I think that's a very disingenuous position to take on charlie hebdo. I haven't seen anyone explicitly say they got what they deserved. What I think the people you are talking about are trying to say is that the murders don't retroactively justify/vindicate the islamophobic positions of the paper, rather than the islamophobic content justifying the murders like i don't think those two positions are that easy to confuse. (heyo there mutual btw)
My wording could’ve probably stood to be less harsh, but what I was reacting to was just a couple of things that particularly caught my eye here. Firstly was the sort of…”lopsided” commentary I saw with the reactions to Hebdo compared with other recent tragedies (it’s pretty depressing that there have been enough to have such a variety for comparison). The tumblr reaction I saw in response to, say, Ferguson and NYC were characterized by a lot of focus on the victims, their families, and the suffering involved (as well as the gross injustices of the incidents), which seems very appropriate to me. But the attitude I’m seeing in the wake of the Hebdo massacre seems almost like if right after Eric Garner’s death, people were immediately making the issue about “Well, to be fair, his murder doesn’t justify his illegal cigarette sales”. And I think people are also getting a really skewed idea of what kind of publication Charlie Hebdo is – going by the tumblr commentary, you’d think it was some right-wing hypernationalist rag, and I haven’t seen a single mention of the fact that their most recent issue lampooned the author of an Islamophobic novel, who they characterize as a drug-addled buffoon. Criticize the magazine for occasionally having poor taste, sure (though even their most “Islamophobic” content specifically targeted fundamentalists/extremists, which I think the world would do well to be phobic of), and certainly even for overstepping their bounds and publishing some fairly religiously insensitive stuff, but not for rampant Islamophobia.
Secondly, there’s that fucking insipid comic with that dragon which represents to me the terrifying eagerness with which many tumblr users will defend the restriction of free speech, and attack, mock and belittle those who use free speech as a defense for views that the userbase finds disagreeable. Like, that’s the whole fucking point of free speech, that people can say awful and hateful and sickening things and as long as they’re not explicitly saying to go kill somebody or burn down a building, it’s tolerable. And not because it’s good to hear those things, but because it’s better than going down the dangerous road of cracking down on speech.
Sorry for the stupidly long essay. I’m in an empty store with a lot of time to kill. And glad to hear from you, mutual!
