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Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts) Fri Jan 9, 2015, 06:42 PM Jan 2015

A wonderful demolition of Glenn Greenwald et al's victim-blaming from Jonathan Chait.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-point-missers-miss-point.html

Excerpt:

Ross Douthat, writing a bit more patiently than me, laid this out more explicitly. Douthat was very clear about his argument: Vulgar expression that would otherwise be unworthy of defense becomes worthy if it is made in defiance of violent threats. Bustillos assails Douthat by pointing out various times when he has criticized vulgarity, neglecting even to consider the distinction that forms the entire core of his argument.

Greenwald and Sacco make the same analytic error, and throw in references to various Western misdeeds against Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere. This is the sort of moral distraction it is common to find when a person believes the wrong kinds of victims are being celebrated or the wrong kinds of perpetrators decried. (Greenwald: “the west has spent years bombing, invading and occupying Muslim countries and killing, torturing and lawlessly imprisoning innocent Muslims, and anti-Muslim speech has been a vital driver in sustaining support for those policies.”) It’s the same impulse driving conservatives to turn cases of police brutality into meditations on black-on-black crime. That is that; this is this.

“No mainstream western cartoonist would dare put their name on an anti-Jewish cartoon, even if done for satire purposes, because doing so would instantly and permanently destroy their career, at least … " writes Greenwald, “Why aren’t Douthat, Chait, Yglesias and their like-minded free speech crusaders calling for publication of anti-Semitic material in solidarity, or as a means of standing up to this repression?” Well, the answer is very simple: because nobody is murdering artists who publish anti-Semitic cartoons.

9 replies

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A wonderful demolition of Glenn Greenwald et al's victim-blaming from Jonathan Chait. (Original Post) Donald Ian Rankin Jan 2015 OP

Yeah, Greenwald has been as predictable as the sunrise Blue_Tires Jan 2015 #1

Every horrible event is an opening for GG to get attention & make more $$$$$$. He sickens me. Tarheel_Dem Jan 2015 #2

What makes this equivalency even more fallacious... OilemFirchen Jan 2015 #3

Um...not really. Maedhros Jan 2015 #4

your advice requires critical thinking skills, Maedhros Skittles Jan 2015 #5

"If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something... oberliner Jan 2015 #6

Agree. deurbano Jan 2015 #7

Greenwald is OVER. check this out uhnope Jan 2015 #8

Demolition of a straw-man Glenn Greenwald, I think you mean. Had Greenwald KingCharlemagne Jan 2015 #9

Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)

1. Yeah, Greenwald has been as predictable as the sunrise

Reply to Donald Ian Rankin (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 06:50 PM

Jan 2015

There's always his standard-template "Yeah, but..." apologia every time there is a terror attack against the west..

Tarheel_Dem

(31,235 posts)

2. Every horrible event is an opening for GG to get attention & make more $$$$$$. He sickens me.

Reply to Donald Ian Rankin (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 07:09 PM

Jan 2015

GG------>>>>>>

OilemFirchen

(7,143 posts)

3. What makes this equivalency even more fallacious...

Reply to Donald Ian Rankin (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 07:33 PM

Jan 2015

is that we Jews are likely the most self-deprecating religion on the planet. Most modern satirists probably stay away from "anti-semitic" material because they can't best their Jewish cohorts.

I would have thought Greenwald, at the very least, would understand this - though not having inherited a sense of humor, I'm not surprised he doesn't.

Maedhros

(10,007 posts)

4. Um...not really.

Reply to Donald Ian Rankin (Original post)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 08:47 PM

Jan 2015

Greenwald argues that to defend Charlie Hebdo's right to publish offensive material does not require that one agree with the content of the offensive material. He cites the example of the ACLU defending white supremacists' right to march in a community of Holocaust survivors, in which the ACLU vocally objected to the white supremacists' message.

Greenwald then looks at the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo incident and the call by certain writers for the publication of additional blasphemous material as a show of defiance against radical Islam. He notes that:

Some of the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo were not just offensive but bigoted, such as the one mocking the African sex slaves of Boko Haram as welfare queens (left). Others went far beyond maligning violence by extremists acting in the name of Islam, or even merely depicting Mohammed with degrading imagery (above, right), and instead contained a stream of mockery toward Muslims generally, who in France are not remotely powerful but are largely a marginalized and targeted immigrant population.

He reasons, correctly, that ordinary every-day Muslim citizens of France (and other countries) need not be subjected to bigoted material any more than (e.g.) Jewish citizens should. He defends the right to publish such bigoted material, but attacks the claimed reason to do so (ostensibly to defend free speech) as disingenuous:

So it’s the opposite of surprising to see large numbers of westerners celebrating anti-Muslim cartoons - not on free speech grounds but due to approval of the content. Defending free speech is always easy when you like the content of the ideas being targeted, or aren’t part of (or actively dislike) the group being maligned.

Just because Islamic terrorists attacked Charlie Hebdo does not mean it's okay to champion a bigoted view of Muslims. Again, defend the right to publish bigoted cartoons but don't promulgate the bigotry:

(I’m not here talking about the question of whether media outlets should publish the cartoons because they’re newsworthy; my focus is on the demand they be published positively, with approval, as “solidarity”).

Chait also seems to think that Islamic violence is the only threat that is leading to censorship, and bases his entire argument on this fact. Greenwald notes:

Nor is it the case that threatening violence in response to offensive ideas is the exclusive province of extremists claiming to act in the name of Islam. Terrence McNally’s 1998 play “Corpus Christi,” depicting Jesus as gay, was repeatedly cancelled by theaters due to bomb threats. Larry Flynt was paralyzed by an evangelical white supremacist who objected to Hustler‘s pornographic depiction of inter-racial couples. The Dixie Chicks were deluged with death threats and needed massive security after they publicly criticized George Bush for the Iraq War, which finally forced them to apologize out of fear. Violence spurred by Jewish and Christian fanaticism is legion, from abortion doctors being murdered to gay bars being bombed to a 45-year-old brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza due in part to the religious belief (common in both the U.S. and Israel) that God decreed they shall own all the land. And that’s all independent of the systematic state violence in the west sustained, at least in part, by religious sectarianism.

I would urge readers to read Greenwald's article for themselves, and not rely on Chait's editing.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-charlie-hebdo-cartoons/

Skittles

(153,169 posts)

5. your advice requires critical thinking skills, Maedhros

Reply to Maedhros (Reply #4)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 09:50 PM

Jan 2015

thanks

oberliner

(58,724 posts)

6. "If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something...

Reply to Maedhros (Reply #4)

Fri Jan 9, 2015, 10:10 PM

Jan 2015

then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more."

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/?_r=0

deurbano

(2,895 posts)

7. Agree.

Reply to Maedhros (Reply #4)

Sat Jan 10, 2015, 05:38 PM

Jan 2015

uhnope

(6,419 posts)

8. Greenwald is OVER. check this out

Reply to Donald Ian Rankin (Original post)

Sat Jan 10, 2015, 06:00 PM

Jan 2015

"in solidarity with freedom of the press...we’re publishing some blasphemous and otherwise offensive cartoons about religion and their adherents" and then Greenwald chooses to print only anti-Semitic cartoons
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-charlie-hebdo-cartoons/

I'm no fan of Israel's occupation of Palestine, btw.

But this creepy move proves to me the final resolution of the bizarre segment of the anti-American left that will side with Russia, Syria and Iran just because they are currently in conflict with the US. Russian/Iranian anti-Semiticism begins to be an influence.

Greenwald is OVER

KingCharlemagne

(7,908 posts)

9. Demolition of a straw-man Glenn Greenwald, I think you mean. Had Greenwald

Reply to Donald Ian Rankin (Original post)

Sat Jan 10, 2015, 06:06 PM

Jan 2015

actually argued what Chait alleges Greenwald argued, why then Chait might have a point. But since Greenwald didn't argue what Chait alleges Greenwald argued, what is Chait doing other than shadow-boxing with a fancy of his own imagination?

Let me be sure I understand Chait's argument though. Let's say the American Nazi Party publishes some scurrilous anti-semitic or racist broadsheet. Let us further assume that some of my more hard-ass Socialist comrades threaten the Nazis with violence for that act. Are Chait and Douthat really arguing that the Nazis' shit somehow becomes 'worthy' because of the threats against it???? Racist shit is shit is shit.

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