{"id":9543,"date":"2015-01-11T16:42:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T16:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9543"},"modified":"2015-01-11T16:42:13","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T16:42:13","slug":"pascharlie-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/pascharlie-2\/","title":{"rendered":"#PasCharlie 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paris\"<\/a>Cross-posted<\/a> on the Corner (yesterday):<\/p>\n

Tomorrow Paris will play host to a march designed to show France\u2019s unity in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Je suis Charlie. Nous sommes Charlie. La France est Charlie.<\/p>\n

Under the banner of Tous Unis! (All United!), France\u2019s Socialist government has called for a show of national unity after three days of bloodshed that were felt as a direct blow to the republican values of libert\u00e9, egalit\u00e9, fraternit\u00e9.<\/p>\n

On Sunday David Cameron and Angela Merkel, as well as the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, president Matteo Renzi of Italy and the Spanish premier, Mariano Rajoy \u2013 30 world leaders in all \u2013 will take part in one of the most significant public occasions in the history of post-war France\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Guardian<\/em> continues:<\/p>\n

While almost everyone is Charlie when it comes to defending the fundamental values of the French republic, there is less unity when it comes to dealing with threats to those values.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everyone is Charlie?<\/p>\n

No, everyone is not<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And the French state most definitely is not.<\/p>\n

Writing <\/a>for the Washington Post<\/em>, Jonathan Turley argues (my emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Indeed, if the French want to memorialize those killed at Charlie Hebdo, they could start by rescinding their laws criminalizing speech that insults, defames or incites hatred, discrimination or violence on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sex or sexual orientation. These laws have been used to harass the satirical newspaper and threaten its staff for years. Speech has been conditioned on being used \u201cresponsibly\u201d in France, suggesting that it is more of a privilege than a right for those who hold controversial views\u2026.<\/p>\n

The cases have been wide-ranging and bizarre. In 2008, for example, Brigitte Bardot was convicted for writing a letter to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy about how she thought Muslims and homosexuals were ruining France. In 2011, fashion designer John Galliano was found guilty of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris cafe. In 2012, the government criminalized denial of the Armenian genocide (a law later overturned by the courts, but Holocaust denial remains a crime). In 2013, a French mother was sentenced for \u201cglorifying a crime\u201d after she allowed her son, named Jihad, to go to school wearing a shirt that said \u201cI am a bomb.\u201d Last year, Interior Minister Manuel Valls moved to ban performances by comedian Dieudonn\u00e9 M\u2019Bala M\u2019Bala, declaring that he was \u201cno longer a comedian\u201d but was rather an \u201canti-Semite and racist.\u201d It is easy to silence speakers who spew hate or obnoxious words, but censorship rarely ends with those on the margins of our society\u2026<\/p>\n

Recently, speech regulation in France has expanded into non-hate speech, with courts routinely intervening in matters of opinion. For example, last year, a French court fined blogger Caroline Doudet and ordered her to change a headline to reduce its prominence on Google \u2014 for her negative review of a restaurant.<\/p>\n

While France long ago got rid of its blasphemy laws, there is precious little difference for speakers and authors in prosecutions for defamation or hate speech. There may also be little difference perceived by extremists, like those in Paris, who mete out their own justice for speech the government defines as a crime. To them, this is only a matter of degree in responding to what the government has called unlawful provocations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And as Turley points out, it\u2019s not just France:<\/p>\n

The French, of course, have not been alone in rolling back protections on free speech. Britain, Canada and other nations have joined them. We have similar rumblings here in the United States. In 2009, the Obama administration shockingly supported Muslim allies trying to establish a new international blasphemy standard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And ask yourself this: What would have been the reaction on an American campus, Brandeis<\/a> say, or Yale<\/a>, if (before this week) some of its students had retweeted some of those Charlie Hebdo covers or, maybe, horrors, invited the magazine\u2019s now murdered editor, St\u00e9phane Charbonnier, to speak?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on the Corner (yesterday): Tomorrow Paris will play host to a march designed to show France\u2019s unity in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The Guardian explains: Je suis Charlie. Nous sommes Charlie. La France est Charlie. Under … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,711],"tags":[51,1108,456,50,804],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9543"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9546,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543\/revisions\/9546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}