Westergaard probably planted the axe, too
A commentator at Comment is Free explains about the axe-attack on Kurt Westergaard the other day.
It was the latest in a string of attempted attacks that can be traced directly to the offence caused by Westergaard’s cartoons for Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.
Unbelievable, isn’t it? A guy with an axe broke into Westergaard’s house and made an earnest effort to chop him up with it, and Nancy Graham Holm is pointing the finger of blame at Westergaard. For drawing a cartoon.
Why did the editors of Jyllands-Posten want to mock Islam in this way? Some of us believed it was in bad taste and also cruel. Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act. As a journalist now living in the same town as Westergaard, I thought some at Jyllands-Posten had acted like petulant adolescents. Danes fail to perceive the fact that they have developed a society deeply suspicious of religion. This is the real issue between Denmark and Muslim extremists, not freedom of speech. The free society precept is merely an attempt to give the perpetrators the moral high ground when actually it is a smokescreen for a deeply rooted prejudice, not against Muslims, but against religion per se. Muslims are in love with their faith. And many Danes are suspicious of anyone who loves religion.
So the real villains here are the cruel heartless Danes who are not charmed by religion. The guy with the axe is just an understandably upset victim of the horrible secular Danes, who don’t share his tender erotic love for Islam.
Now the Danes won’t back down and the few but fatally insane radical extremists will continue the fight…This time, Westergaard’s attacker was caught – but someone else is out there waiting for an opportunity to strike again.
Because the Danes won’t back down, which they ought to do, because these people with the axes are so reasonable and fair and modest in their demands. All the Danes have to do is apologize for something one newspaper did and promise never to do it again. A mere nothing! It’s so simple – there are these maniacs saying ‘we want to kill you and we’re going to do it’ and if only everyone apologizes to them, everything will be all right. Can’t you see that? Of course you can. Just lie down – there you go – close your eyes – hands together, like that, that’s right – is that too loose?
But really. What a disgusting piece.
I don’t know exactly why – there are plenty of stupid people being published all the time – but this piece really makes you want to take a shower just for having read it.
Does she happen to know the opinions of Westergaard’s would-be murderers on the subject of women being allowed to express their views in public?
Because this one is even more stupid and slavish than the usual stuff that gets published all the time. It affected CisF readers the same way, so it’s not just us.
Also I suppose because Kurt Westergaard is 74 years old; he drew an ordinary political cartoon for a newspaper, and did it rather well; he had a guy with an axe break into his house and try hard to murder him. It does indeed make me feel dirty to read someone blaming him.
You may have seen commenter “Cartomancer” over at the Dawkins site put his finger on how the waters are being muddied on this issue. The bottom line is: how dare anyone even mention drawing a cartoon and trying to kill someone in a way that suggests one might be an acceptable counterweight to the other?
Anyone who’s ever been to school knows that a bully expects everyone to take what he dishes out, while dishing it out at the slightest provocation. He creates fear of himself by reacting disproportionately; his victims tiptoe around him in order not to unleash a firestorm.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, I must go and bandage some Muslim victims of the latest Jewish riots provoked by antisemitic cartoons in the Arab press…
I always like to listen to Pat Condell right after such a comment, especially his “Free Speech is Sacred” video, where he makes freedom his religion and claims his right to be offended: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzTA_D5NpU
You’re right, Patrick, it’s a great video, but I save myself the effort of listening again by having internalised the message.
We are the offended party and we act with a restraint that none of the dogma-mongers can match. Easy, isn’t it? Invent a set of crazy rules and then get angry and violent at anyone who won’t play your game. How dare any religions claim offence while maintaining and living by “sacred” texts that condemn or demean great swathes of humanity just for being what they are (or are not)?
Society has spent centuries conditioning non-believers to feel inferior or morally worthless just because they can’t buy into the fairy tales. If many of us are “angry” (“angry atheist” meaning something completely different in practice than “angry religious fanatic,” as we all know), it may just be because it’s really sinking in that we are actually the opposite of the way society wants us to be seen and that society, not us, is the problem that needs fixing.
Hmph. I’m reading the comments at Dawkins’s place but it’s such a damn locker room there – the piece is by a woman so of course it’s bitch this and cunt that and twat the other. I really hate the locker room vibe. And they think they’re so cute, too.
I’m not going after them with an axe – but I think they’re jerks.
I don’t know whether it’s just one or not – this is a bit of what I meant a while back when I made comparisons about what goes on at different comment threads (over 130 so far at Dawkins on this CiF piece, while mine will probably be #8 here) – but I find it lazy to use an epithet rather than an argument. Holm may be both stupid and a woman, but that doesn’t mean that an anti-female jibe is the most appropriate to use on her. I think she doesn’t match up to standards that I hold basic to human beings in general, by siding with a throng of violent aggressors against a single irritant within his rights who could just as easily be ignored by that throng (why isn’t Jesus and Mo subject to this kind of reaction? why does hardly anyone mention that PZ nailed his wafer to a page of the Koran before throwing it in the trash?).
I think there’s a reason those with verbal skills are making our headlines for us and not the average blog commenter. An insult doesn’t demolish an argument; a better argument does (maybe Hitchens is the expert at combining the two, though you’re no slouch yourself).
The title says it all – “Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism”. OOOOH that’s rich…well, I need to go dry off from my shower.
Oh, I’m steaming mad over at Dawkins’ place. Don’t abandon it, Ophelia; we need more women like you standing up to that bullshit. I just left my comment here .
Aside from that, I’m really disturbed at one of the regulars there, Steve Zara, who seems to me to be putting (alleged) conversational rudeness on an ethical par with murder attempts. He doesn’t mean to, but his (I’m sorry, I know how it sounds) nicey-nice liberal knee-jerk sympathies seem to be blinding him to Holms’ ethically bankrupt article. I say this as a liberal myself.
I’d appreciate someone else’s read on my comments in that thread referenced above.
Reminds me of Propaghandi’s musings in “Religulous” about Salman Rushdie. It made me throw up in my mouth just a little bit.
“no-one was “offended” at all for several months, until some muslim enthusiasts decided (very belatedly) to make a deliberate issue of said cartoons.”
And added some extra images to make sure they (the enthusiasts) managed to offend people who hadn’t been offended by just the real images on their own.
“And they think they’re so cute, too.”
Yeah, hahaha. They’re all like “woo” and “bababababa!”. /fry-from-fururama
Thanks for the backup Josh. How depressing – people one would expect to know better, positively wallowing in their own sexist moronism. Someone said Richard once even told off a woman who protested the rampant sexism – is that true?! Jeezis.
Jerry Coyne rebukes sexism at his place, he certainly doesn’t rebuke women who protest it.
Stewart it’s not just lazy, it’s sexist, or racist or straightist etc as the case may be. -Ist epithets are just not a good thing.
Ophelia – I have no knowledge of whether that claim about Richard telling off someone who protested sexism is true, and I’d find that surprising. I’m willing to be wrong, but I’d not jump to that conclusion.
The front page comments on RD.net work a little differently than you might expect. The background is that a group of regulars objected to the much more stringent rules about insult that apply on the forum (again, that’s distinct from the front page comments). After much gnashing of teeth, RD staff decided to allow the front page comments to be more of a free-for-all. To my knowledge, Richard has no direct involvement in the moderation of the comments, or of the forum posts (it’s easy to see he wouldn’t have enough time in the day).
But you will find buttons on the front page comments you can use to flag a post as offensive, or trolling. When I’ve done so (sparingly), I always get a private message from a moderator. Usually, they then move the comment to the “alternative thread.” There’s no deletion of comments on the front page – the “alternative thread” is the way offensive posts are binned.
If you want to bring a bad post to their attention, you need to use the buttons. Those notify a moderator behind the scenes. Be sure to go to the forum and check to see if you’ve gotten a PM from a mod.
‘Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act.’
Whenever I hear that bollocks I have an almost overwhelming urge to show the speaker what an actual aggressive act is.
Almost, but not quite, because I have agency and am ultimately responsible for my own actions.
I’m not a dog which salivates at the sound of a bell.
Some on the Dawkins site have drawn comparisons between the words ‘cunt’ and ‘prick’ but ‘prick’ doesn’t come from ‘penis’: it’s derived from the part of a yoke that stabs oxen if they try to walk backwards.
Some on the Dawkins site are monumental bores and windbags and sexist to boot. They make me weary.
Honestly…who argues about this? Who bothers to argue ‘No the word “nigger” is not insulting to anyone and it’s perfectly all right for me to use it even though I’m white”? No one. Yet men will do the equivalent for bitch and cunt until the walls cave in and the earth falls into the sun.
(Not men as such, of course – I mean ‘there are men who.’)
It really is a disgusting piece. I noticed that they closed the article’s comments section fairly quickly for some reason- I wonder if that’s common practice when an article receives a ton of comments? At least the commenters there (and almost everywhere else) tore her to shreds.
Have they closed it entirely, or just for the night? They closed it for the night yesterday, which was funny – obviously they figured a lot of fire would come in while no one was around to moderate it. They knew everyone would go ballistic.
“Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism“
Don’t you see, if only you Danes had been quiet and meek and respectful and agreed to obey whatever rules Muslim fundamentalists decided to impose on you, they wouldn’t have been forced to do this! Don’t you see, you rude and offensive atheists, how this is all your fault? Why, those peaceful, law-abiding jihadists would have been perfectly happy to sit at home, peacefully polishing their axes, if only your reckless and irresponsible cartoons hadn’t forced them to take to the street? It’s the same simple logic we use to conclude that rape victims are at fault for arousing their attackers.
Beautiful, ruthless takedown, Ophelia. Between this and the Chris Mooney piece from the day before, I think I love you. :)
If the cartoon by Kurt Westergaard had depicted the axe wielding al-Shebab as having a bomb in his turban and al-Shebab had responded by attempting to murder Westergaard, then the same al-Shebab would probably be classified as criminally insane and locked up for life.
But because it was the prophet Mohammad who was seen to be so depicted, there can be no suggestion of criminal insanity regarding anyone seeking revenge, on the part of Nancy Graham Holm, the BBC or anyone else. Yet that is precisely what is needed.
Any religion which encourages even only a minority of its adherents to act in this criminally insane manner and does not disown, excommunicate or otherwise condemn them, is itself guilty of fostering criminal insanity.
The comments are closed right now, and it looks like the last post was sometime yesterday. I would love to see her try to respond to the criticisms/defend her “arguments”, but I doubt she ever will, unfortunately.
Ebonmuse, when will you know for sure?
:- )
Well, I see you got a personal reply and commendation from Richard Dawkins, so I’m afraid my love has now become spiteful jealousy. ;)
(BTW, sorry for the double post yesterday – I just noticed it.)
I thought the thread was still alive, but it turned out only to be Ebonmuse’s double-posted jealousy and apology for same.
I didn’t mean it wasn’t sexist, racist or straightist, only that it was also lazy and therefore a poor substitute for an argument worth engaging with.
Haha – how jealous will you be when I tell you he also sent me a really nice email?