail for mocking Islam and drawing cartoons of Muhammad, even in the most liberal ones (such as Tunisia), or even openly leaving the religion can get you thrown in jail (and that is not just Saudi Arabia and Iran, but also Indonesia and Malaysia). Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing in any Islamic scriptures that says you cannot draw Muhammad. The world today is full of the repression and sexual enslavement of women, and the murder and genocide of homosexuals, religious minorities and atheists in the name of Muhammad, yes in the name of Muhammad! The people perpetrating these acts actually quote him and the sources that say he did the same things to justify their acts. So no I do not think the mockery of a figure that is used to justify such terrible crimes against humanity is tasteless at all.
That might be an interesting point if it wasn’t for the fact you can go to prison in France for mocking Judaism and, as Greenwald has previously written about, one of Charlie Hebdo’s writers was fired in 2008 for this, and had to go to court.
“We have heard from Muslims, many of whom reject the prohibitions on the depiction of Mohammed…”
Really, Nossel? “Many”? You want to say that these Muslims who you try to project as believing in rejection of the prohibition on depiction of Prophet Muhammad (pbuH), represent the sentiments of massive followers of religions in Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, and elsewhere? That’s a huge lie!
Who cares what dumb believers think about depicting their so-called prophet? You do not have the right to not be offended, not in a free society.
Otherwise, you are free to leave. You will *not* be missed.
http://www.understandingcharliehebdo.com/
In some countries, including France, hate speech is illegal. It is for that reason that Charlie Hebdo never publishes anything critical of Jews or Judaism. It would seem to me – having recently seen a couple of issues of Charlie Hebdo – that their editorial policy crosses the border insofar as Islam is concerned. I imagine that the magazine is careful to not go too far in its lampooning of Christianity. Wouldn’t do to publish a drawing of JC having a threesome with Mary and Joseph, would it?
Love those preposterous pretenders who are “informed.” The first CH after the attack had the pope smoking a cigar and a later one had, as part of a much larger tableau about drones, Christ on the cross as a flying drone peeing on those on the ground. The newest one has American police having fun killing blacks and the Pope speaking to a pile of Armenian skulls. It is outrageous. Everyone knows that but no serious person would conclude that Islam was a special target. It was never a topic except that for a certain small segment of the world’s Islamic community who believe that showing images or drawings of the Prophet is a hostile act. Nobody anywhere has accused Charlie Hebdo of an anti-Islam bias. They were attacked by fanatics who want to kill anyone who publishes an image proporting to the Prophet and anyone who works in the same office as such. You might agree with the fanatics. That is your right. But to support such fanatics as a writer and thinker and opt out of a simple PEN declaration is ugly, stupid and immoral to me.
CH published cartoons where they beheaded the pope. Drawings of JC having a threesome with Mary and Joseph are the kind of drawings they always did. CH also criticized the Jews and Judaism and Buddhists.
I hate to repeat points that were already so eloquently made by Deborah, but there is a difference between mocking Catholicism and Islam in a society where the two religions have vastly difference statuses. It’s not exactly satire to make fun of a marginalised demographic compared to the long established and influential church, especially from a position of privilege. More to the point, even if this pathetic attempt at humour could be considered courageous for the reasons given by PEN, they disqualified themselves from deserving it when they fired one of their staff for mocking the Jewish and undermined their own supposed values.
24b4Jeff – you are very wrong on what you imagine about CH’s equal-opportunity religion bashing. What about a cover showing the “holy” trinity engaged in sodomy? Is that enough ‘lampoonng of christianity’ for you? See https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/charliehebdo31.jpg
I am from Vancouver,Canada and I supports the writers boycotting the PEN American Gala honoring Charlie Hebdo.That magazine is racist,islamophobic and reactionary.They reaped what they sowed and deserved what they got.PEN American shouldn’t be honoring such magazines promoting racism.PEN American might as well be honoring the Ku Klux Klan for what they did to the Black people in the USA.Shame on PEN American for honoring Charlie Hebdo.
Nossel is hilarious. Liberal imperialists love to profess their commitment to freedom in the abstract and take safe, meaningless stands against “violence”, while downplaying the violence regularly inflicted by the ruling class they serve. Just take a look at the following excerpt. Note the condescension and the promotion of the lie of European tolerance and respect.
(Since Rwanda is mentioned in the excerpt above, I’ll just passingly note that the public has been lied to about Rwanda, like everything else.)
Read as well Frank Furedi’s The New Ideology of Imperialism (1994)
Worthwhile:
Author Deepa Kumar on the imperial roots of anti-Muslim sentiment
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/author-deepa-kumar-on-the-imperial-roots-of-anti-muslim-sentiment
He is correct in the sense that anti-Muslim sentiment is indeed rooted in imperialism – *Muslim* imperialism.
In the mad rush to find common ground with the terrorists after the Paris attack many on the PC Left, including Greenwald, attempted to slander Charlie Hebdo as racist and reactionary, implicitly suggesting they were asking for it, while paying lip service to a thing they don’t really believe in, Freedom of Speech. Of course most of them didn’t know what CH was or apparently understand the Leftist anti-clerical tradition it upheld. Even after CH’s politics became known, there was a flurry of sanctimonious, condescending articles about the necessity of satire to “punch up”, as if Islam the second largest and fastest growing religion on earth was an endangered species in need of special protections. If not France, where can one be critical of Islam without being tarred as a bigot or murdered as a heretic? That fundamentalist Islam is the greatest threat to Freedom of Speech the world over is obvious to anyone who really cares about the issue. Even in allegedly “moderate” Muslim countries draconian penalties have silenced most religious criticism. In their efforts to extend this silence to the West the Islamic Right has found a reliable ally in the PC Left. Together they’ve managed to intimidate most of the Mainstream press in Western societies through a combination of PC scolding and Islamic violence. These writers who pretend to support Free Speech, but only for causes they personally support, are a disgrace
You lie about and distort Greenwald’s commentary. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-charlie-hebdo-cartoons/
Also, Charlie Hebdo wasn’t “Left.”
You misunderstand the free speech issues.
See “Free Speech” hypocrisy in the aftermath of the attack on Charlie Hebdo
wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/09/pers-j09.html
You’re also ignorant about CH.
counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/im-still-not-charlie/
And you’re misinformed about the history and development of “fundamentalist Islam”, colonialism, and the Anglo-American imperial policymakers who have fueled, directed, used, promoted, and when convenient, backstabbed, terrorists and undermined and attacked reformist, progressive, revolutionary, and Left governments, organizations, leaders, and movements.
Read:
counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/who-should-be-blamed-for-muslim-terrorism/
“Charlie Hebdo wasn’t “Left.”
Not the American PC Left, but they fit squarely in the European tradition of the Anti-clerical Left.
“And you’re misinformed about the history and development of “fundamentalist Islam”
I don’t believe I mentioned the “history and development” fundamentalist Islam, but I’ll bet you’d be shocked to learn it predates the CIA by quite a bit
As long as we refrain from acknowledging the vile and open hatred within Islam’s 1400 year old core teachings and the proscriptive call for acting upon those teachings, we can play all day long at wondering “who should be blamed for Muslim terrorism.”
I know, I know … Islam was only lashing out 1400 years ago in advance of the humiliation they would be experiencing today … and the imam is very concerned about the backlash over tomorrow’s bombing.
Excerpt from Nossel:
The “Muslim world”?
Is Nossel playing dumb or does she really not understand the invention, promotion, use, objectives, and beneficiaries of Islamophobia?
Did PEN America recognize Deepa Kumar for her excellent “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire”?
Nossel worked as a State Dept official for 18 months? What else has she done?
From https://www.pen.org/suzanne-nossel
See, it’s not a mystery why Nossel defends the decision.
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals and Institutions of American Imperialism
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/engineeringempire.html
Glenn quotes Teju Cole:
And I shall quote Salman Rushdie from the NYT:
The fact that Rushdie has been persecuted for his writings does not make him an authority on persecution or freedom of speech. Listening to him in many interviews, I’ve invariably been impressed by his lack of insight and remarkably rigid, authoritarian views. I’m not at all surprised that he might miss the nuances of the Charlie Hebdo case, or of the PEN awards controversy.
Rushdie: “if PEN … can’t defend and celebrate people [from CH] …”: ‘defend’ is one, ‘celebrate’ is two. First, a bit oversimplistic to say that, since so obviously PEN indeed could not defend the Charlie Hebdo authors. Maybe Rushdie intended to say ‘defend their Freedom’, but nobody I read this year, so far, has proposed to take away that Freedom from CH or anyone else. Nobody. Can Rushdie quote one PEN member saying so? Then, and that is what most of those objecting the Awarding say: why the need to additionally *celebrate* (or Award) exactly this magazine? I find it really sloppy reasoning that when one supports this Freedom, one should automatically support CH.
About Rushdie’s final statement, “… I hope nobody ever comes after them.”, I find that a perversion of the dispute. (Again this itching note: PEN can not protect them physically). Is he saying that when bad people come after *their* Freedom of speech, Rushdie will not stand up for the very Freedom he is living by? This Freedom only for people who blindly agree with his simplistic logic? Salmon Rushdie, I prefer Voltaire.
Nossel in her reply (unknowingly) illustrates the troublesome attitude that is at the core of the objections. She repeats in detail her (and her PEN’s and her Govt’s) reasoning: Islam-is-the-couse, the Muslim is the exception (the good news: some have gotten her US’sy approval). She still has not explained how France’s repression in the very same topic is not weighed in: those who satirize Charlie Hebdo itself are prosecuted. Check “Dieudonné” and his “#jesuis…” variant. Nossel, how difficult can a mental mirror check be? Why not tried the shoe on the other feet?
Then Nossel equally openly shows her limited approach: did not even check what she should have known about. “They [CH] mocked religions, but also […] and a whole range of other targets: …, Jews (while I don’t know all the facts but I think the incident you described did happen, but they also published other cartoons targeting Jews. Including quite a few by Stephane Charbonnier, the murdered Hebdo editor), … etc”. The CH editor was fired, no less, and Nossel doesn’t know? Not googled even when she was told about it? And, still unknowing what it is about, do mention Charbonnier in this? What *did* she google?).
No, I do not accept a “this is satire too” excuse. As good satire goes, that hint must be included in it. However, Nossel exposing herself this way does raise a smile with me, but not for being satire.
Freedom of speech and expression has to do with government not restricting your speech. Freedom of expression is not a statistically impossible expectation that each and every one of billions of people will will react just right when you are being offensive.
A lot of anti-Muslim propaganda relies on a simple trick: highlight bad actors among 1.5 billion Muslims. Muslims are then implicitly put into an impossible task that each and every one of them needs to “behave” for Muslims to improve their image,
It has always struck me that it is the right of the person feeling offended to decide what offends them, not the right of the person issuing the offensive material. Of course, that right does not extend to the one offended having the automatic right to exact any sort of retribution or revenge for the offence given. One of the responsibilities that goes with having rights is to exercise them in a respectful and sensitive manner. To deliberately cause offence by abusing the right of free speech will eventually lead to governments seeing an excuse to take that right away. Western governments are already seeking to curtail the rights of bloggers based on any excuse they can dream up. The US government and Western media outlets are chomping at the bit to deny the Russian TV station RT the right to broadcast.
Charlie Hebdo was an avoidable tragedy. Though I deplore the actions of those who assassinated the journalists involved with the magazine, they must never be seen as representative of all Muslims; they were but a very small minority. When we make heroes of Hebdo journalists, we run the risk of making martyrs of their assassins.
Those 6 PEN members sure made Salman Rushdie mad
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/27/salman-rushdie-pen-charlie-hebdo-peter-carey
Both sides of this argument have legitimate viewpoints. If I was a PEN member, I’d probably attend the gala on principle – that is support for freedom of expression without fear of violence – and not because I consider this magazine’s authors/comics “heroes” or their content good – from what I’ve seen, it sucks.
“From what I’ve seen, it sucks” Some of us actually know about Charlie Hebdo and have the latest copy (with a hairy, naked Marie Le Pen on the cover). What actually do you know about it?
Like most people with the ability to see, I viewed dozens of their comics. I didn’t think they the least bit smart, funny, or witty.
Was I outraged by the contents? Nope.
Do I buy this argument that because Muslims are marginalized they deserve a free pass from religious criticism? Nope.
Is PEN’s decision valid? yes
Are the 6 dissenters’ opinions valid: Yes.
At the end of the day, if you enjoy Hebdo’s work, more power to you.
“What actually do you know about it?”
This: in January a Berlin newspaper published a dozen of CH frontpages to illustrate & support the topic. But: one of these happened to be by a CH-satirizing publication (the satire being satorized), the publisher did not know. When it came out, the paper *apologised* for publishing an “anti-semitic” image. (So: the image of a satirised Charlie Hebdo had to be withdrawn & excused).
Maybe in a followup letter ask a question about “free speech” and the seldom-examined claim of Western governments to represent “the free world”. This equation of Western society with free society, as if rights and freedoms were from the outset extended to everyone (and not, say, hard and temporarily won through decades of class struggle from below) by the brilliant, compassionate, Great Founding Fathers, is a key plank in imperial propaganda, especially Cold War propaganda (which, contrary to popular belief, did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union) . Imperial policymakers, the global arsonists and pirates, molest and rob and pillage the world, and turn around and preach about human freedom and democracy and demand everyone to be submissive, deferential and grateful, for they insist they are keeping us safe from the totalitarians. The truth is, they are the totalitarians and barbarians. We must challenge the orthodoxies and ideologies that sustain them.
Teju Cole is a sanctimonious twat. He reminds me of a petulant actor who is throwing a tantrum because his favourite movies weren’t nominated for an Oscar.
Why would any person who believes themselves informed make judgements on Charlie Hebdo if they do not know what they are talking about. Every informed person in France knows Charlie Hebdo and knows of their agressive intellectualism. France has a history of religion involving itself with politics and government and some of those who object might have heard of Voltaire and others who moved to counter this arch-conservative control. Some in America might be enough informed to understand that the writers of the American Constitution had clearly intended that no religious authority be permitted in the activities of government. Some in America pretend that their country, with the largest church attendance of any advanced democracy, is free of influence from Christian conservatives. America could use a Charlie Hebdo because there are many things “intellectuals” fear to discuss and there is no similar American forum for revolutionary thought. The prissy, brainless, conformist wimps who can’t deal with real intellectual freedom and argue with PEN are actually not at all rare in America. You can see those “establishment” brains on Sunday TV. What I did not expect was to see The Intercept among their company.
Was the point of the Teju Cole note to show that many many “writers” are thin skinned, but well-versed, and can’t stand it when their BFFs don’t win “their” awards?
The obfuscation and pretzel-twisting those who refuse the invitation have to engage in is dazzling. If only that passion and effort went into actually defending free speech and standing with those who died to defend it. I think I’ll call this “parsing ourselves to death.”
Thank you, Minion, for your (usual) voice of moral clarity.
And behold, Minion, that this judgemental compliment is coming from Mona. Mona otherwise replies with an “Of for fucking fuck’s sake”. That’s your friend.
On the questions from the Intercept, the first should say “withdrawn,” not “withdrew.” The fifth is loaded (To ask it is to answer it.) and wouldn’t conceivably garner an informative response — you might consider withdrawing it.
I would suggest to americans do not to try to understand the particularity of Charlie Hebdo. Charb, the killed chief editor would be horrified to know that his paper has been distinguished by an american authors association. Charb hated honors, prices, medals or any recognitions coming from whatever establish associations.
Charlie Hebdo is a journal with an old french tradition of anarchism, atheism and republican secularism. They are not racist at all as some PEN members seems to think. Far from being racist, That’s why they have never ridicule any human being, what ever his believe was. But they do frequelty ridicule any religion, judaism, islam, catholicism, but did never make fun about somebody being jews, christian or muslim. That’s a bis difference obviously some writers members of PEN did not understood.
Religions would not exist if they could not indoctrinate a child with the help of his parents. I am sure, that one day, in civilized nation, a child initiation of a religious belief will be stricktly forbidden in order to protect the child integrity. Charlie’s journalist did, for instance, and I agree with that, militate for such laws. I can imagine what such statement would trigger among american believers.
And Charlie Hebdo would, of course ridicule such reactions.
Yes, exactly. The French values and traditions Charlie Hebdo is steeped in are among that nation’s — and the West’s — more noble qualities. Their secularism, of course, can become illiberal in itself, resulting in some absurd laws such as what garb can be worn in public, but their intellectual history attacking the forces of religious superstition, thought control and execution for blasphemy and heresy — this tradition is one we should greatly esteem.
We should esteem Charlie Hebdo for courageously upholding these values and traditions in the face of many death threats and ultimate slaughter, notwithstanding that putrid specimens like David Frum (who works to maintain weed criminalization and has never seen a war on Muslims he doesn’t like) imagine that they too are on CH’s side.
The deepest irony is that France itself is no friend to free speech. Charlie Hebdo has tangled with the government over it’s “illegal” satire, and will likely do so again. That just for the moment CH is useful for the French government to rally around is, in my view, no reason not to support Charlie Hebdo for its actual purpose and the bloody price it has paid — regardless of the various nefarious forces who would coopt the events for their own malign reasons.
“they have never ridicule any human being”
That’s not true. Charlie Hebdo is in fact mainly a political satirical magazine that routinely ridicules and mocks French politicians and government leaders.