Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

aggressive microhorse this cause

What do people make of the recent hebdo cartoon?

Well, I know I can't say "someone should shoot them again", but maybe a bit of a kicking?

i've read ppl say it is a mockery of ppl who believe that immigration should be limited bc of the actions of a few individuals, and i've read ppl say it is raising the important question of whether emotional appeals to humanitarianism can override rational policy. that it can be read either way is probably a pt in its favor - unless yr complaint is specifically about how tactless + vulgar it is to use an image of a dead child to make any kind of argument but hebdo is all about being tasteless right?

the defense that I've heard from ppl is that it's satirizing the hypocrisy of the tabloids and right-wing media IE they publish tear-jerking stories about the tragedy of Alan Kurdi's death, but had he lived to adulthood they would have demonised him like all other refugees? I don't really know enough about the context to tell if this is more than special pleading, or if that would be enough to make it 'acceptable' if that was the intent

For me (no expert) it feels like these defenses/readings are legit until ... you start to ask questions about responsibility when putting out images in public ... by analogy, there's an old prejudice that casts gay men as paedophiles ... if I put out a cartoon that I know millions will see and circulate depicting a gay man as a paedophile, when 'gay = paedophile' is the obvious reading, is it still reasonable for me to say 'But it's attacking the prejudice'

And I'll be honest: I hadn't got round to thinking of the readings Mordy and soref present (i.e. both are news to me) because I couldn't get past the 'fuck this, taking piss out of dead kid' reaction stage ... wonder how average my reaction there was, am I 'soft' etc

Wee bit soft.

hebdo is definitely not careful about ppl's sensitivity and they often use replications of bigoted ideas as satire. in the end the image of Aylan Kurdi is both an image of an actual human being who actually died, and also [and really moreso] an image that has a certain amount of social meaning beyond [tho inextricably tied to] the real human. to not be allowed to comment on the latter before of the former would be a kind of self-censorship. is there a way they could've interrogated these issues (the media's relationship to the refugees, the current situation in europe, the syrian crisis, the use of emotionally potent humanitarian arguments to forward policy, etc) without possibly exploiting the image of a dead child? yes, certainly. but hasn't that image already been exploited and isn't that part of the point they were trying to make here? i think so.

because* of the former, i meant to write

im always just grossed out by their love of gleeful racial caricatures - arab, jew, black - whatever the satirical motivation.

someone better versed in the history of underground comix could probably speak better to this than me but it seems like they're coming out of the r. crumb tradition in many ways? i don't read hebdo regularly but my [probably] favorite living cartoonist works for them so i do feel affection for their existence even if not everything they publish is my cup of tea.

xp. well how gleeful they are about employing them rather.

also yes, the use of the boy doesn't sit very well with me, his aunt who lives in the metro area here (Vancouver) has been quoted in the press saying that it disgusted and upset her.

http://i.imgur.com/oz3RVYz.png

Feel like the context for Crumb and Hebdo are different in relevant ways

i dunno, I also find crumb really horrendous at times, and he's not even always being satirical when doing so

Like Crumb was publishing 'comix' which I understand to have been under-the-counter products whereas the CH stuff is closer to (though not quite the same as) the classic, acceptable 'newspaper cartoon'

This article from India cropped up which I think is fairly agreeable, also gives an interesting perspective -

https://sabrangindia.in/article/racism-not-anti-racist-%E2%80%98satire%E2%80%99

my impression of CH is that it was pretty underground w/ a v limited audience that gained an expanded readership after the attack on their offices, but i might be misinformed - maybe euler knows?

I don't know, tbh I'd not heard of it before the attacks. but I only moved full time to France a couple years ago. I think it's lower profile than Le canard enchaine, another satirical newspaper that I see people reading all the time, whereas I've never noticed anyone reading CH.

Regarding the assertion that the cartoon was satirising attitudes, the picture was apparantly printed under a banner which said "France isn't what people say" which might give that claim more credibility. Most reproductions of the cartoon I saw online failed to provide that context however.
https://twitter.com/ystriya/status/687415698008764421

i found the interview really amusing but i'm not sure what it has to do w free speech + creepy liberalism?

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 5:18 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

her suggestion that men stop writing for a while rang with something we discussed i think back in the genesis of this thread, the discussion about "if you really believed men's voices were overrepresented then as a man you wouldn't write anything"

oh yeah. well i still agree with that. if your primarily consideration vis-a-vis yr writing is whether yr gender is being appropriately represented or not than probably you don't have v much to say anyway. that can be read as snark but it's also that writing probably should function as a "calling" (it certainly pays like one) and if you feel a little enough compulsion to write that you're musing about yr role in perpetuating the writing gender hegemony, you probably don't need to be.

And it isn't going to stop another ten men from writing, thus preserving the hegemony

I do try to keep my mind bashed/pinned open when reading things people different to me have written - different gender, different race, location, etc. I take on board the 'there are things you probably don't know much about so let's be careful with these conclusions of yours' idea in a way I didn't a few years ago. I like to think if I was an editor or publisher I'd apply that

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/21/oberlins-president-refuses-negotiate-student-list-demands

Marvin Krislov, the president, said that while some of the demands "resonate with me and many members of our community, including our trustees," he would not respond directly to the proposals from black students, which were termed non-negotiable.

"[ S ]ome of the solutions it proposes are deeply troubling," Krislov wrote in a response posted on Oberlin's website. "I will not respond directly to any document that explicitly rejects the notion of collaborative engagement. Many of its demands contravene principles of shared governance. And it contains personal attacks on a number of faculty and staff members who are dedicated and valued members of this community."

re demands linked to above ~ december

this one belongs in a rolling academia and its discontents thread:
https://anthrodialogue.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/bds-and-the-rise-of-post-factual-anthropology/

pretty sure this goes here:

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/12/22/yes-virginia-there-is-a-left-wing-reform-movement/?fb_ref=Default

I can dig that

Nah, it's rubbish. No mention of #BlackLivesMatters beyond criticizing: 'claiming that you can fight capitalism and the state with hashtags', as if hashtags wasn't a way to make communication and outreach easier, exactly the things he calls for. It's fighting a straw man.

Maybe he wasn't talking about BLM there - maybe he doesn't equate the movement with the hashtag, as you apparently do. From a different FDB piece that I liked a lot: We celebrate grassroots activist movements like Black Lives Matter, but we insult them by treating them as the same thing as hashtag campaigns, and we don’t build a broader left-wing political movement that could increase their likelihood of success. http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/05/13/maybe-time-for-change/

Ok. Well, then he doesn't mention BLM at all, which is weird as well. Still strawmanning.

seems like he's mainly talking about academic leftism. BLM is something broader than that and didn't begin on campus afaict

Yes. He is talking about academic leftism. That is the straw man. He is dismissing identity leftism, as a thing found in the academia, but doesn't mention the biggest activist movement of these last few years. That hurts his criticism.

It's a strawman because there are no leftists who embody the qualities he's criticizing? Because all purveyors of "identity politics" are also grassroots activists affiliated with BLM?

he probably didn't bring BLM up so as not to appear to be criticizing it or tying it explicitly to #cancelcolbert or whatever

A White Off is a peculiar 21st-century phenomenon where white progressives try to prove that the other white progressives they’re arguing with are The Real Whites. It’s a contest in shamelessness: who can be more brazen in reducing race to a pure argumentative cudgel? Who feels less guilt about using the fight against racism as a way to elevate oneself in a social hierarchy? Which white person will be the first to pull out “white” as a pejorative in a way that demonstrates the toothlessness of the concept? Within progressivism today, there is an absolute lack of shame or self-criticism about reducing racial discourse to a matter of straightforward personal branding and social signaling.

this has obv never happened anywhere ever

Which white person will be the first to pull out “white” as a pejorative in a way that demonstrates the toothlessness of the concept?

The answer to this question is always Whiney, btw.

he probably didn't bring BLM up so as not to appear to be criticizing it or tying it explicitly to #cancelcolbert or whatever

― Blowout Coombes (President Keyes), 27. januar 2016 16:31 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That is completely ridiculous. He seems more to criticize it by attacking all non-class based leftism. He probably didn't bring up BLM because it absolutely destroys his argument about the bad things in identity leftism.

He "seems more to criticize it" by failing to confuse it with the phenomenon he's criticizing?

i agree freddie does downplay, to the detriment of his argument, the overwhelmingly positive effect the rise of BLM has had on the left and discourse as a whole, even despite some missteps and questionable tactics. i would make the argument though that it is possible for reasonable people to disagree in good faith about the extent to which revolution needs to be race-focused, something i think many on certain parts of the left do not grant

I agree, I'd just also consider including Fredrik de B in that group.

The group of reasonable people who disagree in good faith?

Nah. I think by denying the best argument for the revolution being race-focused, he is not arguing in good faith.

Then you didn't really agree with or understand the post you were responding to, but whatever. He only "denies" BLM by not lumping it in with the performative, non-substantive tendency he's criticizing in that post. I would say the third paragraph here is more like an endorsement of BLM as an actual movement, but I suspect you'll stop reading once you notice it comes after "anti-capitalist" and doesn't namecheck BLM: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/12/29/left-materialism-for-2016/

The idea that Marxists have to ignore racism or sexism for fear of being 'identity politicians' is nonsense. It's part of the same mythology that claims anything short of revolution it counter-revolutionary, which is contrary to how Marx approached politics.

boxall, do you really need the snarky remarks? You're hardly a shining example of good-faith-arguing right now.

I disagree with this central part of his argument: 'I’m part of a small but growing collection of people who feel that the left has lost its way, and that it must be steered back to its traditional roots: in materialism, in class solidarity as the basis of political organizing, in recognizing that racism and sexism can only be meaningfully addressed through structural economic change, in privileging the material over the symbolic or the linguistic, and in defining our purpose as building a mass movement — and thus necessarily reaching out and convincing those who are not already convinced.'

I don't think that racism and sexism can only be meaningfully dressed through structural economic change, I would argue a lot of countries that has gone through structural economic change has ended up no less racist, I live in a country with a welfare state the envy of a lot of the American left, right now making headlines for our racist behavior. Ta-nehisi Coates writes convincingly that the fundament of racism remains violence against black bodies, and I don't think the word 'materialist' is good enough to cover that. And if you're arguing in good faith against student leftism, I don't think it proper to dismiss trigger warnings as 'the symbolic or the linguistic', when it is in fact meant as a way to deal with trauma, a way to break the link between the bodily attacks heaped upon women and minorities and the school curriculum, intentional or not a way to keep college more white and male, with huge materialistic implications. We can agree or disagree on that argument, in good faith, but to dismiss it the way Fredrik the Boer does is wrong.

A school curriculum can't make a bodily attack on anyone, which is why calling e.g. trigger warnings a "symbolic" or "linguistic" approach to the problem of violence against women or POC is just an accurate descriptive statement, not a dismissal. If college is too white and male (latter not really as true as the former in the US, I don't think), a wider or warmer embrace of trigger warnings are not the most effective remedy for that problem.

The relationship between positive (to a leftist) economic change and progress against racism might be debatable, but I doubt the experiences of Denmark shed any light on the question in the US.

i take it financial post is canada's version of wsj? anyway lol: http://business.financialpost.com/executive/student-protesters-become-someones-employee-heres-how-to-ensure-they-dont-become-your-headache

http://peterlevine.ws/?p=16357

http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/mind_reading.jpg