Tuesday, March 14, 2006
The Jyllands-Posten Cartoons
There have been no posts on Zoo Station about the ongoing Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, but this has not been for lack of interest. Indeed, over recent weeks a few friends of mine, who also happen to be regular readers of and occasional contributors to ZS, have been exchanging dozens of emails on the issue. I wrote the following essay as part of this email thread, and Reuben suggested I post it on his blog.
Background reading for those who haven't been following the story in full glorious Technicolor: Wikipedia has a typically comprehensive article with a detailed timeline. The Economist's summary of events is shorter but still very informative. On the op-ed side of things, the Economist and Slate talk about the importance of free speech, while Abbas Raza seeks to understand the point of view of the protesters. Svend White provides some background on Danish society, Tabish Khair speaks up on behalf of moderate Muslims, and Lindsay Beyerstein points out the role of xenophobic opportunists (on both sides of the debate) in inflaming the issue. The web has many many more articles on the controversy; if you want more, Google is your friend.
The email thread that I mentioned above started with the news that David Irving, a particularly loathsome revisionist historian, had been sentenced by an Austrian court to three years in prison for the crime of denying the Holocaust. I found it telling that the European press, many of whose members lost no time in reprinting the Muhammad cartoons in the name of 'freedom of expression', were curiously shy about defending Mr. Irving's right to the same freedom. A respondent put forth a number of explanations why this was not an unreasonable stance: Europe's unique history with anti-Semitism; the difference between objective facts and subjective reporting; the difference between text (which states), and cartoons (which merely suggest); and so on. This prompted my essay in reply, which begins now.
Since a lot of the discussion to date has focused on freedom of expression, I'm going to start by laying out my own view on that subject. I believe that freedom of expression is an absolute. No ifs, no buts. No exceptions for any reason whatsoever. So, the J-P folks have every right to publish inflammatory cartoons, and David Irving has every right to deny the holocaust, and Mariah Carey has every right to sing. I may not like any of the above expressions, but that's neither here nor there; the right of the J-P editors, Irving and Carey to express themselves freely trumps my personal likes or dislikes.
[Mind you, just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you have to do it. Amit raised a similar point in a private email about 'etiquette' being necessary to the smooth functioning of civil society. That's why it's called civil society.]
So what about instances like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre? Well, I'm going to take an absolutist stance, and say that even that action, irresponsible though it is, should be protected by freedom of expression. No exceptions, remember? BUT, and this is important, I think there are other laws that can be brought to bear here: 'reckless endangerment' springs to mind. Similarly, someone who incites an angry mob to lynch an innocent victim may have his expression protected, but could (and should) be prosecuted for 'culpable homicide'. And so on.
[Sameer suggested something similar, with his notion of separate laws addressing free expression, property damage, and being accessory to or inciting said property damage.]
For this reason I strongly disagree with the Austrian law banning holocaust denial per se (i.e., banning it as an explicit exception to freedom of expression). Martin's Belgian officemate says that in Belgium, holocaust denial falls under the category of 'treason', which seems like a better approach: penalizing the offense on grounds orthogonal to the issue of freedom of expression. (In the interests of full disclosure, I also have to say I'm deeply uncomfortable with the entire notion of 'treason' as an actionable crime, in this day and age. But maybe that's just me).
Clearly, this is just one (fairly libertarian) take on the issue of freedom of expression. I happily concede that there are other equally coherent or at any rate justifiable views on the subject. Having cleared up where I stand, however, let's move on and ask, what does freedom of expression have to do with the J-P cartoon controversy? The answer: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
This, to me, is the most annoying aspect of the J-P case: the way it has become conflated with the issue of freedom of expression. Utter nonsense, of course; the Muslims who protested against the cartoons were not protesting freedom of expression, they were protesting the insulting depiction of their faith in the said cartoons. This is no different from the NAACP or the ADL protesting outside the offices of the National Vanguard newspaper, or pro-life groups protesting outside clinics that distribute abortion literature.
Yes, some of the above-mentioned protests have occasionally spilled over into violence, and the perpetrators of this violence should be (or should have been) brought to book. No question about that. But none of these protests were against freedom of expression per se. Nobody argues that pro-life protesters are "fundamentally incompatible with western values of freedom of expression" [sic], yet that was precisely the argument made with respect to the Muslim protesters. The western media almost universally interpreted the J-P protests as a freedom of expression issue -- which it wasn't.
And now we come to David Irving. To my way of thinking, Irving's conviction of the 'crime' of holocaust denial is a greater threat to freedom of expression than the Muslim protests against the J-P cartoons, simply because in Irving's case it was a government that curtailed his expression. And government intervention into free expression, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to be far more pernicious (in the long run) than private protests. What's justified as 'protection of minority rights' or 'prevention of treason' today could just as easily turn into mere authoritarianism tomorrow; this is the slippery slope we stand upon.
Even from a purely consequentialist standpoint (the 'other laws' such as reckless endangerment that I mention above), I think it's clear that Irving's holocaust denial was likely to cause far less damage to society as a whole than the J-P cartoons. Irving has been publishing nutty articles for ages, and by and large people have learned to ignore him. The J-P cartoons, on the other hand, were self-avowedly provocative in nature, at a time when relations between Europe's Muslims and Christians are fraught, to say the least.
Now, as I stated before, I think Irving should have the right to deny the holocaust, if that's what he wants to do. Likewise, the J-P editors should have the right to publish inflammatory cartoons, if that's what they want to do. And I should have the right to protest both Irving and the J-P, if that's what I want to do. But, and here's the crux: if the European newspapers are going to interpret the J-P protests as attacks on freedom of expression, then they should do the same for the Irving sentence. If anything, as I have argued above, the Irving sentence was a worse assault on freedom of expression than the J-P protests. Yet the European media's defence of Irving's freedom to write what he wants was conspicuous by its absence. This, I claim, is a clear example of double standards, and I have yet to see an argument to convince me otherwise.
Background reading for those who haven't been following the story in full glorious Technicolor: Wikipedia has a typically comprehensive article with a detailed timeline. The Economist's summary of events is shorter but still very informative. On the op-ed side of things, the Economist and Slate talk about the importance of free speech, while Abbas Raza seeks to understand the point of view of the protesters. Svend White provides some background on Danish society, Tabish Khair speaks up on behalf of moderate Muslims, and Lindsay Beyerstein points out the role of xenophobic opportunists (on both sides of the debate) in inflaming the issue. The web has many many more articles on the controversy; if you want more, Google is your friend.
The email thread that I mentioned above started with the news that David Irving, a particularly loathsome revisionist historian, had been sentenced by an Austrian court to three years in prison for the crime of denying the Holocaust. I found it telling that the European press, many of whose members lost no time in reprinting the Muhammad cartoons in the name of 'freedom of expression', were curiously shy about defending Mr. Irving's right to the same freedom. A respondent put forth a number of explanations why this was not an unreasonable stance: Europe's unique history with anti-Semitism; the difference between objective facts and subjective reporting; the difference between text (which states), and cartoons (which merely suggest); and so on. This prompted my essay in reply, which begins now.
Since a lot of the discussion to date has focused on freedom of expression, I'm going to start by laying out my own view on that subject. I believe that freedom of expression is an absolute. No ifs, no buts. No exceptions for any reason whatsoever. So, the J-P folks have every right to publish inflammatory cartoons, and David Irving has every right to deny the holocaust, and Mariah Carey has every right to sing. I may not like any of the above expressions, but that's neither here nor there; the right of the J-P editors, Irving and Carey to express themselves freely trumps my personal likes or dislikes.
[Mind you, just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you have to do it. Amit raised a similar point in a private email about 'etiquette' being necessary to the smooth functioning of civil society. That's why it's called civil society.]
So what about instances like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre? Well, I'm going to take an absolutist stance, and say that even that action, irresponsible though it is, should be protected by freedom of expression. No exceptions, remember? BUT, and this is important, I think there are other laws that can be brought to bear here: 'reckless endangerment' springs to mind. Similarly, someone who incites an angry mob to lynch an innocent victim may have his expression protected, but could (and should) be prosecuted for 'culpable homicide'. And so on.
[Sameer suggested something similar, with his notion of separate laws addressing free expression, property damage, and being accessory to or inciting said property damage.]
For this reason I strongly disagree with the Austrian law banning holocaust denial per se (i.e., banning it as an explicit exception to freedom of expression). Martin's Belgian officemate says that in Belgium, holocaust denial falls under the category of 'treason', which seems like a better approach: penalizing the offense on grounds orthogonal to the issue of freedom of expression. (In the interests of full disclosure, I also have to say I'm deeply uncomfortable with the entire notion of 'treason' as an actionable crime, in this day and age. But maybe that's just me).
Clearly, this is just one (fairly libertarian) take on the issue of freedom of expression. I happily concede that there are other equally coherent or at any rate justifiable views on the subject. Having cleared up where I stand, however, let's move on and ask, what does freedom of expression have to do with the J-P cartoon controversy? The answer: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
This, to me, is the most annoying aspect of the J-P case: the way it has become conflated with the issue of freedom of expression. Utter nonsense, of course; the Muslims who protested against the cartoons were not protesting freedom of expression, they were protesting the insulting depiction of their faith in the said cartoons. This is no different from the NAACP or the ADL protesting outside the offices of the National Vanguard newspaper, or pro-life groups protesting outside clinics that distribute abortion literature.
Yes, some of the above-mentioned protests have occasionally spilled over into violence, and the perpetrators of this violence should be (or should have been) brought to book. No question about that. But none of these protests were against freedom of expression per se. Nobody argues that pro-life protesters are "fundamentally incompatible with western values of freedom of expression" [sic], yet that was precisely the argument made with respect to the Muslim protesters. The western media almost universally interpreted the J-P protests as a freedom of expression issue -- which it wasn't.
And now we come to David Irving. To my way of thinking, Irving's conviction of the 'crime' of holocaust denial is a greater threat to freedom of expression than the Muslim protests against the J-P cartoons, simply because in Irving's case it was a government that curtailed his expression. And government intervention into free expression, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to be far more pernicious (in the long run) than private protests. What's justified as 'protection of minority rights' or 'prevention of treason' today could just as easily turn into mere authoritarianism tomorrow; this is the slippery slope we stand upon.
Even from a purely consequentialist standpoint (the 'other laws' such as reckless endangerment that I mention above), I think it's clear that Irving's holocaust denial was likely to cause far less damage to society as a whole than the J-P cartoons. Irving has been publishing nutty articles for ages, and by and large people have learned to ignore him. The J-P cartoons, on the other hand, were self-avowedly provocative in nature, at a time when relations between Europe's Muslims and Christians are fraught, to say the least.
Now, as I stated before, I think Irving should have the right to deny the holocaust, if that's what he wants to do. Likewise, the J-P editors should have the right to publish inflammatory cartoons, if that's what they want to do. And I should have the right to protest both Irving and the J-P, if that's what I want to do. But, and here's the crux: if the European newspapers are going to interpret the J-P protests as attacks on freedom of expression, then they should do the same for the Irving sentence. If anything, as I have argued above, the Irving sentence was a worse assault on freedom of expression than the J-P protests. Yet the European media's defence of Irving's freedom to write what he wants was conspicuous by its absence. This, I claim, is a clear example of double standards, and I have yet to see an argument to convince me otherwise.
