What If The Attacks Don't Stop? What Next?

The morning news says that Al Qaeda in Yemen is taking credit for the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, policemen and innocent bystanders in a kosher market.   Oh, yes, it also carries the great new that Charlie Hebdo is supplying more of the fuel for the fire.

I am pretty sure that Al Qaeda and its central purpose will benefit from being associated with the killing and further benefitted from the stupid, macho stance of the Western media, producing more of the raw material for the creation of this cycle.  The people who would join or support Al Qaeda will be quite willing to take what is being played in our media as courageous defiance in yesterday's issue of Charlie Hebdo for more of the intentional provocation that led to the violence last week.  The Islamists who are supposed to be those attacked by the stupid cartoons will be among the greatest beneficiaries of it.  So Charlie Hebdo's issue is a win for violent fundamentalism of that kind.

I have no doubt that the Front National of Marie LePen and other European fascist and neo-Nazi parties will, also, benefit.  So, big win for Liberté, Égalité, et Fraternité, non?   Sometimes I think Moniseur Arouet and his friends were a lot better at coming up with slogans than they were at thinking stuff through.  And we haven't learned much in the two centuries after he died.   That the sciency enlightened folk have learned nothing of the past century of witnessing the power of hate-talk to destroy freedom, not to mention scores of millions of lives has lessons about the pretenses of that intellectual platform, as well.    Actually, I suspect that most of the English speakers bloviating about the events of the past week have never heard of Marie LePen or the Front National and have no idea that their imaginary, liberal, secular Europe is seeing a pretty shocking and dangerous resurgence in fascism and Nazism, as they decry laws against hate speech in places which had the full benefit of allowing fascists and Nazis free speech in the early decades of the last century.

[Update:  I also hear in the news just now that threats and violence against Jewish institutions and individuals are up in Europe, as well.   So, well done, Charlie Hebdo!  You showed them.]

Yesterday morning on the BBC during one of those two-minute debates, a British "free press" advocate also decried "self-censorship" when the host pointed out that the editor of  the  Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which set off the cycle of violence over cartoons mocking Islam and Muhammad, said he was afraid to publish the most recent Charlie Hebdo cartoons.   Apparently being unwilling to irresponsibly provoke a violent response by publishing incredibly stupid, pointless cartoons is a vice.  And let's not self-censor on that matter, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons like every single other one I've seen in this series is stupid and pointless, saying  nothing about the historical figure, what he actually said or Islam in general.

It's odd that the spark that set this off isn't documented, scholarly critique,  but the stupidest level of ethnic and religious mockery, which would not be championed by anyone but neo-Nazis and the flakiest idiots in the "free speech" industry if those mocked were Jewish.  We know that because the hate speech against Jews published in countries where that is as acceptable as anti-Islamic hatred here isn't internationally championed by the "free speech" industry.

The angry condemnation against "self censorship" is one of the most telling stupidities of the pose of free speech absolutism because it is a total and complete denial of reality.   Everyone self-censors all the time, and no one self-censors like newspapers, magazines and other venues of the commercial press. The first and most widely spread form of self-censorship is called EDITING and the foremost reason that is done in the media is nothing higher than what will sell and what will inhibit sales.  Since the idiot I heard on the BBC was decrying someone else "self-censoring" because they didn't want to bring violence onto themselves, you wonder why she wasn't going out and drawing fire to herself by publishing that kind of offensive material, herself.  Only, I'm sure, she wouldn't want to be professionally associated with something as vulgar, pointless stupid or dangerous as the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Media is never not "self-censored" except in the make believe we are coerced into pretending is real.   No media is going to publish stuff that will kill off their product, or survive it it does.  So there is constant commercial self-censorship for financial reasons.  So, self-censorhip for that reason is OK, self-censorship as moral responsibility is immoral in this bizarre world view.

And among the free speech champions there are ideas that are subject to suppression by coercion.   In the idiocy of "free speech" theory as it has come to be practiced in the past century, anyone who brings up a wider consideration of the role hate speech plays in the oppression of other people is discouraged from saying it.  I have been encouraged and commanded, over and over again to shut up by the advocates of free speech and free press whenever I criticize the "free speech-free press" industry and their frequent sponsors, the porn-prostitution industry.

They're worried about some kind of "slippery slope" at the bottom of which the publication of seriously important speech would be banned.  Apparently they're worried that the human species is too stupid to distinguish between important speech in which difficult and truly important things must be said and the stupidest most absurd of intentional and unimportant offense which will incite violence.  Even when we know it will incite violence from past and recent experience and that the violence will enhance the status of those who are willing to mount a violent reaction to that offense.   Believe me, important speech isn't the winner when Al Qaeda's status and power have been enhanced through angering Muslims.   It isn't the winner when the sides in an ethnic dispute use free speech and free press to encourage one side to take up their machetes and slaughter the other side, as we saw in Rwanada, as the American administration rejected the plea to bomb the radio tower that was instructing the murderers in how to find their victims.  Free press, free speech was the reason given for that refusal.

Hate speech, the freedom to offend and provoke a violent response constitutes a slippery slope into a situation where freedom of important and responsible speech are the victim.  The pretense that we can't safely distinguish between the two is the grease that facilitates the slide down that slope.  And the professional self-interest of those in the free- hate speech, free- hate press industry is the motive of those who provide that.  When the results of what they advocate come, the worst part of our culture and societies are the greatest beneficiaries.  The people they victimize are victims of real violence, real discrimination.  It's only safe for the elite when those people can't hit back.   The great advocates of free speech, free press in the early United States were certainly not in favor of those for the people they held in slavery.   They wouldn't have tolerated speech that would have led them to escape their slavery and the  resulting loss of their privilege extracted from the labor of those slaves  if they enjoyed the most basic rights their enslavers pretended to advocate.  Our entire free-speech, free press discourse is dishonest because it suppresses a review of the complete reality of it.

So, I could go on and on but I'll leave it at this,

YOU IRRESPONSIBLE A-HOLE, CHARLIE HEBDO!