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Comment by krig | Hacker News Reader

This is horrible, and we as a society need to somehow make this kind of thing not happen. I have no idea what that means in practice, though. It seems everything that has been tried so far has only escalated the hatred and strengthened the extremists.

Also, at a time like this it is important not to forget that the last major terrorist attack in Europe was instigated by a fundamentalist christian norwegian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

But it's hard not to get swept up in it right now. I too want to _do something_. The question is, what? How is freedom of speech best defended in the face of unreasonable people who have no limits to what they are prepared to do?

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> This is horrible, and we as a society need to somehow make this kind of thing not happen.

No. We shouldn't. We as a society need to stand for values of openness, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. There is no way to do this other than to accept that there are psychopaths and lunatics among the human race and sometimes they do something terrible.

After all, the only way to truly prevent acts like these is with an absolute police state. I am Charlie, and I will not stand for such a crackdown.

We have to stop imagining that we can entirely cure the human race from mental sickness or extreme radicalism. We have to accept that, in a free society, sometimes horrible things happen. One day it's a hurricane, the other day it's a terrorist attack. Nobody is to blame except the perpetrators and their direct influencers.

Stoltenberg (ironically now the boss of NATO) said it best the last time something like this happened in Europe: "The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation". That's the only valid response.

Right, maybe I was not clear enough in my meaning - I have some hope that there are ways to make this not happen at all or at least happen a lot more rarely, and I think the way to get there is to get the standard of living and education, and the openness of society, extended to all people, and for religion and fundamentalist thought to be a rare fringe activity and not commonplace.

I don't think an absolute police state can prevent violent acts, because an absolute police state IS violence.

It's easy to forget that less than 100 years ago the whole world was at war. There has been progress, even though things may seem bleak. We are still at the infancy of global civilization. Of course it's possible that we're also at the zenith of global civilization, but that's where the hope comes in...

In America we like say "freedom isn't free" while we waste trillions on ineffectual wars, but we don't like hearing "freedom isn't free" in cases like this. But you are unfortunately absolutely right, we have to accept that our freedom implies risks.

> How is freedom of speech best defended in the face of unreasonable people who have no limits to what they are prepared to do?

By everyone continuing to utilize their freedom of speech. It's really that simple. The only way to lose is to not make use of your freedom.

Even aside from the blatantly unreasonable people, consider the reasonable people who don't think that you should have that freedom of speech. Demographic trends present in Europe today make eventual change in public policy on the matter an increasingly realistic prospect. This is one of the underlying reasons behind the European right's distress about rising influence of Muslims, and a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment and related intolerance.

It's kind of a new problem: how can a democratic, tolerant society defend both ideals (democracy, tolerance) under these circumstances? And at the same time it does echo back to old conflicts: once upon a time European, Christian states were facing increasing pressure from Arabic, Islamic ones... their solution involved crusades. :/

(No solutions to this problem are hereby offered or endorsed.)

The democratic society has to convert people to a democratic, tolerant viewpoint at something approaching the rate at which people from other backgrounds enter the country. As far as I can see, that's the only thing that can possibly work.

Did you just say "immigrants"?

Many European born people are traveling to Syria to fight for ISIS. They're not being converted by extremist immigrants but by online communities and their extremist non-immigran friends.

Hang on: in england we had blasphemy laws that meant you could not do an equivalent of the mohamed cartoons using christ (those laws have recently gone); and we had racial discrimination laws which meant you could not have an equivalent of the mohamed cartoons using g*d.

It's not some radical muslim fundamentalist conspiracy to extend these protections to muslims.

(I am not saying it's the right thing to do. I think the blasphemy laws should have gone a lot sooner and racial discrimination laws should have been clearer about who was included and what was prohibited).

The UK establishment appears to be side with Christianity being openly mocked (viz a special show on Tim Rice choosing to lead with songs and artists mocking Christianity being scheduled for prime-time Christmas day). In contrast the BBC will not even mention that attacks were perpetrated by muslims [rightly or wrongly] 'in the name of Islam' in news reports.

>you could not do an equivalent of the mohamed cartoons using christ //

Something like Jesus Christ Superstar, Jerry Springer the Opera or The Life of Brian [which have all been featured on the BBC] are pretty closely mocking in the same way as the Jyllands-Posten cartoons; except instead of mocking people they are directly targeted at the subject of Christian worship and respect. An equivalent to the Mohammed cartoons would be something like a cartoon of John the Baptist.

Blasphemy laws haven't been applied here in living memory to "defend" against insult to Christians (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3753408.stm). Speaking about the message of the New Testament of the Bible in public can get your arrested though (eg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...).

Not sure what race discrimination has to do with questions of freedom of conscience and speech though.

Jesus Christ Superstar doesn't mock Christianity or its object of worship and respect. Certainly, its been argued by some as providing a too-sympathetic presentation of Judas Iscariot, and certainly many people don't like the way in which the presentation of the Passion is done (or the creators comments outside of the work portraying Christ as human but not divine), but there is nothing in the work mocking Christ or Christianity.

You've got me, I don't know JCS so well. I've played the main songs on the piano.

The BBC's special used Herod mocking Christ sung by an ardent atheist as the opener to a Christmas day program "They think they've found the new Messiah, And they'll hurt You when they find they're wrong".

That's like doing a feature on Denmark for Eid and opening, just coincidentally of course, with Jyllands-Posten's Mohammed cartoons.

FWIW they followed that with "I Don't Know How To Love Him" which has a strong undercurrent of suggesting an erotic triste between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Then to follow was Judas singing "Jesus Christ, Superstar, Do you think you're what they say you are?" which is a statement of incredulity as much as anything.

Now Tim Rice's music is great and there's a place for Superstar for sure. In general it can be seen as an enquiry but this selection to lead off on Christmas day, to me, was mocking.

Glasgow Council finally approved the showing of Life of Brian in 2009 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8126490...

Being murdered for what you say seems like, if not precisely losing, then being at least removed from the board.

People being murdered is a shame, but the only way that it can stifle freedom of speech is if we let it. Obviously the person(s) murdered lose their ability to exercise that freedom when they're murdered, but the point is to continue pushing forward as a whole. Doing that requires us to all decide to continue to utilize our freedom.

As long as the number of people that choose to exercise their freedom of expression does not fall you are right.

Let's just hope that people do not begin to follow extremist muslim law out of fear for their lives.

There is no muslim (extremist or not) law that encourages these acts, research it. You can tweak any law to do exactly as you wanted to do and that's what those people are doing. The last thing I know about a war (if we put this as a kind of war) is don't cut trees, don't kill non-armed soldier, women, children or old people but they keep beheading people on national television.

Not expressing your freedom of speech in fear of being murdered is definitely what these terrorists want (note the term "terror"-ists).

I think that's unfortunately just the first order aim. The second order is to provoke an even more extreme reaction from the other side which drives wedges and divisions where there were none (or were manageable). Pretty soon everyone is at war.

Not for very long, though, if by "war" you mean war, rather than the sort of half-hearted low-intensity brushfire nonsense of which we've seen so much out of US policymakers for the last couple of decades.

Charb, one of the victims (and maybe the main target) said in 2012: "Je n'ai pas de gosses, pas de femme, pas de voiture, pas de crédit. C'est peut-être un peu pompeux ce que je vais dire, mais je préfère mourir debout que vivre à genoux." ("I have no kids, no wife, no car, no debt. It may sound a tad pompous but I'd rather die standing up than on my knees.")

> By everyone continuing to utilize their freedom of speech. It's really that simple. The only way to lose is to not make use of your freedom.

Do you think normal daily newspapers should print the cartoons? How about KKK cartoon propaganda? How about "With Jews you lose"? http://www.dailystormer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/with-...

I don't really see how this is the same thing. Can you elaborate?

He means that you're either OK with mocking both of them and their faiths, or you hold a different standard for Muslims vs Jews, etc.

Why is it okay to print shitty zero-value cartoons that are anti-Muslim[1] but not print shitty zero-value cartoons that are anti-Jew or anti-other-minority?

[1] and these cartoons are anti-Muslim, pushing ignorance and bigotry.

Charlie Hebdo is not anti-Muslim. It is a satiric paper, and hits on everyone, including Muslims. No one had a special treatment with them.

Source : Am french, and actually read the Charlie Hebdo. You can also check here, for example : http://qz.com/322550/charlie-hebdo-has-had-more-legal-run-in...

A few years ago, Charlie Hebdo fired cartoonist Siné over a relatively innocuous joke about Jean Sarkozy (the son of then president Nicolas Sarkozy) planning to convert to judaism in order to marry into the family of the founders of supermarket chain Darty. Siné's quip was basically a direct quote of a comment by Patrick Gaubert (a personal friend of Nicolas Sarkozy's and the president of LICRA at the time) but since he had added a sarcastic bit to the effect that the young boy would have a bright future, Charlie Hebdo's editor-in-chief decided that it was an unacceptable display of antisemitism and could put the newspaper at risk of lawsuits. Therefore Siné had to be let go.

That's only one example for sure, and things may have been a bit different after Philippe Val left, but I don't think it's fair to say that Charlie was even-handed in the way it targeted its gushes of vitriol, and even less so that they were principled champions of freedom of speech. Like most French people across the whole political spectrum, they were stauch supporters of speech-they-agree-with.

None of this detracts from the horror of what has happened of course. I just thought I would mention that the popular "uncompromising beacon of freedom" narrative might be a bit too simplistic.

This picture (taken from Charlie Hebdo, and drawn by one of the murdered cartoonist) is as "anti-jew" as "anti-muslim". The title says that those two minorities cannot be mocked.

http://www.tuxboard.com/photos/2012/09/Charlie-Hebdo-Intouch...

They drew many anti-catholic pictures, too. They never especially attacked muslims more than other communities.

http://p1.storage.canalblog.com/19/22/177230/100853043.png

Utilizing your freedom of speech doesn't quite stop the murder problem, though. It's not that simple.

We should adopt a very simple policy: the satire will continue until the killings stop.

This puts the onus on the Islamist murderers to stop killing people. When they stop killing people for making fun of them for being religion-addled killers, the number of people making fun of them for being religion-addled murderers will start a long slow decline, until eventually it will, as it were, die away.

Until then, we should all make fun of them for being murderous anti-Bayesians, because they are.

We should also depict the Prophet Muhammad ~0:-{= frequently and with great glee, because offending murderers and defending free speech is way more important than delicately tiptoeing around the sensibilities of the vast majority of Muslims, who are in any case the primary victims of Islamist hatred.

The satire will continue, wether or not the murdering stops. For ever. Because that's the concept of freedom of speech.

Well, that's if freedom of speech continues to be allowed and accepted. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Freedom of Speech has a very bright future.

These attacks are likely to promote freedoms of speech and to slow down people calling for restrictions.

My position used to be one of asking people to consider whether the value of printing a shitty cartoon is worth causing deep offence to very many people. The murders have changed my position to supporting -with caution- the printing of these cartoons.

>the value of printing a shitty cartoon is worth causing deep offence to very many people //

Mostly they're choosing to be offended, they're seeking out something to be offended by. It's a case of "we want to be violent against people who oppose our views, so we'll look and find things we can call offensive and use that to justify murder and violence". It's behaviour that seems very true to the war-lord that inspires it however [as much as that person is depicted in "his" writings/collected sayings].

I'm not talking about extremists but about the vast majority of moderate Muslims.

And it's not just "offence" - this type of material promotes ignorance and fear and it marginalises and already marginalised minority.

The vast majority of muslims surely don't read Charlie Hebdo or similar satirical cartoons - how then can they be offended by them? The offence seemingly lies in society allowing people to hold views contrary to their religion. Even if you kowtow to that desire and implemented sharia in Western Europe there are seemingly enough Sunni and Shia willing to blow one another up that it's not going to prevent violent atrocities in the name of Islam.

I don't understand how such satirising "promotes ignorance and fear" however, can you explain that? Surely the point of satire is cast a critical light on things in order to dispel what the satirist sees as ignorance.

At the risk of a naive/blunt response, "Je Suis Charlie". Exercise your freedom. Throw it in the face of anyone who thinks that fear and threats of violence or ANY means are sufficient to oppress it. Be like those who worked for this paper, and stand against this sort of fearmongering. I see no other way to not do a disservice to the people lost in this.

I don't think technology or psychology is yet sufficiently advanced to be able to stop this stuff altogether.

However horrible it may sound, I think our best course of action is to accept that these things do happen occasionally. That doesn't mean we shouldn't fight them, and that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our best to prevent them, but it does mean that we must accept that we'll never get to 100%.

If we can move forward with the idea that we'll do our best to reduce these attacks as much as possible, rather than with the idea that we'll eliminate them, I think the result will be much better.

As for what to do, I think the combination of smart intelligence (as opposed to NSA-style dragnets) and emergency response (to minimize the effects of attacks after they happen) are the way to go.

Edit: whee, downvotes. If you think I'm wrong, or even just right but insensitive, would you mind explaining yourself instead of (or, heck, in addition to) downvoting? I honestly don't see anything wrong with my comment.

Upvoted, because you make a very important point: I think our best course of action is to accept that these things do happen occasionally.

It is very hard to stop all zealots, especially if they act on their own or in small groups. Trying to extend spying, restraining ourselves in our free speech, starting to hunt down people of a certain religion, etc. will only have the opposite effect: stifling democracy and free speech.

The best reaction is to stay calm and continue to be rational: terrorism exists to instill fear in people. However, looking objectively, the chance of being hurt in a terrorist act is fairly slim in most countries. Especially if the problem is treated well, besides smart intelligence, social improvement: ensuring that kids have a future, talk with them before they radicalize, etc.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're right: absolute security is impossible. Unfortunately, I can already see more "security" laws on the horizon, because lawmakers have to be seen doing something.

I think the chasm we need to cross is accepting that anything "faith based" is an acceptable target of satire. Additionally, I think the satire adds a lot of value in constraining the absurdity.

I don't strictly mean religion here. Among others, politics and political candidates meet the requirements. I think there is a lot of value to satirical political cartoons.

> Also, at a time like this it is important not to forget that the last major terrorist attack in Europe was instigated by a fundamentalist christian norwegian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

Sure. And there were also numerous bombings and attacks in Europe by left-wing extremists during the "years of lead". That said, the difference between Breivik and these guys is just the beard length. Right-wing nutjobs are right-wing nutjobs, whatever their creed.

The difference is that religion didn't play a role in the motivation behind Breivik's attack.

The thing is that on the level of abstraction where 'religion' prompts someone to kill people, it really is rather facetious to consider Breivik any different.

As far as I'm concerned (and others too, judging by the downvotes), his concoction of 'Western-european culture', Christian or not, that led to his actions, is on the same level as this particular case.

Singling out 'religion' as somehow a differentiating factor is like trying to differentiate between Hitler's eradication of gypsies and homosexuals. It serves no purpose other than raising the suspicion that one particularly hates gypsies or homosexuals.

No? He himself claims that it does, in the sense that he sees himself as a Christian crusader defending the european christian monoculture against an islamic invasion. His reason for killing social democrats was that he feels that the party is too supportive of a multicultural society.

That was xenophobia, naionalism, traditionalism, etc.

Those are all aspects of his acts, and the acts of the Islamic State as well. You can't separate religion cleanly from traditionalism for example, because religion is to a large part tradition - it is not a coincidence that sons commonly have the religion of their fathers. The acts of Breivik definitely have a religious component. He dresses like a Knight Templar, he speaks of a crusade, these are all religious in nature.

Upvoted because you have the right to think this, even if is wrong. That is how freedom of speech works...

Downvoting is also an expression of freedom speech. It's quite different from censorship.

I really don't understand the downvotes.

By force of arms. What else is there?

Guns might preserve the freedom of speech of a few people. Words preserve freedom of speech for everyone else.

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

Only when you can't tell the difference between killing and murder.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-angrily-clarifies-dont-...

Trolling web-boards?

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