Well, that seems to be the new rap—the new, improved rap—on Charlie Hebdo, the no-holds-barred French satire magazine, nine of whose staff were recently murdered by Muslim terrorists. A number of prominent lefties, including renowned Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau and anti-Bush/Obama war crimes crusader Glenn Greenwald, are suddenly deciding that there should be limits to free speech—quite a few of them, in fact. Yeah, we were all “Je suis Charlie Hebdo” for awhile, but some of those drawings are so crass, so crude, so vulgar!
Well, it’s certainly true that Le Bon Charlie can come up with images, like the one above, that would make Howard Stern say “Damn! I wish I had thought of that!”1 On the other hand, who said free speech has to be tasteful, much less aesthetically accomplished?2
I happen to think that some of the cartoons making fun of the Muslim predilection for murderous intolerance are funny, and they’re certainly deserved. The pope hasn’t initiated a crusade or an inquisition in a century or two, while the fatwa handed down against Salman Rusdie’s Satanic Verses set the stage for riots around the Muslim world that claimed dozens of lives. And Rushdie’s book received some of the same criticisms that are now being doled out against Charlie Hebdo.
I can sort of see why people might object to the decision of PEN America to award the 2015 Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, except that, well, I really can’t see why they would object. While Charlie frequently crosses the line when it comes to accuracy, good taste, etc., it doesn’t cross the line when it comes to freedom. It’s the opponents of the award who are crossing the line.
There is a compulsion on the left to sympathize with outgroups. The more out they are, the better. Gays were cool, but now they’re so in they’re boring. Transexuals are the new black, so to speak, except that, well, there are so few of them that it’s kind of hard to get excited about them. So now the brave souls on the left want to compliment themselves for their capacity to “understand” right-wing fundamentalist fanatics. Hey, they aren’t capitalists, are they?
What’s most repellent about this outgroup obsession is that the lefties invariably focus on the most “passionate” of the outcasts. Nine tenths of French Muslims are. I’m sure, totally well behaved. They’re practically bourgeois, and that’s the worst thing you can say about anyone! It’s the violent tenth, the anti-Semitic, misogynistic tenth, that captures the left-wing’s imagination. They’re so cool, they’re so dangerous!
Yes, the terrorists are the real victims here, victims of “hate speech,” a meme of which the left has grown depressingly fond. The left’s world was shattered by the collapse of communism, the collapse of the dream of “the Revolution”,3 the pathetic, false, impossible dream that the left had dreamt for more than a century, of that great, immortal day when they would at last solve the problems of the peoples of the world and thus win their undying gratitude. The death of that dream has forced the left to waken to a world where they really have nothing to offer the people, nothing at all. It is capitalism, not socialism, that provides a decent standard of living to an ever-growing percentage of the world’s population. The left is so bitter, so humiliated, that they will embrace anyone who stands outside the current consensus, even the gang of anti-Semitic, misogynistic murderers who slaughtered the staff of Charlie Hebdo.
Afterwords
Reason’s Jesse Walker takes apart Gary Trudeau’s disgusting “it’s your own damn fault you got killed” argument here. Glenn Greenwald’s unpleasant take, to which I soon hope to do justice, is here. The Nation’s Katha Polit demolishes the case of the anti-Charlieites here. Jesse provides further commentary here and, at the Spectator, Nick Cohen throws some very nice punches here.
- I particularly like the sensitive portrayal of Christ’s stigmata. I guess if I were Catholic I would “get” whatever it is that’s popping out of Christ’s ass, but since I’m not, I don’t. ↩︎
- In episode 1 of the widely if not wildly applauded “Amy Schumer Show” (which can be pretty funny), the first bit we see is “Two Girls, One Cup, Number Two,” which is coprophagous enough to delight a Swift or a Dante. Later, in two minutes of standup, Amy makes fun of Latinas (slutty), lesbians (dyky), southerners (toothless hillbillies), and herself (slutty, unattractive). Are we to banish Amy as well? Banish plump Amy, and banish all the world! ↩︎
- It was the cult of the revolution, of course, that helped romanticize violence in the first place. People are always looking for an excuse to kill people, it seems. ↩︎
