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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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