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Six writers have withdrawn from the PEN American Center's annual gala in protest over the organization's decision to give its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was attacked on January 7th:
The writers who have withdrawn from the event are Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi, The New York Times reports. [...] Kushner, in an email to The Times, said she was withdrawing from the May 5 PEN gala because she was uncomfortable with Charlie Hebdo's "cultural intolerance" and promotion of "a kind of forced secular view." Those views, The Times added, were echoed by the other writers who pulled out of the event. Carey told The Times that PEN, in its decision, was going beyond its role of protecting freedom of expression." A hideous crime was committed, but was it a freedom-of-speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about?" he said in an email to the newspaper. Novelist Salman Rushdie, a past president of PEN who spent years in hiding because of a fatwa over his novel The Satanic Verses, criticized the writers for pulling out, saying while Carey and Ondaatje were old friends of his, they are "horribly wrong."
Glenn Greenwald has written about the controversy over at The Intercept, which is hosting letters and comments written by Deborah Eisenberg and Teju Cole. Greenwald notes:
Though the core documents are lengthy, this argument is really worth following because it highlights how ideals of free speech, and the Charlie Hebdo attack itself, were crassly exploited by governments around the world to promote all sorts of agendas having nothing to do with free expression. Indeed, some of the most repressive regimes on the planet sent officials to participate in the Paris “Free Speech” rally, and France itself began almost immediately arresting and prosecuting people for expressing unpopular, verboten political viewpoints and then undertaking a series of official censorship acts, including the blocking of websites disliked by its government. The French government perpetrated these acts of censorship, and continues to do so, with almost no objections from those who flamboyantly paraded around as free speech fanatics during Charlie Hebdo Week.
From Deborah Eisenberg's letter to PEN's Executive Director Suzanne Nossel, March 26, 2015:
I can hardly be alone in considering Charlie Hebdo's cartoons that satirize Islam to be not merely tasteless and brainless but brainlessly reckless as well. To a Muslim population in France that is already embattled, marginalized, impoverished, and victimized, in large part a devout population that clings to its religion for support, Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.
Was it the primary purpose of the magazine to mortify and inflame a marginalized demographic? It would seem not. And yet the staff apparently considered the context of their satire and its wide-ranging potential consequences to be insignificant, or even an inducement to redouble their efforts – as if it were of paramount importance to demonstrate the right to smoke a cigarette by dropping your lit match into a dry forest.
It is difficult and painful to support the protection of offensive expression, but it is necessary; freedom of expression must be indivisible. The point of protecting all kinds of expression is that neither you nor I get to determine what attitudes are acceptable – to ensure that expression cannot be subordinated to powerful interests. But does that mean that courage in expression is to be measured by its offensiveness?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @07:15PM
SJW drama/bs.
Consider carefully before modding as flamebait. TFS + article should be modded as offtopic.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 28 2015, @07:55PM
Even though using the term "SJW" to label people you disagree with is an instant sign of stupidity, you're right.
There's nothing noble about withdrawing from a free speech conference because you disagree with the winners. It's just plain dumb. You never endorsed free speech in the first place, and the organization is better of without you.
Free speech means shitty speech. Poorly considered speech. Cruel speech. Inane speech. *gasp* secular speech. Religious speech. These people didn't understand what organization they were members of.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday April 28 2015, @08:22PM
Even though using the term "SJW" to label people you disagree with is an instant sign of stupidity, you're right.
No, it's not. It depends on whether the label fits. There is a large contingent of people who have elevated getting easily offended to a matter of principle. SJW is a useful term to describe members of that group. If you're using the word correctly -- as OP was -- it means you are able to effectively use new language to concisely communicate your ideas.
On the other hand, if you're using it wrong, then, yeah, it's stupid. Same as using "sexist", "racist", "homophobic", "The Patriarchy", and like shit for random crap you don't like but that has nothing to do with the actual accepted definitions of those words. Or, for "THE PATRIARCHY", for really anything at all.
(Score: 4, Funny) by dyingtolive on Tuesday April 28 2015, @08:24PM
Did you just 'mansplain' it to him?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 28 2015, @08:26PM
That's not what the term meant. It meant someone who used the ideals of social justice as a bludgeon to demand that their personal preferences in conversation are adhered to.
Things like playing oppression olympics where you try to pretend your group X is more oppressed than other group Y because of reason Z. Or things like saying that opinions "trigger" you, without any bearing or familiarity with actual PTSD and how it works, and how it causes people in the real world to suffer. Shallow understandings of important things used for selfish ends. That's where the "warrior" part came from.
That's not the same as being offended at shitty behavior. You're allowed to call a gross fucking bigot exactly that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:35PM
Correct. People using the term need to distinguish "SJW" from "cat lady". The latter is a fairly benign, harmless creature that shrieks at the top of its lungs about some trivial SWPL issue, such as the perceived racism presented by white men after their colleagues were killed by Islamic extremists. I know that creature is the courageous one; the one who will receive nothing but social praise from its circle.
A "SJW" is a recursive "cat lady".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday April 29 2015, @12:37AM
You're allowed to call a gross fucking bigot exactly that.
Exactly. You are allowed to respond to speech with more speech. But if you actually support free speech, the second somebody calls to force the 'fucking bigot' to shut up you are required to jump to their defense with "I hate that guy but I will defend his right to be an offensive bastard with my last breath.... and box of ammo if required. So if you can stop with the censoring crap we can both get back to denouncing and perhaps even shunning the bastard, K?"
I speak of it as Freedom Zero, the one the that implies all of the others: The Right to Be Wrong. As in I think you are wrong but you have the right to be wrong. If you can't say that you really haven't internalized the whole Freedom thing yet. You have the right to think the wrong things, you have the right to say the wrong things and within as broad a limit as compatible with a Civilization of Free Men, you have the right to do the wrong things. I believe you have that Right to be Wrong because I do not want to empower some tribunal to decide who is 'wrong' since it is a certainty that it will eventually decide I too am Wrong on some issue. No, no Western Civilization has yet fully realized that level of Freedom but it should be the star we guide our policy by.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:58AM
You have the right to think the wrong things, you have the right to say the wrong things and within as broad a limit as compatible with a Civilization of Free Men, you have the right to do the wrong things. I believe you have that Right to be Wrong because I do not want to empower some tribunal to decide who is 'wrong' since it is a certainty that it will eventually decide I too am Wrong on some issue. No, no Western Civilization has yet fully realized that level of Freedom but it should be the star we guide our policy by.
Maybe if we got rid of human beings and replaced them with some superior beings we could realize that level of freedom. Until then, we will have to accept that we need laws imposed by whatever society of which we are a part in order to continue as a just and civil society. We might have to invent another term, Libertarian Justice Warrior (LJW), for those who are having hissy fits whenever "SJW's" come down on them for their bigotry or whenever they get offended by society's disapproval of their position.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday April 30 2015, @05:04AM
Libertarians ... bigoted? I've never heard of or witnessed that. Libertarians seem to be people with a coherent philosophy that unfortunately is premised on some wrong ideas (like markets being perfect, governments being the root of all evil, etc.). That leads to some strange positions that, taken alone, can misrepresent what they're about. For example, they'd probably disagree with the Civil Rights Act, but not because they're bigots: they just don't like government telling anyone what to do ever, for any reason, except for directly preventing physical violence.
They're also usually strongly in favor of drug legalization, but not necessarily because they think drugs are not harmful. They just think that people should have the freedom to hurt themselves without restriction. They also think said people should then suffer the consequences of their actions up to and including dying in the streets since they spent all their money on heroin and now can't afford medical care. Consistent, not bigoted or anything, but ... just ... wrong, at least for utilitarians (of which I am one).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:05AM
I speak of it as Freedom Zero, the one the that implies all of the others: The Right to Be Wrong, the right to pass the cobblestones and shout "Queer" in the company of homophobes, the right to point and shout "Jew" in front of a pack of neoNazis, the Right to Shout "Fire" in a crowded Theatre, the right to bully the weak, to subjugate, to gaslight, to mentally destroy.
FTFY.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:08PM
There is a large contingent of people who have elevated getting easily offended to a matter of principle. SJW is a useful term to describe members of that group.
Or, you know, people who don't hate SystemD enough.
(see yesterday's Linux thread for examples)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday April 29 2015, @08:42AM
Or, you know, people who don't hate SystemD enough.
(see yesterday's Linux thread for examples)
That's a fellow that goes by MikeeUSA online. He's a deranged jackass with a boatload of issues and an agenda against Debian. He also has a massive hatred for women for some reason, so any discussion he inserts himself into invariably trends toward ranting against women and labeling anybody that disagrees with him "feminist" or "SJW" or something similar. He's been around for 10+ years doing this shit, I think, though I only learned about him in the past year or so thanks to his appearance on SN. He leaves a highly identifiable trail of word-vomit online, so it's not difficult to get an idea of what dealing with him is like.
[Anyone easily offended by words should probably skip this next paragraph, I'm not one to self-censor]
Imagine a hypothetical version of APK that scours the web for mentions of host files, and whenever he finds one, he tells everyone how they could just use a hosts file to solve all their problems. (Okay, that part isn't any different than the real thing.) Except this hypothetical evil APK is crazier than normal and, in every discussion, blames "niggers and jews" for every problem in every discussion that mentions /etc/hosts. And, once he joins a topic, he sticks around for days replying to everybody, fighting all and sundry and accusing them of being "nigger lovers" or "kikes" because they called him out on being insane or stupid. That's MikeeUSA, except with Mikee, he hates women and Debian, so every discussion ends up with him blaming them for all problems ever and accusing everybody of being SJWs.
He's been doing this stuff long before systemd existed existed, and his diatribes and harassment also predate the SJW moniker. He just uses whatever tool is convenient to further his own insane agenda. The only reason he's anti-systemd is because Debian's adopting it and a portion of the Linux community dislikes it, and he picked up "SJW" because it's a polarising label. They're both just fuel for his lunatic crusade against Debian at this point. I've seen him on Slashdot doing the same shit, and unfortunately for us, he found SN and apparently decided its smaller size and greybeard anti-systemd leaning makes it easier to spread his insane bullshit.
His writing style is easy enough to pinpoint once you know it, since it tends to carry an unhinged zealotry that stands out. Ignoring him is simple, but the problem is he manages to discredit people with useful commentary and insightful opinions simply by claiming to be on their side while waging his personal war that nobody else is involved in. As soon as he uses someone else's cause to further his own lunatic agenda, people seeking to discredit that cause will use him as an example of why that cause is wrong. He's like a living example of how false flag operations can discredit a movement, except that he seems to really just be a deranged nutter with a keyboard that manages to achieve similar results.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 29 2015, @06:42PM
That's a fellow that goes by MikeeUSA online.
I wonder if he is the one who keeps modding me down (a day later) for calling it out.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday April 30 2015, @05:08AM
I would hope that MikeeUSA does not have high enough karma to ever get mod points...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:18PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:34PM
0 Disagree
-1 Overrated
That looks like a bug.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:16PM
No, it's not a bug. The "Disagree" mod is +0, not -1.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:52PM
The "bug" is that we aren't allowed to use Overrated or Underrated unless the comment has already been moderated, but Disagree does not change the score. It doesn't make sense to allow Overrated/Underrated if only Disagree has been used.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:01AM
That's sad, I thought Disagree was +1 for some reason. There should be a "I think this post is wrong, but it also adds to the discussion and should be seen more" mod.
(Score: 4, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:17AM
My interpretation of "Disagree" is it's encouraging would-be unintentional mod abusers to see their feelings more clearly. Like, a comment pisses you off, and you have mod points, so you click the drop-down list to select "Troll" or "Flamebait" or whatever, and you realize that "Disagree" actually fits better, and your better nature takes over, and you either mod it "disagree" or just back off and continue reading the rest of the discussion.
It's served that role for me a few times. Mind you, I would never intentionally abuse mod points. I thought a post was actually flamebait or whatever, but then after seeing the "disagree" mod in the list, I realized that, no, I just really, really disagreed with how stupid it was and my disagreement with said stupidity was pissing me off. Without the disagree mod available, I may have picked a -1 mod, without the benefit of that additional reflection. With the disagree mod, I either selected it or posted a response and not modded at all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:56AM
I mod up idiot posts (by non-ACs)
So everyone else can see how much of an idiot the author is.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @08:59PM
Free speech means shitty speech. Poorly considered speech. Cruel speech. Inane speech. *gasp* secular speech. Religious speech. These people didn't understand what organization they were members of.
One thing free speech does not mean is endorsing shitty, poor, cruel, inane, secular or any other type of speech. Your twisted logic would have them be forced to endorse speech that they vehemently disagree with -- that's the opposite of free speech. Free speech means the right to make opposing speech and that's exactly what these people are doing by withdrawing their support. Nobody in this story is stopping Hebdo from saying a thing. They just aren't willing to praise them for it.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:05PM
In what way does acknowledging the suppressed speech of others with an award endorse it?
Clarify that. You are letting it stand as a bare assertion right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:21PM
In what world is an award not an endorsement?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:46PM
Because it specifically celebrates the freedom to express the opinion.
There. Hope that solves your conundrum.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:08PM
The idea that an award for speech ignores the content of that speech is head in the sand denialism. Especially since this award seems to have been specifically created for Hebdo. There was no such award in 2014, only a Goodale Digital Freedom Award [pen.org] that went to Twitter for enabling others to speak.
If you think blindered literalism is all that matters in analysing a situation then you are guaranteed to come to an erroneous conclusion. Kind of like concluding that the DPRK is a democratic republic, that Russia's anti-gay laws are about protecting children and the Defense of Marriage Act was about defending anybody.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:40PM
Agreed. It doesn't take any courage to say the popular thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:54PM
Which is why Charlie Hebdo *didn't* deserve this award, right? I mean, if they were publishing in Saudi Arabia or something, sure. But harassing Muslims in a country which has already legally prohibited them from practicing their faith in public? And doing so while receiving massive outpourings of support from numerous world leaders? While receiving millions of dollars in donations? With millions of citizens marching to support you? Publishing that cartoon didn't take much courage. The right to publish it was never in question.
The award isn't being given to them because of their speech; it's being given to them because of someone else's act of terrorism.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:51PM
Given what happened, you may be underestimating the risk.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 30 2015, @12:09PM
Yeah, there was some risk. There's some risk to anything. But the risk Charlie Hebdo took was nothing compared even to someone like Edward Snowden. And it certainly doesn't even begin to compare to a reporter covering corruption and abuses in some third-world dictatorship. What Charlie Hebdo did is nothing compared to the journalists publishing where their own government and even their own neighbors want them dead. Charlie Hebdo's staff isn't still being hunted. They aren't in prison. They weren't forced to flee the country. Publishing that took about as much courage as your average gas station attendant or bank teller.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 30 2015, @06:30PM
Agreed Snowden took a bigger risk and has paid a substantial price, but he is not a writer or a publisher. He is deserving of many awards and accolades nevertheless.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:01PM
To me, an SJW is a lazy insufferable shit who will preach down to you if you say anything off color. They harbor guilt and lack self esteem. So to make up for that, they have to feel superior to others by talking down to them about social issues.
Anecdotal poster boy SJW:
My brother and his girlfriend rented a room with mutual friends. The friends were a couple, the male was a woman's study major or something of the sort. So all he did was spend most of his time arguing of forums about patriarchy, how marriage is wrong, feminism etc. Meanwhile he talked down to his own girlfriend, even calling her ugly to her face. My brother hated him with a passion as anything mildly sexist would make that douche start preaching. And by sexist I mean holding the door for his girlfriend. Why? Because that is displaying patriarchal behaviour as he was telling his girlfriend she is weaker and can't open the door for herself. That SJW douche would let the door slam in his girlfriends face and other peoples faces. Seriously. When they moved out he almost punched the guy out after he and his girlfriend were struggling trying to get large boxes through the door and Mr. SJW walked right past them and didn't even bother to hold the door for them. He was just a piece of shit. And that, is a real SJW. A phony douche who doesn't practice what they preach. They just preach to feel better about themselves, not to improve society.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:26PM
Yes, it means such speech must be permitted. It doesn't mean that such speech must be honored and awarded.
They're allowing the speech to occur, but they're also raising their own voices to say they disagree with that speech. This too is part of the right to free speech and free expression. By attending the event you endorse the event and you help fund the organization behind it. If you disagree with that organization's decision, why would you continue to support it? I'm not sure I'd say it's "noble" either, but it's certainly logical...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:28PM
It says something about the responsibility you should feel in exercising free speech (as it's the case with any other freedom).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:21PM
Why?