In the aftermath of the attack in Paris, I've been wondering about my reaction to the news after reading Gary Myers' blog post It was a gut reaction, but unlike reactions to other stories of senseless murders. The questions have been nagging me relentlessly, this need to understand my response.
To add to the internal deliberations, along comes this from The New Yorker. Something else to consider. Thanks to mykwerks.
5 comments:
Silenced by violence, irrational and misdirected. It's a gut punch to one's sense of safety and reason.
Ah, yes, the other side. Even so, the answer is litigation, return mockery, wordswordswords. Never meet even hate speech with murder. Which is the heart of the issue. Violence only creates itself. If the 'satire' is racist, hostile, entitled, attacking it with bullets only gives it credence.
They finally took down the Aryan Nation with wrongful death lawsuits, took away all their assets to settle the award. Including their trademark.
I read this article in the New Yorker with interest. And maybe we do need to be reminded of our past, but not to engender a sense of guilt but to remind us that we need to take care.
Whenever something like the Paris killings, or the London Tube killings, or the Twin Towers killings occur, there is always someone who feels called to intellectualise the situation; knock the ball into the long grass.
What the writer of the New Yorker article seems to have forgotten is that although the incidents he quotes of home-spun restrictions are valid, in general the majority of the population accept these anomalies in our free societies (whatever that means) as undesirable maybe, but perhaps necessary. Some freedoms are necessarily given up whenever people live in settled communities.
And maybe in the past we have got it wrong. But so what? We are dealing with the here and now, a time when we find it totally unacceptable to kill others because we don't like what they say about us. And the outcry here in France is not against immigration or Islam, except by the kinky right and other racist organisations. In the main is against murderers whatever their background.
Most young people here, as one section of society for example, probably do not like what has been printed in Charlie Hebdo for time to time. They would rate the magazine's content as tasteless and offensive. But they nevertheless defend the right to lampoon where appropriate.
Over-intellectualisation of the recent occurrence in Paris does not help. We are not creatures of arid logic and reason. We also feel! What we do needs to be guided by intellect and feeling, but not ruled by those twin features of our egos. And that comes down to the real problem. It is the ego of the Islamist killer that has been seen to be attacked. Ordinary, law-abiding and decent muslims are disgusted and appalled at what has happened here.
If, in the West, we do not like our leaders, we can vote them out of office. We do not assassinate them, at least not on this side of the Ditch. It is to be hoped that we can reach out our hands and make common cause with all that see life as sacred, and to beware those who would seek to make capital out of what has happened.
I think it should be simple question of good manners:
I have my views; you have your views;we agree to differ, but will not insult/kill each other for them.
Because you rightly question your response does not mean you should jump at the first prompt to distrust and disown it. Teju Cole's writing has always left me with the feeling I'm a witless numpty with now right to anything one might call an intelligent opinion so perhaps I won't bother getting up in the morning. Sour grapes, of course, and thank goodness there are such people to make us question our assumptions and reactions.
Did you read around on the New Yorker, some of the other articles on the subject? You might have found yourself persuaded to quite other points of view, or, equally be left with a similar sense that, well yes, that's all convincing and illuminating and tells me things I didn't know, and yet... I am not comfortable about accepting its truth, is that because I dislike letting go of my initial emotional reaction or because my gut knows something?
Of course free speech isn't and cannot be absolute - though even the worst kind of pornographers and hatemongers should have the right not to be murdered for their words and images - but is relative, fluid, must always be negotiated, defined, considered and often wrested from more subtle and powerful enemies than fundamentalist crazies.
I know that the French secularist model of state is at best arid and at worst oppressive, and that it is an ideology too, and that Paris has seen more violence and cruelty and bloodshed and betrayal than perhaps any city anywhere, much of which there is still considerable denial about.
But, in the words of an Economist article, full of typical centrist, economic liberal, calls for reason, moderation, unity and not division, context and intelligent analysis, ' If the proper first response to the slaughter was outrage, after considering the argument that Charlie Hebdo made about free speech, the second response should be outrage, too.'
I've been shocked, depressed, confused, and finally proud and moved over these things in the last few days, and I think I must try to write more on it.
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