Yet such is the febrile climate in which we live today, that what began as a local dispute over some drawings in Scandinavian newspapers of which few had ever heard has escalated into a global dispute, with everybody from the secretary-general of the United Nations to the American and British governments feeling it necessary to get involved.” — Mick Hume (Spiked)
Hume argues that Western societies encourage “all manner of groups to seek special status by defining themselves as victims and developing a heightened sense of grievance… Being offended or excluded in some way becomes a shortcut to claiming moral authority and demanding apologies and redress…” Hume suggests that the cartoons — admittedly offensive but obscure — were a convenient target for those looking for an occasion to become outraged.
And the protests have drawn their strength from the defensive reactions of the West. The reprinting of the cartoons in other European media, spun as arising from solidarity with the Danish paper, is less a principled stand on behalf of free speech than “another claim for victim status, this time on behalf of journalists.”
The opposing stance in the West, that of a politically correct condemnation of the offensiveness of the caricature, on the other hand, gives legitimacy to the protestors and actually fans the flames. Freedom of speech is not true freedom if only inoffensive speech is free, although on the other hand freedom does not oblige us to offend at any opportunity. Hume attempts to draw some distinctions, which I think don’t really work, about when it is worthwhile to be offensive, as opposed to merely frivolous or gratuitous: “For us, the right to be offensive is about the freedom to express ideas and opinions in which you believe, regardless of whether they offend existing orthodoxies or sensibilities. Cartoons like these, however, simply seem to cause offence as an end in itself.” In a sense, if we are to defend as fundamental the right of others to say things we do not like, far be it for us to judge if they are “just to offend” or said from conviction.
Islamic protestors have frequently drawn a contrast between the European toleration or (as it is viewed in more paranoid circles) encouragement of the anti-Muslim cartoons and the taboo against expressions of anti-Semitism. In the West, restriction of free speech, as e.g. prosecution of hate speech, has often been based on the principle that certain speech crosses the line to become action (“crying ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater”). The history of persecution of Jews, including the West, means that anti-Semitic speech credibly creates a present danger of inciting violence. Especially in a society in which disenfranchised people seek opportunities to parlay trumped-up charges of victimhood into the advantages of the aggrieved, attempting to apply that litmus test seems worthwhile. I hope I am not being ethnocentric in saying that I am not sure the ridiculous Danish cartoons pass the test. I am closer to feeling, however, that some of the Islamic reaction does.
Related: “Iran’s largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.” (news.com.au)
