Just Stop Provoking!

But Charlie Hebdo has been a target for a long time, thanks to a long history of intentionally controversial and provocative cartoons and covers.

To me this sounds like victim-blaming of the worst caliber. This article is pretty much saying that Charlie Hebdo provoked murderers and did it intentionally. Poor little murderers, so horribly provoked! If only the journalists hadn’t published these provocative and controversial cartoons, nothing bad would have happened to them. Why did they have to go and publish, dress, breathe, speak, and exist in a way that forces good, well-meaning murderers to start shooting?

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43 responses to “Just Stop Provoking!”

J. Otto Pohl

January 7, 2015

I haven’t seen the cartoons. I am assuming they are offensive. But, that is irrelevant. Press organs should have the right to publish material that is offensive to people. Most people including most Muslims I know personally (including my wife and her devout sister) don’t waste any of their time and energy on whether cartoons in French magazines are offensive or not. They just don’t think about the French media period.

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Clarissa

January 7, 2015

Maybe I found Cinderella offensive. Why should this weirdness of mine be anybody else ‘s problem, you know?

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Alexander

January 7, 2015

Baby, why do you make me hurt you so much? I love you, and this time I’ll try harder too… but you know you shouldn’t make me so mad.

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Clarissa

January 7, 2015

Exactly.

It’s her fault for dressing provokatively.

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Dreidel

January 7, 2015

Where’s the link to the article you’re referring to? I can’t find anything clickable in your post.

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Clarissa

January 7, 2015

I don’t want to link to it but it can be found by Googling the words.

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djiril

January 7, 2015

I hear “provocative” used as as a compliment or a way of making someone’s work sound interesting all the time. It doesn’t necessarily mean the writer wants the person to shut up.

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Clarissa

January 7, 2015

Given that the cartoonists were killed today, I think we could find other words to compliment their work. Why not say that the cartoons were funny, popular, creative, brilliant, enjoyable, etc?

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1. aglaonika
  
  January 7, 2015
  
  “Why not say that the cartoons were funny, popular, creative, brilliant, enjoyable, etc?”
  
  Because they were fucking primitive and deliberately spread hatred. The creators shouldn’t have been massacred though.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    January 7, 2015
    
    Killing people for having a chuckle spreads hatred. Humor actually allows to bridge the distance between different groups. I love a good Jewish or Ukrainian joke. Why not? Using humor to lower tensions is a long-standing European tradition that dates back to antiquity. Laughter is cathartic. And dark humor is the most cathartic of all.
    
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    1. musteryou
      
      January 7, 2015
      
      People really need to get things in proportion. Nothing causes hatred. Pseudo-scientific language has to go.
      
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    2. Anonymous
      
      January 7, 2015
      
      Why do Islamic terrorists think they should be able to live anywhere and have the host cultures give up their own way of thinking and compromise in their own cultural practices and beliefs to accommodate that of Islam, while Islamic people are not required to accommodate anything in return? They respond with these acts of unconscionable violence and keep arguing that they are the victims. The politically correct ideology that Western cultures currently subscribe to simply colludes with this bullying. Personally, I am not at all comfortable with a culture that represses women, murders people in the name of ideology, and refuses to dialogue on any kind of cultural exchange that is accommodating to both parties.
      
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    3. Dee
      
      January 7, 2015
      
      Why do Islamic terrorists think they should be able to live anywhere and have the host cultures give up their own way of thinking and compromise in their own cultural practices and beliefs to accommodate that of Islam, while Islamic people are not required to accommodate anything in return? They respond with these acts of unconscionable violence yet argue they are the victims. The politically correct ideology that Western cultures currently subscribe to simply colludes with this bullying. Personally, I am not at all comfortable with a culture that represses women, murders people in the name of ideology, and refuses to dialogue on any kind of cultural exchange that is accommodating to both parties.
      
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    4. musteryou
      
      January 7, 2015
      
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    5. Jones
      
      January 7, 2015
      
      “A devout Muslim walks into a bar …”
      
      [ahem]
      
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    6. aglaonika
      
      January 7, 2015
      
      “Killing people for having a chuckle spreads hatred.”
      
      Yes, indeed. It was a horrible response. The tension between the French locals and the Muslim immigrants was more than a few chuckles though.
      
      “Humor actually allows to bridge the distance between different groups. I love a good Jewish or Ukrainian joke. Why not?”
      
      Okay, but you’re hyperintelligent. The reality is that 99% of people are not like you, and not taking this fact into consideration is irresponsible to say the least.
      
      “Using humor to lower tensions is a long-standing European tradition that dates back to antiquity. Laughter is cathartic. And dark humor is the most cathartic of all.”
      
      When it’s intended towards someone’s own self, not when it deliberately insults other groups. Like rape jokes are also not chatartic. The guys at Charlie Hebdo didn’t follow Journalism Ethics 101 which is the respect of other people’s identities (like religion, nationality, familial status, sexuality, etc.). Of course the response was horrible and catastrophic, and that’s also true the caricatures were just excuses on behalf of the murderers. If they hadn’t killed because of this, they’d have found another excuse. But journalism ethics should be taken more seriously, especially because the “who can mock whom in front of a wide audience” question is also a question of power. Media is power. Journalists should understand that. It’s not the same as when someone tells a Muslim joke to his neighbour. Journalists are not individuals when they’re at work but hold a huge social responsibility. That’s why media companies shouldn’t whore out this profession. Real humour is subtle and intelligent. These caricatures were neither subtle nor intelligent.
      
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      1. musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        “Real humour is subtle and intelligent. These caricatures were neither subtle nor intelligent.”
        
        They must have been imaginary humour, then, because real humour can only be subtle and intelligent.
        
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        aglaonika
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        I refuse to revise all of my comments on a popular blog as if they were an academic thesis in philosophy.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        A troll recently collected a lot of rhetorical trollish truisms and threw them all at me, hoping some might stick. This troll pronounced, among other cliches, that I had not achieved anything in the “real world”.
        
        I have become very aware, over the years, that some people like to lay exclusive claim to reality. I wish them all the best with it.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        A person who is capable of using the expression “haven’t achieved anything in the real world” should not take part in adult conversations. 6 – year-olds speak like this.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        All of the ideas generated by this illiterate entity were of the same calibre. Let us see.
        
        The entity first impugned my character on a three-second video, where I had nothing but stared at the character, saying that I was very egoistic and self-aggrandizing. When that didn’t work, it said I was a feminazi who was against religion and science. Then it said I hadn’t achieved anything in the world and I shouldn’t publish on a “family site”.
        
        It went on like this . I imagine that these are rhetorical phrases picked up from shock jocks or people like that, since these words really didn’t belong in the exact context of YouTube.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        What’s this “family site”? YouTube?
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        I assumed he meant YouTube. It’s all so …rhetorical.
        
        Hold on.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        That’s exactly what I’m talking about. People think that if something causes them some vague discomfort, it doesn’t have a right to exist. It’s disgusting. The video was shorter than the hissy fit he threw over it. Jeez.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        The video had literally NO CONTENT.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        I think there was something in there about a family site, but perhaps I didn’t paste and copy .
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        oh yeah, “family forum”. It is in there. I imagine this is how most Yankees talk to each other, although “aggro” is typically Australian slang for “aggressive”.
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        OOPSIE. RETYPED:
        
        All of the ideas generated by this illiterate entity were of the same calibre. Let us see.
        
        The entity first impugned my character on a three-second video, where I had nothing but stared at the camera, saying that I was very egoistic and self-aggrandizing. When that didn’t work, it said I was a feminazi who was against religion and science. Then it said I hadn’t achieved anything in the world and I shouldn’t publish on a “family site”.
        
        It went on like this . I imagine that these are rhetorical phrases picked up from shock jocks or people like that, since these words really didn’t belong in the exact context of YouTube.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        Let’s definitely not revise anything on the blog! 🙂
        
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        musteryou
        
        January 7, 2015
        
        If I were to resort to explaining my subtle and intelligent humor, I would say that “reality” is a self-serving construct and those who use the term rhetorically may not be as subtle and intelligent as they think. As Nietzsche said, “The stupidity of the good is
        unfathomably wise.” One may think one knows what reality is. But one’s perspective of reality is limited by the ability of one’s consciousness to range out further. And the ability of one’s consciousness to range out further than one’s own interests is limited in turn by many different factors, above all the desire to see the world in such a way that one feels intellectually or morally advantaged.
        
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Jones

January 7, 2015

Yes, Charlie Hebdo makes people laugh, so it’s evil …

“BUT YOU ARE NOT RESPECTING THE RIGIDITY AND PURITY OF OUR BELIEFS!”

Absolutely fucking spot on, and I never will. 🙂

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musteryou

January 7, 2015

Another thingie thing thing to do with this is that many people consciously or unconsciously hold the view that nothing happens to you unless you will it. The whole archaic understanding of masochism was precisely based on this just world principle. You only got what was coming to you because you required it to come to you. To the degree that we are still superstitious or that we overextend small truisms to make them appear as life principles, we will uphold the view that victims were “asking for it”. But this notion really is the unwinding or undoing of principles of ethics, which have to be embraced actively and deliberately.

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Jones

January 7, 2015

Fine, I’ll finish the joke. 🙂

A Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest, and an Islamic terrorist walk into a bar …

They find a devout Muslim at the bar, sipping a beer, wondering what the fuss was about.

The Jewish rabbi asks the devout Muslim why he’s in the bar, and the devout Muslim tells him he was merely curious about what it would be like on the other side.

The Catholic priest asks the Jewish rabbi why he’s in the bar, and the Jewish rabbi says he was merely curious about this devout Muslim being on the other side.

Then the Catholic priest asks the Islamic terrorist, “So what are you doing here?”

The Islamic terrorist smiles widely, pulls out a remote detonator switch from his jacket, and says, “Well, now that you’re all here …”

[ahem]

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Clarissa

January 7, 2015

Good joke. 🙂

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cliff arroyo

January 8, 2015

“The guys at Charlie Hebdo didn’t follow Journalism Ethics 101 which is the respect of other people’s identities”

It’s not a news magainze. Charlie Hebdo is a satirical magazine that regularly ridicules everybody regardless of political or religious orientation.

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aglaonika

January 8, 2015

Satire also needs to have ethics, and the creators of satires needs to understand the society, its inner tensions and dynamics in which they operate. Multicultural societies like the French are different from homogeneous societies, everybody is much more sensitive there, so the “every social group can be ridiculed at any time” mentality won’t last long – especially because the who can ridicule whom and in what form is a question of power which people seemingly refuse to understand. Satire-makers in the multicultural countries will need to find other basis for their satires than religion or nationality. Refusing to understand that is the policy of the ostrich.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 8, 2015
  
  Everybody’s ethics is different and only reaches as far as one’s nose.
  
  The idea that since immigrants exist, civilization should be abandoned is just tragic. We should not give way to the seductive belief that we can simply stop making fun of religious fanatics and they will leave us be. Because they won’t. If they can get “offended” over this cartoon, the absence of cartoons will have no impact on their offense. They will find something else, and then something else, etc.
  
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  1. aglaonika
    
    January 8, 2015
    
    “The idea that since immigrants exist, civilization should be abandoned is just tragic.”
    
    Yep, I admit I want to abandon civilization, you found my hidden motive indeed. 🙂 Nationality- and religion-based satires still won’t work in the post-nation state era where people from different backgrounds will have to live together. It’s not about the fanatics. They’ve always existed, they’ll always exist, just the excuses change. I talked about the Muslim community (or anyother religious or ethnic group) that currently live in a multicultural society.
    
    The fact that I find the principles of the deceased satire creators obsolete and mistaken, doesn’t mean I condone fanatism and massacre, or I agree with the murders. Also doesn’t mean I blame them for being killed. I just don’t like their work, don’t agree with their principles and I won’t grow to like it just because they were massacred. I also think that societal satire needs to find a new basis not because of the fanatics but because of the millions it insults at the core of their identities (as religion for a religious people is at the core of their identity). Muslims in France aren’t immigrants, but French citizens, most of them were born and lived in that country in all of their lives. This is how Western multicultural societies look like today. When societies go through such a huge change, the principles or framework of societal critics also need to go through a change. That’s not the abandonment of civilization, just the adaptation of it to the new situation.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 8, 2015
      
      I think that the millions who are insulted will just have to lump it. 🙂 I accept and would defend with everything I got any body’s right to worship the Prophet. But I equally support and would defend anybody ‘s right to ridicule the Prophet. Neither activity interests me but I can’t accept that some identities or pastimes or beliefs are more important than others.
      
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  2. Clarissa
    
    January 8, 2015
    
    Freedom of speech but only such freedom that doesn’t offend anybody is no freedom of speech at all. Because anything can be potentially offensive to someone.
    
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sugs

January 8, 2015

Nobody has the right to never feel offended, society can’t work like that. Be it dull or offensive, clever or stupid, satire can’t kill you – or your religious beliefs, however clever or stupid.
I don’t respect anyone’s religious beliefs, I respect individual’s right to beliefs, but not to inflict those beliefs on other people.

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Clarissa

January 8, 2015

I agree with sugs completely. There are so many articles I’m seeing that say, “Well, the cartoons were offensive. ” Don’t like the carttoons? Don’t buy the magazine. That’s the only civilized response.

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David P. Bellamy

January 8, 2015

A friend of a friend of mine on Facebook said that the problem with Charlie Hebdon cartoons is that they are egregiously racist and white-supremacist. I have no idea whether this is true, but it is a statement I have not noticed here, so it seems worth adding to the discussion.

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