The original Trump surrogate

“Put Your Hands Up”

Quote of the day - The City without Jews

“A human wall encircled the beautiful, calm, and noble parliament building. The wall extended from the city’s university and went all the way up to the Bellaria. This one morning in June at 10 o’clock, it seemed that the whole of Vienna had gathered to witness a historical event of unprecedented magnitude…. And again and again, an excited one would step forward and address the audience around him; and again and again, the same call could be heard:

‘Out with the Jews!’

…Suddenly, the masses cried out with one voice:

‘Let’s cheer for Dr. Karl Schwertfeger: hip, hip, hooray! Long live the liberator of Austria!’

…‘You’ll immediately hear what will happen. Our chancellor Dr. Karl Schwertfeger will explain meticulously the “Deportation of all Non-Aryan People from Austria Act’…

…‘Ladies and Gentlemen! I am here to introduce an act and an amendment to the constitution which together will do nothing less than to enforce the deportation of the non-Aryan, Jewish population of Austria.

…Throughout my five years as party leader, the so called liberal press and the social democratic press alike, or, in other words, all the newspapers published by Jews have tried to make me look like some sort of boogeyman. They portrayed me as an angry anti-Semite and as a fanatic hater of Judaism and the Jews. Today, now that the power of the press has come to an irrevocable end, I feel the urge to declare that all of this talk is nonsense. Oh, yes, I’m brave enough today to stand here on this very platform and to declare that I’m a friend of the Jews rather than their enemy!

…Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I cherish the Jews. …I am prepared to admire the down-to-earth Jewish virtues, their extraordinary intelligence, their efforts to climb the social ladder, their exemplary sense of family, their internationality, and their ability to adapt to any milieu!

…Nonetheless, that’s exactly the reason why, with time, I came to believe that we, the non-Jews, can no longer live amongst and with the Jews. It’s either hook or crook. We have to either lose our Christian ways, our very essence, or renounce the Jews.

…They’ve taken control over our economy, our spiritual and our cultural life.

…And now that we hold the power in our hands, we’d be fools, no, our own enemies and the enemies of our children if we did not make use of this power and drive away the small minority that is destroying us. This has nothing to do with catchphrases and slogans such as “humanity,” “justice,” and “tolerance,” but with our mere existence, our very lives, and the lives of future generations!’

…And 10.000 throats answered from the street: ‘Out with the Jews!’

Dr. Schwertfeger let the excitement fade out, received handshakes from his fellow ministers, and then started talking about how the law would be implemented. One would proceed with utmost care and fairness and in accordance with the demands of humanity and the terms of the League of Nations….” - Hugo Bettauer, The City without Jews (1922)

The City without Jews is a satirical work describing the unforeseen consequences of the deportation of Jewish people from Austria. It’s not a great work of literature but it is a short, lively story with some darkly funny moments.* That it was written as political satire with no knowledge of what was to happen in Austria or to the author himself and the comedic treatment of the situation and the leading anti-Semites (allegedly based on real political figures) make it a difficult book to read. Its prescient details – the greeting “Heil!” gains popularity after the deportations, for example – leave a knot in your throat.

In an interesting coincidence, two of the characters who are government representatives are Secretary of the Treasury Trumm and Privy Councilor Tumpel, who argues shortly after the expulsion that “the Indogermanic naivety of our people ventures out again!”

In 1925, following open calls for his death in Austrian Nazi publications and the release of the Expressionist film based on the popular book, Bettauer was murdered by a young Nazi named Otto Rothstock. Pleading insanity, Rothstock was sent to a psychiatric institution, from which he was released within months.

* I’ve read some reviews suggesting that Bettauer at times falls into anti-Semitic stereotypes, but I believe they’re missing the point. As a satirist Bettauer – a Jewish man who converted to Evangelicalism in his late teens, possibly to try for a career in the Austrian military – was likely using and exaggerating these stereotypes for comedic and critical effect. This would seem to be confirmed by the stereotypes of Austrian Christians, who often state themselves that they have to expel the smart and adaptable Jews for whom, in their honest simplicity, they’re no match. Some of the funniest moments are in the descriptions of Vienna in the months and years after the Jews have been deported – style, glamour, and sophistication gone; the city giving way to “ruralization”; women wearing dirndl skirts (“which, indeed, look very nice when worn in the open country. Here, they looked like a bad joke or caricature”); cultural establishments turned into beer halls; businesses going to pot; and so on. I think what Bettauer is trying to do is to show how the anti-Semitic stereotypes implied a contrasting, and amusingly stereotypical, picture of non-Jewish Austrians.

Recommended: Wild Tales (2014)

I loved this film despite hating its underlying premise.



As the title suggests, and the opening credits make explicit, Wild Tales is based on the notion that we’re a heartbeat away from “regressing” to our animal nature. As expected, this nature is characterized by: violence, vengeance, irrationality, lust, the reflexive defense of kin and tribe, greed, and gluttony.

This sort of speciesism – which itself underlies a great deal of racism, sexism, and political repression - we can and should avoid, particularly in works that aspire to political satire or social criticism. Director Damián Szifrón has discussed the film’s theme:

Despite the clear common theme of violence and vengeance, what connects the accounts, according to the director, is ‘the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control’. This is explored through the concept that human beings have animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between human and animals is the capacity one has to restrain oneself as opposed to animals who are guided by their instincts. Humans ‘have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode’. It deals with ‘daily life’ aspects and ‘is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails’. The main issue, according to Szifron, ‘is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice’. (my emphasis)

The Freudian distinction between a repressed “civilization” and a “barbarous” freedom, in addition to isolating the human characters with their alleged instincts and drives, presents an obstacle to working out a real approach to political freedom and social justice. As I said, I loved the film, but it could have been a much stronger work of art, a stinging and biting social satire, had it questioned and challenged received wisdom about “civilization” and “barbarism,” “human” and “animal,” rather than reproducing it.

Recommended: Blame It on Fidel (2006)

Quotes of the day – Charb

“So long as the biggest jerk in the Taliban is unable to understand my art, I refuse to express myself – is that it?”

“Asserting that Islam is not compatible with humor is as absurd as claiming that Islam is not compatible with democracy or secular governance.”

“Forgive me, but the fact that racists may also be Islamophobic is essentially incidental. They are racists first, and merely use Islam to target their intended victim: the foreigner or person of foreign extraction. By taking only the racist’s Islamophobia into account, we minimize the danger of his [sic] racism.”

“While, unlike the existence of God, it is difficult to deny the existence of Marx, Lenin, or Georges Marchais, it is neither blasphemous, racist, nor communistophobic to cast doubt on the validity of their writings or their speech. In France, a religion is nothing more than a collection of texts, traditions, and customs that it is perfectly legitimate to criticize. Sticking a clown nose on Marx is no more offensive or scandalous than popping the same schnoz on Muhammad.”

“In protest against the decree of July 21, 2010, which outlawed the desecration of the French flag, and against the law of March 18, 2003, which outlawed any public affront to the national anthem or the tricolor flag, in January 2011 Charlie Hebdo called on the citizenry to rise up against censorship. We asked them to ridicule, destroy, or soil the symbol of the Republic. This was an invitation not to destroy anyone’s property, but to demonstrate that a secular republic may not decide for its citizens which symbols are sacred and which are not.”

“[O]n February 18, 2014, François Hollande visited the Grand Mosque of Paris to inaugurate a memorial honoring Muslim soldiers who died for France from 1914 to 1918.

…

It’s perfectly natural for Muslim leaders to pay homage to Muslims killed in the First World War. But it’s absurd for a President of the Republic to pay homage to Muslims ‘who died for France’. These natives – colonized and enslaved who, for the most part, were rounded up and enlisted by force – did not die for France in their capacity as Muslims. They died in their capacity as low-cost cannon fodder. And if they did die for France, it wasn’t by choice. They died because of France; they died defending a country that had stolen their own. Hollande honored them as heroes, but they were, above all, victims. Before them, German bullets; behind them, French bayonets. Among the native colonial casualties of the Great War who are purported to have been Muslims, it would be astonishing to find even one who fought to defend the values of Islam.

…

Let the Republic raise a monument to the colonial peoples it led to slaughter rather than dream up Muslim fighters who died for France!”

-Stéphane Charbonnier, Charlie Hebdo editor murdered a year ago today, from Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression, completed days before the massacre

Comical glare of the day

Inconsistent

“Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

Historical quote of the day

“[S]uppose for a moment that we lived in a world where psychologists used women as the basis of comparison. We might then be reading articles and books that analyze the following problems that plague men:

• Men are more conceited than women.
• Men overvalue the work they do.
• Men are not as realistic and modest as women in assessing their abilities.
• Men are more likely than women to accuse and attack others when they are unhappy, instead of stating that they feel hurt and inviting sympathy.
• Men have more difficulty than women in forming and maintaining attachments.

Now the same ‘problems’ have to do with male overconfidence, unrealistic self-assessment, aggression, and isolation, not with women’s inadequacies. But you won’t find many popular books trying to help men like George Steinbrenner or Donald Trump, who, as far as I’m concerned, suffer from excessive self-esteem.”

- Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman (1992), p. 29

Indecent: my position on (the response to) Charlie Hebdo

“Tignous and his from now on inseparable comrades. Journalists, cartoonists, economist, psychoanalyst, proofreader, guards—they were the sentinels, the watchmen, the lookouts even, who kept watch over democracy to make sure it didn’t fall asleep. Constantly, relentlessly denouncing intolerance, discrimination, simplification. Uncompromising. Armed only with their intelligence, with their sharp eyes, with this art of making it possible to see. Armed with only their pencils. Inseparable. United in irreverence, in a gentle cruelty. They brought about the awakening of three generations. The awakening of the consciences of three generations. They taught us, sometimes without our knowing it, about the virtues of freedom of thought and speech. They nurtured our capacity for indignation. And they led us sometimes into the dizzy pleasure of forbidden laughter.

…And at the end of these horrible crimes, we can see that something was in the process of going lax in us. And this alarm reminds of our ambitions—which have been too long silent, too easily abandoned—for social justice, equality, education, and attention to others. We must find again that humanity and that uncompromising outlook that characterized Tignous.”

I’ve been asked to clarify my argument with regard to Charlie Hebdo and the various claims that have been made about the magazine since many of its staff were murdered by an Islamist death squad in January. I have never claimed, as this comment insinuates, that my views about various individual cartoons, whatever they may be, are the only decent ones. My argument all along has concerned the ethics of learning and speaking about the magazine.

See, for example,

• “A bad epistemic approach is anti-humanist, unwise, and unkind”

• “Guest post: The problem with ‘Je ne suis pas Charlie’”

What I’ve consistently found indecent is the approach so many have taken, one in which they were immediately prepared to believe the worst claims about Charlie Hebdo and to coldly repeat them. One in which people who knew nothing or virtually nothing (or less than nothing, having seen altered images and read false reports) about the publication set themselves up as implacable judges. One in which upon learning that the claims of intentional racism were false, people immediately shifted to accusations of negligent, callous, or irresponsible racism, propped up by clichés about intent not being magic, punching down, and splash damage.

I expected better. I expected that people would show a modicum of intellectual humility and responsibility, especially when they began to see indications that their early suspicions didn’t hold up on further inspection. First, because our community is supposed to be about humility, questioning, curiosity, evidence, and care in our claims-making. Second, because having been murdered the people they were discussing were no longer here to defend themselves. Third, because tossing out irresponsible claims about the willful or negligent racism of people who were just massacred for drawing cartoons and whose families and colleagues are grieving is disrespectful and cruel - not to mention hypocritical - and so the only decent way to proceed is to take great care in our public statements so as not to perpetuate falsehoods. (I think this is what we’d want for ourselves in similar circumstances.) Fourth, because isolating the victims and targets of Islamist hit men on the basis of an ignorantly-applied purity test endangers us all.

Certainly, the fact that Charlie Hebdo is and is well known in France to be a leftwing, anti-racist publication whose primary target is the racist, xenophobic Right, was information easily available to anyone who cared to look, and is relevant not only to understanding their intent but to understanding the likely reception of the images in context. If nothing else, I would have expected that fact to give people pause before they continued to comment on the subject. No one was being compelled to declare themselves Charlie. It makes sense for people who don’t feel they have enough information to step back before taking a position. But in that case the decent approach is to remain silent while you seek out more information, including the statements of the survivors and of the victims before their deaths, and listen to those who perhaps know more. It’s also to conscientiously retract previous public statements or insinuations that have turned out to be unsupported.

At the time the people of Charlie Hebdo were being isolated on the Left on the basis of some image-mined cartoons of which the self-appointed critics had little understanding, their funerals were ongoing. The person rendering the moving tribute at the funeral of Tignous quoted at the top of this post was Christiane Taubira, the French Justice Minister who now seems to be known on the English-speaking internet as “the black woman they drew as a monkey.”



I think we can all agree that her understanding of the image, its intent, context, and effects is probably greater than ours. But many of Charlie’s critics were either ignorant of or unconcerned with her views. Those who thought the publication of the images of Mohammed was racist or purely provocative in intent or consequence didn’t care to hear from those of us who knew better. Those who had claimed the magazine targeted Muslims weren’t generally provoked to correct themselves when this appeared. In fact, in general the self-appointed prosecutors went silent – not, as I’d hoped, in order to learn more so as to correct misconceptions, but evidently more for a lack of continuing interest.

Then came the controversy surrounding the PEN award. Shortly before the awards gala, several writers who were members of PEN wrote an open letter explaining their objection to the magazine’s receiving the award and announcing their intent to boycott the awards gala. They had clearly done little research since January to determine whether or not their beliefs about CH were correct. They refused to support their claims or to engage with those pointing out their ignorance. They evidently weren’t interested in the strong words of Dominique Sopo, head of the French anti-racist organization SOS Racisme, who attempted to set the record straight:



Translation:

We’ve reached an incredibly high level of stupidity and intellectual dishonesty.

This must stop. Charlie Hebdo is the greatest antiracist weekly magazine in this country. Every week in Charlie Hebdo, every week, half [of the magazine’s articles] is against racism, against antisemitism, against hatred towards Muslims… I mean, [some people didn’t like a caricature and said “Well, okay but…”] There is no “but”. Charlie Hebdo fought against all kinds of racisms. Cabu drew cartoons for us, he even made a book for us. Charb drew cartoons for us, they [the cartoonists] gave us drawings on a regular basis, every time we asked; we used those drawings as we wished. Wolinski did the same. [Take a look at the past and ask] every antiracist organisation, they’ll tell you [that] they [Charlie Hebdo] really were antiracist and obviously everyone knows it. And so, people who argue that “Ah, Charlie Hebdo, so full of hate…” Did you know that Charlie Hebdo petitioned to ask for Claude Guéant [then minister of the Interior] to resign right after his anti-Muslim words? For an islamophobic weekly magazine, honestly, that’s quite unusual. So actually, this must stop, okay? And these people who try to make you believe that Charlie Hebdo was a racist magazine, honestly, this is scandalous, they insult the memories and the fights of the ones we lost, most of whom we knew on a personal level, needless to say, and you have to stop insulting the living and the dead. Because when you insult, and when you spread an ideology full of hate, when you lash out at journalists like a pack, this is what happens. So this must stop, everyone is called to its personal responsibility.

The morning of the awards gala in New York there was a panel discussion on “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression.” I went, reported back, and posted the video of the event.* I was hoping that at least one or two of the more than 200 writers who had sanctimoniously denounced the magazine would accept the invitation to come and discuss the matter with Charlie Hebdo’s editor and film critic. But none did. Not a single one. I don’t think anything could have been a bigger insult to the dead and to the survivors at CH than this refusal even to talk with them. That was indecent.

They went ahead with the boycott. Dominique Sopo was among the speakers at the presentation of the award:

I think that for us tonight, in honoring Charlie Hebdo, we honor the magazine, we honor the talent and the courage of the people who work for it, and above all we honor their antiracist commitment which has been consistent throughout their existence. Charlie Hebdo in France is something that has stood for the antiracist voice in many kinds of combat, whether it be combat due to religious dogma, a rising up against anti-Semitism, against violence, against Jews, against the Roma people, against Arabs. Charlie Hebdo is always in the forefront of all of these battles. I speak both on behalf of my own organization, SOS Racisme, but also for all of the other organizations—we know this.

Fortunately, Biard and Thoret, accepting the award, received a standing ovation. And then, from the boycotters, silence. There was a bit of self-righteous muttering about how the protest had been necessary, but now it was over and can’t we all just move on? I was thrilled last week to see that one of those who’d signed the letter, Jennifer Cody Epstein, asked for her name to be removed, apologizing and acknowledging that she had failed to adequately inform herself before taking a public position. This was admirable, but so far she’s the only one. That’s indecent.

There are new books by Caroline Fourest, Charb (posthumously), and Luz. I’ve yet to read these last two, although I’ve read excerpts from Charb’s, but I have read Fourest’s, which was published earlier this week. It gives a good deal of background which would be useful to those trying to sort out their understanding of Charlie Hebdo. But again, I haven’t seen people who were so keen to interrogate CH going out of their way to engage with them.

And guess what? Both Fourest and Charb, as well as others I agree with in general, say several things with which I disagree. There are probably also many individual CH cartoons I’d find cringeworthy or offensive or “problematic” (not the ones I’ve seen shared around, but surely some). And I’ve never seen any representative of CH dismiss that reaction or treat it as invalid. In fact, even in the face of the most vicious attacks and unfair criticisms, they’ve been entirely decent.

As I said at the beginning of this post, my concern here isn’t about any specific content. My idea of what’s decent, as I’ve said all along, doesn’t necessarily concern any particular opinion, but the way in which opinions are reached, expressed, and revised. I think it’s decent, when people have just been massacred, to avoid rushing to judgment about them. To appreciate the limits of our knowledge, recognizing when we might not have the requisite information or skills to form a proper opinion. To hold off on making public suggestions about their motives, actions, or impact until we’ve learned more. To treat the question holistically instead of plucking a handful of superficially questionable images out of context. To approach the matter, not with a prosecutorial zeal, but with a high level of care that we not erroneously smear people (we could still in the end conclude that they’re intentional or negligent racists, but this is different from beginning with this presumption and then expecting to have to be convinced out of it).

To correct previous statements if they prove to have been exaggerated or mistaken, and to correct other people when they make those errors. To apologize if we’ve said something ignorant and potentially damaging. To seek out more information, especially from the people about whom we’re forming our views, and to take that information fully into account. To appreciate that our intentions are (ha – not magic!) irrelevant, no matter how good or well-meaning, if their application is based on misinformation and stubborn ignorance. To recognize that it doesn’t show a weaker commitment to social justice or give comfort to racists to admit that our initial judgments were mistaken in any particular instance.

To proceed otherwise is, yes, offensive and indecent.

* Incidentally, Voltaire’s play Fanaticism was mentioned there. I’ve now read it and have been writing about it: part 1, part 2.

True Finn, False Finn

Charlie Hebdo takes on the Finns Party.

(I wonder how long until the image is cropped out of context and claimed as further evidence of CH’s racism and xenophobia…)

Quote of the day

“A ceux qui n’aiment pas les blasphèmes, redisons que personne ne les oblige à les aimer. Ni à acheter Charlie Hebdo, ni à dessiner Mahomet, ni à aller voir des expositions ou des pièces de theater moquant Jésus. Mais qu’ils n’interdisent pas aux autres de penser librement et rejoignent clairement le camp de la liberté de conscience.

Qu’ils passent du « oui mais » au « mais oui ».

…

Que chacun en soit bien conscient. Le « oui mais » conduit à une société où le sacré redevient tabou, où les croyants sont privilégiés par rapport aux non-croyants, où les religions majoritaires passent avant les religions minoritaires, où l’intimidation et la violence ont gagné.

Le « mais oui » dessine un monde où l’on continue à se parler malgré nos disputes, où les croyants et les non-croyants sont à égalité, où toutes les religions s’expriment sans privilèges, où l’on peut rire de ce qui nous fait peur et donc tenir tête, ensemble, aux plus violents.

Il n’existe pas d’autre choix. Ce sera le courage ou la lâcheté. Ceux qui pense que la lâcheté permet d’éviter la guerre se trompent. La guerre a déjà commencé. Seul le courage peut ramener la paix.”

- Caroline Fourest, Eloge du blasphème: essai

Quote of the day

“As a writer whose work is largely predicated on diligent and careful research, I am reluctant to admit that in this case, I didn’t do enough of it before sending my name out into the Cloud. Unfortunately, though, that is the conclusion to which I’ve been forced to come, and I thought it best to acknowledge it publically and head-on rather than disingenuously pretending otherwise.”

- Jennifer Cody Epstein, removing her name from the PEN petition

Well done. May there be more to come.

I read Epstein’s letter at Ophelia’s blog moments after beginning Caroline Fourest’s new book on blasphemy (released today!). The beginning is about her experience of going to the Charlie Hebdo office in the immediate wake of the attack and learning of her murdered colleagues, and then finding hope in the solidarity of so many in France and elsewhere in the days that followed. Reading that section reignited my anger toward the PEN protesters, but Epstein’s letter has been a salve.

Self-unaware quotes of the day

“What was disillusioning about l'affair Charlie Hebdo was not basic misunderstandings -- which might have been eased through discussion—but immediate name-calling & denunciations; disrespect for a dissenting opinion, in the very name of ‘freedom’ of speech. Hard to comprehend.”

- Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter

“It’s hard...to reevaluate strongly held opinions and to publicly admit that your original opinions weren’t accurate.”

- Glenn Greenwald on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell praising those who’ve retracted their earlier ignorant attacks on Edward Snowden

Luz to leave Charlie Hebdo

Luz, the cartoonist who created the moving cover of Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the attack, will be leaving the magazine in September:

“Each issue is torture because the others are gone,” said Luz.

…“Spending sleepless nights summoning the dead, wondering what Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous would have done is exhausting,” he added.

He’s recently published a new work, Catharsis, which he calls a “therapeutic book,” about his experience of the murder of his friends and colleagues and its aftermath. This article about the book also refers to the dispute among the CH staff which I mentioned recently.

“Europeans hold no patent”: contesting colonialist myths about Charlie Hebdo

Two recent articles by Justin Smith related to the recent PEN-Charlie Hebdo controversy make arguments that go beyond the immediate issue and deserve to be highlighted. Smith tries to situate Charlie Hebdo in relation to the Enlightenment, and, more particularly, to some present-day narratives of the Enlightenment and its meaning for “Western civilization.” This is vitally important because these narratives have real cultural power - they perpetuate colonialist ideas and work to justify racism and violence.

“The Joke” situates Charlie Hebdo’s humor not in a “culturally advanced” Europe but in an ancient, global tradition:

The jihadists who murdered the cartoonists prefer the sort of death that is not tempered by freedom, and they do not get the joke for which their dumb violence is the punch line. Put differently, they do not understand the freedom that governed the lives of the murdered satirists, the freedom by which the satirists both lived and died. Few, in fact, in these literal and self-serious times, were able to understand it. Many insisted that Charlie Hebdo’s satire was a sign that the values of the Enlightenment had outlived their purpose, that those values had been duplicitously distorted to the great disadvantage of the world’s colonized and oppressed. This concern is valid enough, but it was no less valid in the eighteenth century. What this insistence misses is that humor, as a disposition to life, far precedes the Enlightenment, and that Europeans hold no patent on it. It is ancient, and universal, and it is the best thing we’ve got in a world in which we’re all going to die anyhow, a world in which so many malign fools prefer to spoil what little flare of freedom we may enjoy by killing in the name of dogmatic, doubt-fearing, dour, and deathly earnesty. Humor is freedom, and it must be defended — not with guns and bombs, no, but with more, more of the same. [emphasis added]

Smith’s piece “Charlie Hebdo and Literature” similarly seeks to complicate humor’s relationship to Europe, particularly by noting the hostility toward humor found in much of the European philosophical tradition:

European philosophy is embarrassed by humor, distances itself from it, and when Kant tries clumsily to engage with it, he shows how unprepared the philosophical tradition is to do so in a rigorous way. …[T]he invocation of ‘I think therefore I am’ at the Paris rallies after the attacks was misplaced;…if we want to make sense of Charlie Hebdo’s humor, we have to look to a very different domain of culture than philosophy, the one that…reaches back genealogically to Rabelais et al. and from there across the Mediterranean to a part of the world Europeans wrongly imagine as the total opposite and negation of their historical experience.¹

Both articles, then, attempt to contribute to developing a humanist understanding of humor that isn’t bigoted or nationalistic, a vision that challenges the colonialist imagination rather than nourishing it.

Seen through the colonialist lens, the values represented by Charlie Hebdo, or at least by “Je suis Charlie,” are the higher, Western values of thought, questioning, and democratic freedom - values threatened by the backwards, oriental forces of irrationality, unfreedom, and oppression represented by the jihadists. Within this framework, Western culture is more evolved, more “human” than that of the Muslim world. (I’ll discuss this colonial vision in more detail in one of my next few posts.)

With Charlie Hebdo claimed as a symbol of French or European or Western expression and freedom, the attack set in a global narrative of uneven cultural and political development, the magazine’s “vulgar” drawings themselves, along with its mission of contesting power (including colonialist myths), are marginalized and defanged. The mind-body hierarchy underlying the colonialist vision – given form in the placards quoting the cruelly speciesist Descartes – further serves to sanitize the publication. Once the magazine is falsely assimilated into this tale of Western enlightenment, once its defense is presented as a defense of the civilized mind against animalistic savagery, its bodily humor and its emphasis on Western political violence are rendered invisible.

The PEN protesters are thoroughly, embarrassingly wrong about Charlie Hebdo. But they aren’t wrong to recognize that the magazine and the murders have been claimed by and for a reactionary mythology, exploited by those seeking to advance racist, authoritarian projects. (Not that they’re the first or only ones to have recognized this, or that anyone should be surprised by it.) But our response to this shouldn’t be to credulously accept those claims about the magazine,² much less to create or accept counter-myths that are merely the mirror image of colonialist narratives.

We need to resist the attempts to draft these artists and writers, against everything they stood and continue to stand for, into a racist, colonialist campaign, and to challenge the colonialist narratives at their very foundation. Locating Charlie Hebdo’s humor in a longer and more diverse cultural history and drawing attention to all of the opponents of this free, biophilic sensibility is a necessary part of this effort.

¹ I’m reminded here of Camus’ 1937 “Indigenous Culture: The New Mediterranean Culture” (available in Algerian Chronicles) in which he supports a “nationalism of sunshine” and argues that

Our task here and now is to rehabilitate the Mediterranean, to reclaim it from those who have unjustly appropriated it, and lay the groundwork for a new economic order. It is to discover what is real and alive in Mediterranean culture and therefore to encourage its most diverse forms. …Cities like Algiers and Barcelona have a crucial role to play, namely, to serve in their own small way those aspects of Mediterranean culture that sustain man rather than oppress him.

² This mythical civilization-vs.-barbarism story of the attack and its meaning hasn’t been promoted by CH itself. From what I’ve seen, they’ve always opposed such bogus narratives.

Video of Tuesday’s “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression” forum

The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, which hosted the forum, has already made the video available. It’s about an hour and twenty minutes long. If you prefer to read a summary of the discussion (with a bit of commentary), mine is here.

With all the vanity of good souls

The new issue of Charlie Hebdo responds to the PEN boycotters:

Inside, a centerfold package of articles and cartoons addresses the PEN controversy.

In an opinion column written in a serious tone in contrast to the comic cartoons surrounding it, Philippe Lançon, a journalist shot in the face in the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices by Muslim extremists in January that left 12 dead, expresses his surprise at the PEN dissenters. He writes that he understands that some writers might want to distance themselves from PEN, and that the magazine itself mistrusts such institutions, “so as not to become one itself — one of those places where it’s indispensable to show how bien-pensant you are in order to get ahead and believe you’re loved.”

“It’s not their abstention that shocks me; it’s the nature of their arguments,” Mr. Lançon continues. “That novelists of such quality — Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi — come to say so many misinformed stupidities in so few words, with all the vanity of good souls, is what saddens the reader in me.”

“Blasphemy is just debate”: a report from yesterday’s PEN forum on “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression”

Before I cover the content of the discussion – which was lively and insightful – I want to note that my hopes weren’t fulfilled: none of the group who chose to boycott and protest PEN’s award to Charlie Hebdo accepted PEN’s invitation to take part in the panel discussion.

Now, I wouldn’t automatically attribute this to cowardice – I can think of a number of reasons people wouldn’t want to participate in public debates (though I expect that among the more than 200 protesters one or two debaters could have been found). But before making the introductions, the moderator read aloud a short joint statement from the protesters, attempting to justify their refusal on the grounds that the forum should be for people to get to learn about Charlie Hebdo and what they do. So declining the invitation to participate does seem to stem from cowardice of some sort (…possibly indicating a budding realization that their claims about CH were ignorant?), rooted either in the fear of having to try to defend their smears in person to CH staff members and those knowledgeable about the magazine or in the fear of discovering that they were very publicly and embarrassingly wrong in the first place. It’s also just…strange. Last night’s gala afforded them only the option of protesting symbolically by boycotting or refusing to applaud the award; but the forum would have provided the opportunity to share and exchange views. Why would professional communicators choose the former? (While I was disappointed by this choice, I continue to hope that at least some of them, after some reflection and research, will come forward and acknowledge that they had misunderstood and mischaracterized the magazine.)

In any case, their refusal was unfortunate, since it was the protesters who most needed to learn about and understand Charlie Hebdo. It was also ironic in that, as I’ll discuss below, one of the major themes of the discussion was that at the very heart of their work is a desire to provoke public debate. The protesters’ refusal to engage in discussion and debate with those they oppose wasn’t just disrespectful to the murdered and surviving staff of the magazine – and it was that – but also contrary to a basic principle of free expression. Defending free expression can’t just be about defending people’s right to express themselves, but has also to involve calling for their voices to be heard and engaged with, for people to listen to what they’re saying, to take their ideas seriously.

So…on to the discussion. The participants were the moderator; PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel; director of the NYU Institute of French Studies Ed Berenson, who provided an introduction locating CH in the historical tradition of French satire; Charlie Hebdo’s editor Gérard Biard; and CH film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret. I’ll talk about a few of the major themes.

Understanding Charlie Hebdo

The values promoted by CH shouldn’t have to be emphasized, but in view of the baseless attacks from some PEN members and others, it was useful to reiterate them. The discussants spoke about CH’s commitment from the start to fighting racism and all forms of discrimination – against not just racial and ethnic minorities but women, LGBT people, immigrants, and poor people.

They underlined that their emphasis was on politics and power, and that their principle targets had long been the French Right, and especially the far-Right Front National. Part of a long satirical tradition, they seek to attack political power – institutions, representatives, icons. Religious institutions, representatives, and icons are only a small subset of the “sacred” phenomena they attack - these also include political parties, nations, and so on. They’re about defying and contesting power in any form.

The discussion returned again and again to their mission to provoke thought and debate. The people who murdered their colleagues and commit other such crimes, they argued, don’t want debate. (They pointed out that the recent attack in Copenhagen actually targeted a debate.) For all they know, they could be murdering those who agree with them – what’s important is shutting down any discussion or debate. Their project isn’t a religious but a political one: to impose their views on others and silence dissenters. In contrast, the CH staff see their work – including blasphemous cartoons – as intended to contest power and open debate.

On differences between the US and France concerning free expression and criticism of religion

The conversation covered important differences between US and French law and culture, specifically between secularism as practiced in the US and laïcité in France and between US and French laws surrounding freedom of expression. Critics of the magazine in the US often seem to ignore the difference between US secularism (or “secularism”) and French laïcité. Laïcité as they described goes beyond the separation of church and state – it understands the public sphere and political discourse as a common space in which religion has no role or status, and outside of which religion (for some) is practiced, and respected, privately. In this context, religion is seen as intruding on the public sphere and publicly mocking religious iconography and practices as political targets is acceptable. This can be difficult to understand here in the US because our system is so different in theory and in practice. The US system wasn’t really discussed at the forum, but as I’ve argued many times it’s based on a bogus sort of compromise in which institutionalized religion is (in theory) kept separate from the state, but religious claims and identities suffuse political discourse and public policy, all while people are expected to refrain from criticizing or mocking religion because it’s an allegedly personal and emotional matter. Whatever the problems with laïcité in practice (and Berenson hinted at some, although unfortunately there wasn’t time to return to them), the US system with its tradition and practice of deference to “personal” religion even as religion colonizes public life is ridiculous and anti-democratic.

In any event, people from outside France should seek to understand their system before pontificating about what is or isn’t within the bounds of acceptable discourse there. I think this also helps to understand the perspective of CH a bit better. They see religion in highly personal and private terms. It only comes to be of interest to them, and a target for their critique, when it improperly invades the democratic public sphere and makes political claims to status and power. So their attacks aren’t on individual believers or their dignity but on religion as a political force. They see believers not as representatives of, or represented by, a religion but as equal participants in a shared democratic sphere.¹

Another significant difference discussed is that, while the US has few legal prohibitions on speech, France has speech laws prohibiting, for example, inciting racial or religious hatred, denying the Holocaust, or trivializing the slave trade (I had been unaware of this last one). The panelists differed about some aspects of these laws. Berenson was strongly opposed to all of these prohibitions. Biard disagreed, arguing that there was a meaningful difference between satirizing religion and denying historical facts. Thoret talked about some of the unintended consequences of such laws in this age of social media. Banning language and images from the public sphere and institutional channels, he said, can drive them underground, in a sort of “return of the repressed,” especially into social media where they’re most often seen by the young. The anti-Semite Dieudonné, for example, was removed from French television, and quickly discovered the immensely greater reach of YouTube. Thoret contended that the ideas have to be fought in the public space.

On self-censorship

The problem of self-censorship was raised in two contexts. First, in relation to media outlets and their decisions about whether or not to publish the CH cover cartoon from after the attack or other controversial images from the magazine. All were in agreement, I think, that they believed the media should have shown the images – not without context, of course, but accompanied by relevant contextual information – as a newsworthy subject, as an opening to discussion and debate, and as a demonstration of commitment to the value of free expression.

Once again, they refused to accept the designation of “special” defenders of free expression and other important values, arguing that everyone can and should actively defend them. Biard discussed how the magazine’s original decision in 2007 to publish the Danish cartoons (which they presented thoughtfully, accompanied by commentary) was taken in response to the firing of the editor of another French paper who had published them. It was an act of solidarity when other publications had chosen self-censorship. It’s sad to imagine how things might have turned out had more than one other publication joined them at the time…

Self-censorship was also talked about in relation to individuals. Panelists were concerned about the threats and violence, and the lack of solidarity, leading writers and artists to self-censor. While they made it plain that the attack and public responses haven’t led them to change anything about their approach, they worried about self-censorship creeping in. It’s an especially pernicious sort of censorship since people aren’t always fully conscious of the fact that they’re doing it.

On reading images

Another theme was the question of the different nature of, and complexities in interpreting, verbal vs. visual commentary, words vs. images. Biard and Thoret spoke passionately about the general problem of “illiteracy” (as Caroline Fourest put it in a recent interview) with regard to images, an illiteracy not limited to cartoons or humorous or satirical images but extending to all visual representations. Biard talked about how children are surrounded with images from the time they’re born – on television, in advertising,… - without knowing how to go about interpreting them, and how they’re never really taught how to read them. Thoret, who teaches about film, noted that he’s found his film students often lack the skills to critically analyze images. Both called for public attention to this problem (which has enormous political reach given the use of images by the powerful) and education in reading and interpreting visual representations.

They also alluded to a number of problems with their critics’ attempts to interpret images pulled from their immediate and larger (linguistic, cultural, political, historical) context. Part of the problem, of course, is a basic lack of skill in reading images themselves and of awareness that this skill is lacking or needed. But the difficulties of reading decontextualized images from other cultures, which should be obvious, have been all but ignored, even denied, by the PEN protesters, who’ve arrogantly insisted that not only can they definitively interpret the decontextualized images but that they can speak for people in the French political context.

The moderator asked an important question about the globalization of culture and the issues that can arise when images are seen or used outside of their original context. Biard acknowledged that this was increasingly the case, but cautioned against responses to this phenomenon that would put all of the burden on creators to preemptively address all possible misinterpretations (which would be impossible in any case). He argued that an artist envisioning and trying to guard against all of the ways their work could be misread, intentionally or unintentionally, or cause anyone offense, wouldn’t be able to produce anything. I think this returns us to the question of literacy in interpreting images and the complexities involved with trying to read them across different contexts. Of course creative people have a responsibility to minimize the possibility of misreading and misrepresentation of their work (and I’ve discussed examples of CH staff demonstrating this responsibility), but all of us need to be aware of these problems and, most important, to use caution and humility in interpreting or discussing unfamiliar images.

They also pointed out that CH isn’t just a publication of cartoons. The images appear in the context of words and articles, and are as much a subject of editorial discussion and debate as the written pieces they accompany. Critics, however, tend to treat them as though they’re freestanding, and worse, to focus only on the cover images rather than those within the stories themselves. Moreover, people aren’t, they emphasized, forced to buy or read Charlie Hebdo. Thoret described his dislike of soccer and wish to avoid all things soccer.² But he’s not compelled to buy soccer magazines any more than people are compelled to buy CH. This wasn’t of course an argument that consumption decisions should trump democratic debate. But it was worthwhile to note, because reading some of the articles attacking CH you’d almost be led to believe this small satirical publication had the power to demand that it be read by every person in France.

On “Je suis Charlie”

They also talked about their response to the support for the magazine following the massacre, particularly from some of the institutions they’ve targeted most viciously.³ They stated that they’ve never been naïve – they’ve always known many of these expressions of support were ersatz and politically self-serving and would evaporate in a matter of months or even days. The film critic Thoret, in keeping with their emphasis on dissension and debate, also expressed his discomfort with the idea of a globally shared opinion, which reminded him of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I think the most poignant remarks concerned their response to the “Je suis Charlie” supporters whose support was and is genuine. Naturally rejecting iconic status, with all of the anti-democratic bad faith it entails, and insisting that they’re not the “owners” of the universal values they defend and champion, they called for those who shared their values not to leave it to them but to take action themselves:

OK, you’re Charlie. So take a pencil, take a pen. Stand up for these values…. ‘Je suis Charlie’. OK, so do it.

Thoret said that he dislikes that they have been singled out as especially courageous, arguing that many if not most people can and do also show courage in these situations.

On the history of French satire

I’m going to close where the discussion opened. Ed Berenson opened the discussion by situating Charlie Hebdo in the bawdy, irreverent, anti-clerical tradition of French political-religious satire dedicated to skewering all claimants to power. (These two articles, which I plan to discuss in an upcoming post, go beyond France to fit their work in an older, global tradition.)

One aspect of this history discussed by Berenson that I’d forgotten or somehow never knew was that Voltaire wrote a play in 1741 called Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet. I impatiently await delivery of the 2013 translation.

Some last thoughts

I was already favorably predisposed toward Charlie Hebdo going into the forum, but I was impressed by Biard and Thoret especially given the stupidity of the protest here; Biard’s opening line - “We don’t eat children, and we don’t eat believers” – was funny, but shouldn’t have been. It’s terrible to be ignorantly accused of being the opposite of what you actually are, and I thought they handled it remarkably well. They seemed deeply committed to challenging power in any and every guise and to provoking thought and debate, and talked about their continuing hope that the current controversy helps to bring about more debate. This made the protesters’ blanket refusal to join the panel all the more aggravating and embarrassing.

And one last note. Almost every piece I’ve read, not only the attacks on Charlie Hebdo but the defenses too, includes some line or other about how the author dislikes and won’t attempt to defend the cartoons. They’re puerile, juvenile, unsubtle, unintelligent, ugly, and just “not funny.” I’ve never been a fan of cartoons, including those meant as political satire, but I’ve now seen numerous images from CH and I like them. I’m sure there are many I wouldn’t care for, but overall, yes, I find them interesting, thought-provoking, not exceptionally ugly, and often funny.

¹ I’ll note that their views are less extreme than my own on this subject. While of course I share their concern about religion as an explicitly political force, I also have a problem with “private” belief and the epistemic practices associated with faith. I think faith, even when ostensibly private, always has political consequences.

² He mentioned one player’s name, and then expressed his annoyance that he even knew it, since it was occupying space in his brain that could be used to much better purpose. I know that annoyance very well.

³ They laughed about the ringing of the bells at Notre Dame in their honor, but correctly pointed out in response to a comment from the moderator that ultimately the Pope did not speak in support of them.

204 denigrators and disassociaters; 0 discussers and debaters

The number of PEN members who’ve signed on to a letter publicly disassociating themselves from the organization’s decision to award Charlie Hebdo for courage in defending free expression now stands at 204. I’ve been checking the page for Tuesday’s PEN forum “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression,” and have seen no updates about additions to the panel. Of course, it could be that the site just hasn’t been updated, but I assume this would be a significant enough development that it would be announced. I’m also sure that of the 204 signers, at least a few must be in New York, a short subway ride from the event.

I do continue to hope that a couple of the anti-Charlie crowd agree to join the panel, for a few reasons. First, I think that the best way to address their concerns is to give them a public airing in such a forum. Second, it seems to me that if you’re going to sign a statement declaring others undeserving of an award for courage, you should at least be willing to try to make your case in their presence. Third, I’ll be at the forum, which isn’t just a short subway ride for me, and I selfishly expect it will make the event far more lively and productive.