{"id":68705,"date":"2016-01-11T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=68705"},"modified":"2016-01-10T19:02:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T19:02:40","slug":"where-were-the-post-hebdo-free-speech-crusaders-as-france-spent-the-last-year-crushing-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/01\/where-were-the-post-hebdo-free-speech-crusaders-as-france-spent-the-last-year-crushing-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Were the Post-Hebdo Free Speech Crusaders as France Spent the Last Year Crushing Free Speech?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"glenn<\/a>8 Jan 2016 – <\/em>It\u2019s been almost one year since millions of people \u2014 led by the world\u2019s most repressive tyrants<\/a> \u2014 marched in Paris ostensibly in favor of free speech<\/a>. Since then, the French government \u2014 which led the way trumpeting\u00a0the vital importance of free speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo<\/em>\u00a0killings \u2014 has repeatedly prosecuted people for the political views they expressed, and otherwise exploited terrorism fears to crush civil liberties generally. It has\u00a0done so with barely a peep of protest from most of those throughout the West who waved free speech flags in support of Charlie Hebdo<\/em> cartoonists.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, as I argued at the time<\/a>, many of these newfound free speech crusaders exploiting the Hebdo<\/em>\u00a0killings were not authentic, consistent believers in free speech. Instead, they invoke that principle only in the easiest and most self-serving\u00a0instances: namely, defense of the ideas they support.\u00a0But when people are punished for expressing ideas they hate, they are silent or supportive of that suppression: the very opposite of genuine free speech advocacy.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Dave Higgens\/PA Wire\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Days after the Paris march, the French government arrested<\/a>\u00a0the comedian Dieudonn\u00e9 M\u2019bala M\u2019bala \u201cfor being an \u2018apologist for terrorism\u2019 after suggesting on Facebook that he sympathized with one of the Paris gunmen.\u201d Two months later, he was convicted<\/a>, receiving a suspended two-month jail sentence. In November, on separate charges, he was convicted<\/a> by a Belgian court \u201cfor racist and anti-Semitic comments he made during a show in Belgium\u201d and was given a two month prison term. There were no #JeSuisDieudonn\u00e9 hashtags trending, and it\u2019s almost impossible to find the loudest post-Hebdo<\/em> Free Speech crusaders denouncing the French and Belgian governments for this attack on free expression.<\/p>\n

In the weeks after the Free Speech march, dozens of people in France<\/a> \u201cwere arrested for hate speech or other acts insulting religious faiths, or for cheering the men who carried out the attacks.\u201d The government \u201cordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.\u201d There were no marches in defense of their free speech rights.<\/p>\n

\"latuff-540x287<\/a>In October, France\u2019s highest court upheld the criminal conviction<\/a> of activists who advocate boycotts and sanctions against Israel as a means of ending the occupation. What did these criminals do? They \u201carrived at the supermarket wearing shirts emblazoned with the words: \u2018Long live Palestine, boycott Israel’\u201d and \u201calso handed out fliers that said that \u2018buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.’\u201d Because boycotts against Israel were\u00a0deemed \u201canti-semitic\u201d by the French court, it was a crime to advocate it<\/a>. Where were all the\u00a0post-Hebdo<\/em> crusaders when these 12 individuals were criminally convicted for expressing their political views critical of Israel? Nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

More generally, the French government seized \u201cemergency powers\u201d in the wake of the Paris attack that they originally\u00a0said would last twelve days. It was then extended to three months, and there is now talk, as the deadline approaches, of extending those powers indefinitely or permanently<\/a>. Those powers have been used exactly as one would suspect: to barge into places without warrants where French Muslims gather, shut mosques<\/a> and coffee shops, detain people with no charges, and otherwise abolish basic liberties. They\u2019ve also now been used<\/a>\u00a0beyond the Muslim community,\u00a0against climate activists. If that sort of classic, creeping repression does not anger and upset you, then you may be many things, but a genuine advocate of free expression in France is not one of them.<\/p>\n

\"French<\/a>

French comic Dieudonn\u00e9 M\u2019bala M\u2019bala speaks to the media during a press conference in a theater in Paris, Jan. 11, 2014.\u00a0 Michel Euler\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Even before the Hebdo<\/em> murders, prosecutions in Europe against Muslims for the expression of their political opinions were common, especially when those opinions were critical of Western policy. Indeed, a week before Hebdo<\/em>, I wrote an article<\/a>\u00a0detailing that growing threat to free speech in the U.K, France and throughout the West. Those types of actions \u2014 carried out by the world\u2019s most powerful governments \u2014 were, and remain, the greatest threat to free speech in the West. Yet they receive a tiny fraction of the attention that the Hebdo<\/em> killings did.<\/p>\n

\"france<\/a><\/p>\n

Where were, and where are, all the self-proclaimed free speech advocates about all of that? It was only when anti-Islam cartoons were at issue, and a few Muslims engaged in violence, did they suddenly become animated and passionate about free speech. That\u2019s because\u00a0legitimizing anti-Islam rhetoric and demonizing Muslims was\u00a0their actual cause; free speech was just the pretext.<\/p>\n

In all the many years I\u2019ve worked in defense of free speech, I\u2019ve never seen the principle so blatantly exploited for other ends by people who plainly don\u2019t believe in it as was true of the Hebdo<\/em> killings. It\u00a0was as transparent as it was dishonest. Their actual agenda was illustrated by how they invented a brand new free speech standard specially for that occasion: in order to defend free speech, one must not merely defend the right to express an idea, they decreed, but must embrace the idea\u00a0itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

This newly-minted \u201cprinciple\u201d is, in fact, the exact antithesis of genuine free speech protections. Central to an actual belief in\u00a0free speech rights<\/a> is the view\u00a0that\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>ideas \u2014 those with which one most fervently agrees and those one finds most loathsome\u00a0and everything in between \u2014 are entitled to be expressed and advocated without punishment. The most important and courageous free speech defenses<\/a> have typically come from those who simultaneously expressed\u00a0contempt for an idea while defending the rights of other people to freely express that idea<\/a>. This is the principle that has long defined authentic free speech activism:\u00a0those ideas being expressed are vile, but I will work to defend the right of others to express them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Those who exploited the Hebdo<\/em> murders sought to abolish this vital distinction. They insisted that it was not enough to denounce or condemn those who murdered the Hebdo cartoonists. Instead, they tried to impose a new obligation: one must celebrate and embrace the ideas of the Hebdo cartoonists, support the granting of awards to them, cheer for the substance of their views. Failure to embrace the ideas of Charlie Hebdo<\/em> (rather than just their free speech rights)\u00a0subjected one to accusations \u2014 by the world\u2019s slimiest\u00a0smear artists \u2014 that one was failing to uphold their rights of free expression or, worse, that one sympathized with their killers.<\/p>\n

This cheap bullying tactic \u2014 trying to force\u00a0people not merely to defend Hebdo<\/em>\u2019s free speech rights to but to embrace the ideas being expressed \u2014 has endured to\u00a0this day (but only when it comes to speech critical of Muslims). A full year later,\u00a0it\u2019s still common to hear supporters of Western militarism falsely accuse\u00a0portions of \u201cthe left\u201d of having sanctioned or justified\u00a0the attack on Charlie Hebdo<\/em>\u00a0solely<\/em> on the ground that they refused to\u00a0cheer for the content of\u00a0Hebdo<\/em>\u2019s ideas.<\/p>\n

This accusation is an absolute, demonstrable lie, an obvious slander. I\u2019ve never heard a single person on the left express anything other than revulsion at the mass murder of the Hebdo cartoonists, nor have I ever heard anyone on the left suggest\u00a0that the murders were \u201cdeserved\u201d or that the cartoonists \u201chad it coming.\u201d I certainly did hear, and myself expressed, opposition to the relentless targeting of a marginalized minority in France by Hebdo<\/em> cartoonists (that critique, just by the way, was\u00a0most eloquently expressed by a former Hebdo<\/em> staffer<\/a>, Olivier Cyran: \u201cThe obsessive pounding on Muslims to which [Hebdo<\/em>]\u00a0has devoted itself for more than a decade has had very real effects. It has powerfully contributed to popularising, among \u2018left-wing\u2019 opinion, the idea that Islam is a major \u2018problem\u2019 in French society\u201d). But objections to the substance of an idea quite obviously\u00a0does not denote or even suggest a failure to uphold the rights of free speech for those who express that idea: unless you\u2019re endorsing the noxious, deceitful, entirely novel concept\u00a0that one can only defend the free speech rights of those with whom one agrees.<\/p>\n

But this\u00a0all highlights that free speech was not the principle being upheld here; free speech\u00a0was just a weapon used by some tribalistic Westerners to try to force people into cheering for anti-Islam and anti-Muslim cartoons (not merely the right to publish the cartoons without punishment or violence, but the cartoons themselves).<\/p>\n

And what even more powerfully demonstrates the sham\u00a0at the heart of this post-Hebdo<\/em> spectacle is that before the Paris march, and especially since, there has been a systematic assault on the free speech rights of huge numbers of people in France and throughout the West who are either Muslim and\/or critics of the West or Israel, and the newfound Hebdo<\/em> free speech crusaders have exhibited almost no opposition, and at times tacit or explicit\u00a0support.\u00a0That\u2019s because free speech was their cynical weapon, not their actual belief.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/a>: \u2709glenn.greenwald@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year ago, millions marched in Paris in defense of free speech. Why, then, is the systematic attack on free speech rights in France now ignored?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}