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“I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.”
That maxim of Voltaire was among those most invoked by the marching millions in Sunday’s mammoth “Je Suis Charlie” rally in Paris.
This week, in the spirit of Voltaire, French authorities arrested and charged Cameroonian comedian Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala, and 54 others, with “hate speech.”
Yes, Monsieur Voltaire, there are limits to free speech in France.
Dieudonne’s crime? He tweeted, “I am Charlie Coulibaly,” the last name of the killer of four innocent Jews in that kosher market.
A wounding wicked remark.
And what are now the limits of free speech in France?
Prime Minister Manuel Vals lists four. “There is a fundamental difference between the freedom to be impertinent and anti-Semitism, racism, glorification of terrorist acts, and Holocaust denial, all of which are crimes, that justice should punish with the most severity.”
Vals’ list brings to mind another quote of Voltaire’s, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Why did Vals not include slanders against Catholicism and Islam, the world’s largest religions, both of which have been repeatedly insulted by Charlie Hebdo? In the banlieues north of Paris, they wish to know.
Pope Francis himself said yesterday, “You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. … If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch.”
Is our new Pope offering preemptive dispensations to Catholics who sock those who mock their faith? That’s pre-Vatican II thinking.
Back to Vals’ list. Who decides what is “anti-Semitism” and what is “racism”? In America, these terms are tossed around with abandon.
As for the “glorification of terrorist acts,” Israel’s Menachem Begin, the ANC’s Nelson Mandela, and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat were all credibly charged with acts of terrorism in their liberation struggles.
And all three won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Millions of Algerians reside in France. Is it impermissible for them to celebrate the FLN in Algeria and the often-terrible deeds that won their independence? Algerians did not fight the French in stand-up battles, but rather with bombs in cafes and movie theaters.
Did not the maquisards and French Resistance, during and after the Nazi occupation, exact savage reprisals, of which some in France are today ashamed?
Who decides which historical events are off-limits for debate?
Even before the Paris march, Vals had declared “war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity.”
But does not the renewed publication of cartoons that insult the Prophet undermine the fraternity and solidarity of French Muslims, Christians and secularists in Val’s war on terrorism?
Has Charlie Hebdo really helped to unite the West and the Islamic world in the “war … against jihadism, against radical Islam”? Or has it divided us?
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, our ally who ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, killed hundreds, and imprisoned thousands, just issued a decree allowing him to ban foreign publications offensive to Islam.
Why might President Sissi regard Charlie Hebdo as toxic?
According to a 2013 Pew Poll, 80 percent of Egyptians favor the stoning of adulterers and 88 percent the death penalty for apostates.
The figures are comparable for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Across the Middle East, majorities favor the adoption of sharia law. Many support beheadings, stonings, the lash and amputations of limbs for lesser offenses.
What does these polls tell us?
First, if we insist that freedom of the press means standing behind the blasphemies of Charlie Hebdo, we should anticipate the hatred and hostility of majorities in the Islamic world to whom faith and family are everything — and our First Amendment is nothing.
Second, the idea that, by sending armies of Americans into that part of the world for a decade or two, we could convert these peoples, steeped in a 1,500-year-old faith, to share our embrace of religious, cultural and moral pluralism and secularism was utopian madness.
Third, as Islamic peoples grow in number and militancy, while the peoples of Europe age and pass on, and the migrants continue to come from the Maghreb and Middle East, Europe will have to adapt to Muslim demands or face endless civil and cultural conflict on the Old Continent.
The moral befuddlement in France mirrors that of the West.
In welcoming the return to the newsstands of Charlie Hebdo, with a cartoon mocking the Prophet on its cover, President Hollande said, “You can murder men and women, but you can never kill their ideas.”
True. And anti-Islamism is an idea. As is the “radical Islam” against which France has declared war.
And which of the two ideas appears today to have more adherents willing not only to march for it on Sundays, but to die for it?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”
Copyright 2015 Creators.com.
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“Prime Minister Manuel Vals lists four. “There is a fundamental difference between the freedom to be impertinent and anti-Semitism, racism, glorification of terrorist acts, and Holocaust denial, all of which are crimes, that justice should punish with the most severity.”
This was a nice clear statement by Valls of what now counts as Blasphemy in France and throughout the West. Here in Britain Labour abolished the crime of Blasphemy against the Church of England while establishing broad speech-crime laws that are used to imprison those who criticise homosexuality or make racist tweets. Nick Griffin of the BNP was even prosecuted for criticising the Pakistani grooming/rape gangs, before they became common knowledge.
Mr. Buchanan: I am a life long admirer and agree completely with what you have written and implied here but you need a new copy editor. (“What does these polls tell us?”!!!)
Voltaire had it right. Yes, Charlie Hebdo staff are despicable. They pretend to be insulting to all religions, while actually giving preferential treatment to Jews and leftism. And even if they were the equal-opportunity offenders they pretend to be, they’d still be a nasty bunch.
But without a wide array of nasty bunches proving that we have free speech, how else are we going to know?
Jews seem to be the primary beneficiaries of two of those exceptions. Interesting, no? The rest are non-whites, foreigners, and leftist thought.
The French place a very low priority on Liberty, it’s as simple as that.
Dieudonne didn’t post “I am Charlie Coulibaly”, he wrote “Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly” which means more “I feel like Charlie C. ” or “I am made to feel like” . . .a kind of ambiguous reference to the way the French state was treating him, before this post. I think the ambiguity was probably intentional, because Dieudonne is kind of a trickster, but he surely didn’t write “I am Charlie Coulibaly” and almost certainly is too smart to have done that.
All this discussion is basically a misdirection of attention. Properly understood, the Charlie hebdo incident has nothing to do with either Islam or “free speech”. See: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/examining-key-premises-in-je-suis.html
“That maxim of Voltaire“, Mr. Buchanan writes.
Well, that maxim was attributed to Voltaire long after his death. But, of course, it is no more an authenticated part of Voltaire’s actual published work than “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph” was of Burke’s, or “believe not in nothing but in anything” was of Chesterton’s.
Surprised that copy-editors didn’t catch the original slip. Still, if Homer nodded, then presumably rare and brief attacks of somnolence hampered Homer’s proofreaders too. Otherwise, a fascinating, tough-minded, tender-hearted, and admirable article.
Pat, you’re a mix of excellent insights & myopia.
“Pope Francis himself said yesterday, “You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. … If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch”
This pope is pre-Vatican II in ‘deed’ (despite any dissembling to the contrary)
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/01/16/opus-dei-christian-dominion/
Not that you’d like the facts. But then no one should.
I note the pope specified mocking the faith of ‘others’ .. in which case he should have no problem with anyone originating with European Christian culture mocking his religion and here’s my short contribution:
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/01/11/who-punked-the-cardinal/
About the radical Islam thing … would you have settled for a peaceful world of Islam that was socialist?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/who-should-be-blamed-for-muslim-terrorism/
^ “In the last five decades, around 10 million Muslims have been murdered because their countries did not serve the Empire, or did not serve it full-heartedly, or just were in the way. The victims were Indonesians, Iraqis, Algerians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and the citizens of Mali, Somalia, Bahrain and many other countries”
^ a result of the ‘cold war’ entirely too many Americans are proud of having ‘won’ (without considering the consequence.) Life were never simple, eh?
Yes, the quote was not Voltaire, but why didn’t you say who actually came up with that observation?
His name is Kevin A. Strom.
For some moron like Holllande or Cameron , everything is always De Novo ,always free will and there is no causality and everything is so sudden that they are blindsided or jerked out of their toilet seats forcing them fall flat on their faces .
From http://www.atimes.com 3/9/11 “Robert Fisk, the well-known chronicler of Middle Eastern affairs for the Independent newspaper of London, wrote a sensational dispatch on Monday that the Obama administration had sought help from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for secretly ferrying American weapons to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi, for which Riyadh would pick up the tab so that the White House would need no accountability to the US Congress and leave no traceable trail to Washington.
The moral depravity of the move – chartering the services of an autocrat to further the frontiers of democracy – underscores Obama’s obsessive desire to camouflage any US unilateral intervention in Libya with “deniability” at all costs. ”
CNN at one time briefly alluded to this rogue operations
Some of these goons with some of these arms are so damned undomesticated untamed animals!