
New extremely offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoon - iofj
https://twitter.com/sunny_hundal/status/687307040243511296
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DanBC
The point of Charlie Hebdo is to cause offence. They do this by pushing
buttons - holocaust denial, anti semitism, sexism, racism, etc.

If you hate that then paying any attention to them at all is probably the
wrong tactic.

EDIT: Although some of the tweets pointing out that it's about the press
hypocrisy (lots of sorrow for dead children; condemning all male migrants as
rapists) have a good point.

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flashm
Interesting. From my pov, it's just making a satirical statement. But I expect
a lot of others will get a bee in their bonnet.

I don't think you can really do anything these days without someone taking
offense, so you might as well just crack on with things.

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dogma1138
The brawl in the following tweets tells more about this than the actual
cartoon. Apparently calling people "dickheads" and "idiots" on twitter is the
norm these days...

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kushti
Offensive for who? Let's try to avoid double-standards here. Mohammed images
were offensive for many people in the world as well, but West protected it. So
if the images were okay, this one should be protected in the same way.

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DanBC
To try to expand this a bit more, because Americans don't always understand
Europe's limited version of freedom of speech.

In some EU countries holocaust denial is banned. Or anti-semitism is banned
under race discrimination hate speech law. Or blasphemy[1] is banned. But that
leaves a gap for hate speech against Muslims - they're not a racial group and
they're not Christian, so there was nothing preventing for example the
Mohammed cartoons.

So when Muslims protest the cartoons often they're not asking for much,
they're just asking for something similar to what Jews and Christians have, or
they're asking for the protections that Jews and Christians have to be
relaxed.

In the context of the EU where freedom of speech is already limited that claim
is not bizarre or out of place. Personally I'd want countries to remove some
of the laws (eg, the blasphemy laws got dropped in England) rather than adding
nebulous anti-Muslim hate speech to the law.

[1] EG, "Life of Brian" was banned from Glasgow cinemas for years because
blasphemy; the comedian Stewart Lee went through a very expensive legal case
for "Jerry Springer the Opera".

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dogma1138
I think you are confusing most of Europe with the UK. Most of Europe has
freedom of speech which goes far beyond what is offered in the UK.

The only country where Holocaust denying is out right banned is Germany beyond
that only France has a law that specifically protects against antisemitism.

And sorry but Muslims have way way more "freedom" as far as saying and doing
shit goes, you virtually cannot criticize immigrants or Muslims in the current
political climate in most European countries until a situation boils over and
blows up into public rage.

People especially in the public sector are so afraid from being marked as
racists that they try to cover up pretty much every possible scandal that
involves Immigrants/Muslims until it blows up completely.

You can have the figures from the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and many other
"controversial" organizations freely go about and preach pretty much genocide
as long as they substitute Jews with Zionists.

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pfg
> The only country where Holocaust denying is out right banned is Germany
> beyond that only France has a law that specifically protects against
> antisemitism.

It's actually 14 European nations according to Wikipedia. Some have more
generalized genocide-denial-laws.

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dogma1138
Aren't those under the wide banner of European Union Framework Decision for
Combating Racism and Xenophobia? It seems that the only prosecutions regarding
it are pretty much exclusively related to France and Germany/Austria.

I do find these laws silly tho genocide denial should not be criminalized it
only gives it legitimacy and vigor.

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mavdi
A quick look at the follow up tweets and I'm glad I'm out of Twitter.

