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Six writers have withdrawn from the PEN American Center's annual gala in protest over the organization's decision to give its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical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The writers who have withdrawn from the event are Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi, The New York Times reports.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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:34PM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:37AM
You're still equating murder with satire and/or insult. An extreme in speech is not equivalent to an extreme in action taken to harm another human's body.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:45AM
You're still equating murder with satire and/or insult.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that you're applying a broad stroke to a narrow scenario and that will result in unintended consequences.
An extreme in speech is not equivalent to an extreme in action taken to harm another human's body.
Taken to an extreme speech can unify one group against another. Just to be clear, we do not disagree on Charlie Hebdo's right to run the magazine cover it did. I am not defending the shooters. I'm pointing out that you don't fight one extreme with another. I'm not equating one to another, I'm reminding you that history repeats itself. It's a wise thing to consider, not an indication that I'm siding with the bad guy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:20AM
By re-stating your main point, you still come across as equating murder with printing repugnant words on paper.
I'm not a fan of Charlie Hebdo and what little I've seen of the work published therein repulses me. While I do believe there is validity to the concept of "fighting words" in far-edge cases, can you produce any example of insult or degredation that would justify murder, and thus actually produce an example of how an extreme of murder can equal an extreme of speech?
"Unifying one group against another" is not the same as members of one group murdering people they don't like for things the victims wrote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:05AM
By re-stating your main point, you still come across as equating murder with printing repugnant words on paper.
I really don't see how you're finding that equivalence in my post. I'm sorry. As near as I can tell the misunderstanding is coming from you measuring this equation with only one circumstance instead of spreading it out amongst many.
"Unifying one group against another" is not the same as members of one group murdering people they don't like for things the victims wrote.
It doesn't have to be. If you go all-or-nothing with free speech you allow it to be used to oppress a group of people. The summary is explaining this way better than I am.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:09AM
Free people in a free society have no choice but to go "all in" on free speech as far as any governmental enforcement is concerned; the alternative is allowing government to kill people who say certain things, since all government power rests on lethal force.
The excerpt from Deborah Eisenberg's letter attempts to make the basic claim that Muslims aren't fully human in that they are not responsible for their own actions if "inflamed" or "mortified" by printed words or images. Basically, the summary attempts to paint Muslims as petulant sub-human children who are not responsible for their own actions. I reject that claim, as one of my fundamental premises is that each human is the exclusive owner his/her body (a more detailed description of an "unalienable right to life"). I could be wrong, of course, but if the summary's premise is actually correct, then an appropriate response could be to massacre the "less-than-human Muslims", since they as a group have proven to have dangerous individuals among them and yet cannot be individually held responsible for their actions - it would be the rough equivalent of putting down a rabid pet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:36PM
Free people in a free society have no choice but to go "all in" on free speech as far as any governmental enforcement is concerned...
This is not true. Even in a free society there are concepts of libel, slander, hate speech, incitement to riot, and of course the oft-discussed 'shouting fire in a crowded theater' cliche. We've already learned this lesson, you cannot go that extreme in either direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @02:57AM
Libel and slander are private matters (non-criminal), and in civilized countries as well as the USA, truth is a defense. "Mohummad was a pedophile" is a statement of historical fact according to Islam's own books. Hate speech is a thoughtcrime, a concept that cannot exist in a free country. "Incitement to riot" claims that at least some individuals that are expected to be walking about unaccompanied in public are not responsible for their own actions - also a concept that cannot exist in a free country.
Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater is only a problem if there is known to be no fire. Even in the case of lies intended to harm, lying about a fire in a theater still rests upon the concept that humans aren't responsible for their own actions, as the supposed problem with such a lie is that it would "cause" other people to trample each other in a blind panic. It is also worthwhile to note that this principle originated from the same Supreme Court that ruled that black people aren't human (Dred Scott) and that grain grown and used entirely intra-state is somehow inter-state commerce (Wickard vs Filburn).
Is the USA a free country? De facto, no, it is a slave nation ruled by naked force. De jure, of course, it is a free nation, albeit one with public offices almost entirely populated by literal criminals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @11:19PM
Libel and slander are private matters (non-criminal), and in civilized countries as well as the USA, truth is a defense.
Correct, but "Freedom of Speech" is not a rebuttal to that defense.
Hate speech is a thoughtcrime, a concept that cannot exist in a free country.
Untrue. Hate Speech is the dark side of Free Speech. As you've proven with this point and your point about the fire in the theater, speech has power. This is why you can't wield it to an extreme. In fact your first example eloquently illustrates why, albeit unintentionally.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Friday May 01 2015, @08:44AM
Your assertion is attempting to conflate one person's speech with the actions of listeners, and that claim is something I've already addressed [soylentnews.org] in my previous comment.
In a free country, speech power of unlimited magnitude can indeed be wielded to any extreme. The avenues of address for free people (a free man exclusively owns his body) includes the choice to ignore, use speech in response, and cease association with the speaker and/or the speaker's supporters. If violence is an acceptable response to speech in society, then that society is not free; even my own edge cases involve the crime of assault along with "gonna kill yer wife 'n kids" speech. Violence is what is being called for when governments impose limits on speech.
Now, if your argument comes exclusively from the view inside of a non-free society (or even from the observation that all countries are de facto non-free), I could agree with you from that viewpoint alone. After all, in a slave country, the slave population usually has no choice but to abide by whatever the masters want, without limitation. However, that viewpoint does raise some other critically serious issues about countries that only have lawful authority to be free countries and yet have government offices populated with criminals, ala the USA. (Sorry, I can't speak for France.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @04:45PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @06:19PM
By law, such a free country exists in the form of the United States of America. Its government was created at the Philadelphia Convention, by delegates that had been given authority by voters. Since the authority of the individual does not justly increase its ability to trespass on the unalienable rights of others merely by increasing numbers, it is therefore true that the entire authority of US government cannot exceed that of a single American citizen.
US governments require law to exist; they were called into existence by the creation of their founding laws, and without them they cannot exist. When government overreach occurs in the USA, as it often does, such acts are literally criminal.
True, the USA isn't directly involved with the murders at Charlie Hebdo. However, restrictions on speech imposed within a non-free country cannot be imposed on a free country - by definition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @06:31PM
However, restrictions on speech imposed within a non-free country cannot be imposed on a free country - by definition.
There are restrictions to free speech that are there to maintain its integrity. By your own extreme interpretation it is impossible to achieve a free country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @07:49PM
My claim is that among free people there is no example of speech alone that can excuse the speaker's death at the hands of a listener. Feel free to provide an example which contradicts my claim. Governments that impose restrictions on speech do so with the threat of force, and thus cannot be governments of free people.
You'll have to explain your assertion in more detail, as I am not understanding your claim here. Difficult, I could agree with, as it would require mass awareness and acceptance that each individual is the exclusive owner of his/her body, and that no other individual nor no government based on the delegated consent of such individuals has authority to violate that exclusive ownership. I cannot agree that such an achievement is impossible, especially in light of the particulars of the creation of just such a nation (as far as its laws are concerned): the USA. It may help to understand that even the USA's Supreme Court has acknowledged multiple times that a law which violates a more fundamental law has the same legal status as a law which was never passed in the first place; see Norton vs Shelby County [findlaw.com] and the opinion in Marbury vs Madison [umkc.edu] . The observation that such principles are routinely ignored does not change the legal facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @08:57PM
My claim is that among free people there is no example of speech alone that can excuse the speaker's death at the hands of a listener.
I never made that argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @09:29PM
I never wrote that you did make that exact claim. Still, perhaps I should have asked for an example of speech alone that can excuse the speaker's death at the hands of anyone. Do you have one you'd like to share with me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @09:34PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @04:45AM
No problem; let me then build on that point.
Decrees, orders, rules, laws, etc. issued from a government are ultimately enforced with lethal violence. (Break even a trivial unjust law, and a citiation is issued; ignore the citation, and a fine is imposed; ignore the fine, and a court summons is issued; ignore the court summons, and a warrant for arrest is issued; ignore the warrant, and enforcers seek to find you and put you in a cage; ignore the enforcers demands, and the enforcers assault you; overcome the initial assault, and the enforcers try to kill you.) Because of this, a government's restriction on speech is equivalent to a statement of "that government will kill you if you say something it doesn't like".
I view violence as a perfectly acceptable tool when it is used in defense of one's property, chiefly one's own body. Governments of free people have been delegated authority to use that same violence on behalf of free people, to exercise in the same circumstances that a free person could. Thus, governments that enforce laws against murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery, theft, and fraud are doing so in a manner compatible with people who already have the authority to use lethal violence in response to such crimes, and have chosen to delegate that authority to a government in the interests of better securing their right to not have their body killed, stolen, violated, etc.
Thus, when agents of government attempt to impose restrictions on the speech of free people, such agents literally become criminals by exceeding their authority, just as a mugger exceeds his authority when he tries to steal money from his victim at knifepoint.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:58PM
Nowhere, because no country is without flaws. There exist serious problems that must be fixed in every single country in the world.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:56PM
Libel and slander are private matters (non-criminal)
Private matters that just so happen to involve the government enforcing the court decisions. Make no mistake, if someone can sue you and win and have the government enforce the court decision because you said something, your freedom of speech has been limited.