Let's go, point by point, how Pam Geller's "exhibit" was NOT the same as Charlie Hebdo.

[RandySF]

1. It was not just an exhibit. She had a series of prominent anti-Muslim figures as speakers.
2. The event was held by her organization which has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
3. The keynote speaker, Dutch politician Geert Wilders, wants to kill all the Muslims in Amsterdam.
4, it was held in a town where there has been ongoing tensions between Muslim residents on one side and pretty much everyone else on the other.
5. Charlie Hebdo jabbed all religions equally while Geller was been a one-person campaign against Islam.


No. No one has the right to kill another human being (I kind of thought that's a given). And Geller may not have planned for police officers to get shot. But don't be fooled by her false tears. She did this in the hopes something will happen that grabs enough headlines to further her cause.

[daleanime]

1. Which in my book makes her almost, but not quite,....

as bad as the idiots who took the bait. No, there's never a good excuse for violence, but there's never a good reason to incite violence either.

[Recursion]

2. Charlie Hebdo made racist cartoons about African immigrants and Gellar didn't

So that's a difference. Hebdo really is a "shock" rag.

[RandySF]

4. That's vile.

[Recursion]

5. Yes, Hebdo has published a lot of very vile cartoons that were entirely for shock value

Sound familiar?

[kcr]

3. I would go even further and say that those who champion free speech should be disgusted with her

Not support her. She was deliberately inciting violence to make people afraid. It doesn't matter if the 1st Amendment exists or not if people are too afraid to exercise it. If you want free speech to flourish, the last thing you want to do is support a terrorist.

[Skittles]

6. some people are just too stupid to know the difference

[951-Riverside]

7. There is no difference, they're both racist hate mongers hiding behind "free speech"

and they both put an entire town and its law enforcement in jeopardy over their hate speech.

Pam Geller continues to put lives at risk, she needs to be arrested.

[Telcontar]

12. The fascism is strong in this one

[Ken Burch]

8. Absolutely. Thanks for the sanity there n/t.

[Yorktown]

9. The shootings and its cause are exactly the same

The fact Charlie hebdo were nice blasphemers and Geller a masty blasphemer doesn't alter the unicity of cause and effect of the two cases: blasphemers get shot because of blasphemy.

And the ideology of Islam calls blasphemy a grave offense with severe penalties, up to death.

A Pakistani ex-minister, Salmaan Taseer, was shot for merely opposing blasphemy laws. An American secular blogger, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death in Bangladesh for speaking out against religious extremism.

Could there be a pattern beyond Charlie Hebdo and Pamela Geller?

[melman]

13. Yes they are exactly the same in the way that actually matters

which is that people were shot over DRAWINGS.

[MattSh]

10. Five is just plain wrong.

In fact, this was mentioned on DU numerous times. Funny how these types of things go down the memory hole when it fits someone's agenda.

Charlie Hebdo Fired ‘Anti-Semitic’ Cartoonist For Ridiculing Judaism In 2009 - AnonHQ

Maurice Sinet, known to the world as Siné, faced charges of “inciting racial hatred” for a column he wrote in July 2009. “L’affaire Sine,” followed the engagement of Jean Sarkozy to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of a major consumer electronics company, the Darty Group. Commenting on rumours that Jean intended to convert from Catholicism to Judaism (Jessica’s religion) for social success, Siné quipped, “He’ll go a long way in life, that little lad.”

It didn’t take long for Claude Askolovitch, a high-profile political journalist, to accuse Siné of anti-Semitism. Charlie Hebdo‘s editor, Philippe Val, who re-published Jyllands-Posten’s controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in the name of ‘freedom of press’ in 2006, agreed that the piece was offensive and asked Siné to apologize. Siné refused, saying, “I’d rather cut my balls off.” He was fired and taken to court by the Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (LICRA), an organization which works to promote racial tolerance. In December 2010, Siné won a €40,000 court judgment against his former publisher for wrongful termination.

Charlie Hebdo publishes cartoons insulting Islam and Muslims as well as Jesus and Christianity, and tags them as “freedom of speech.” However, in the case of Siné, it failed to stand firm on its provocative “freedom of speech” stance.

Complete story at - http://anonhq.com/charlie-hebdo-fired-anti-semitic-cartoonist-ridiculing-judaism-2009/

[JI7]

11. i think Geller is more comparable to the Westboro scum

[Bluenorthwest]

21. Wow, you are right! But if you notice, the OP and others never mention Phelps because of two things

First, mention of Phelps instantly calls attention to the fact that provocations like this are common as dirt and when they are done to LGBT people, folks like the OP simply do not care. Phelps got no push back at all, for years and over the course of hundreds of stalking events against LGBT funerals. Funerals.
Second, the OP and others want to limit the speech of LGBT and artists, not the speech of Phelps and other religious hate mongers. They seek laws which allow religion to spew invective freely while limiting the rights of others to respond to such attacks. So Phelps makes them very uncomfortable on several levels, so they pretend he and his history do not exist, they pretend they did no sit back and watch hundreds of hateful, provocative events without once standing up against them.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. And the best thing I think anyone offended by her could do, to make that comparison

would be to TREAT her like Westboro.





Why is Fred Phelps such a giant joke? Because people respond to him with humor.

Unfortunately religious fundamentalists- of all stripes- aren't real well known for not taking themselves too seriously/their senses of humor.

[melman]

14. Seeing a lot of revisionist posting on Hebdo these last few days

As if some people think others won't remember what they actually posted back in January.

[Warren DeMontague]

17. Exactly.

thank you for saying what I was trying to, but far more succinctly.

[leftynyc]

15. While their motives were different

both knew they were pushing the envelope and knew that many would be insulted by their cartoons - what is the same is that the terrorists rose to the bait and gave confirmation bias a leg up. That geller got what she was looking for doesn't make the fact that nobody HAD to rise to her bait any less valid. Killing over cartoons is madness and I don't give a fuck how insulting people find it. While I try and respect all religious beliefs, catering to the taboos is a bridge too far for me.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. Standard disclaimer: She's an asshole.

But it's funny that "oh, this is so different than Charlie Hebdo". When Charlie Hebdo happened, we saw the exact same arguments on DU. We saw people demanding that religion should be off limits from criticism, that blasphemy should be a crime, that everyone should comport themselves and the range of their expression to the demands of fundamentalists, all of it.

The other difference was, Charlie Hebdo happened in France, so if anyone brought up the 1st Amendment, they were shouted down with "doesn't apply in France" (of course, it doesn't)

However, here, it does.

[Laughing Mirror]

18. Please show where Charlie Hebdo jabbed all religions equally

I keep hearing this repeated over and over again, as if it's fact.

Is it?

[Gothmog]

19. Geller is a hate monger and this exhibit was not related to Charlie Hebdo

[Bluenorthwest]

20. Would you like a point by point about how Geller is just like Fred Phelps? Because they are the same

monster. How do you think Straight America will look if we compare and contrast the DU reaction to this one Geller event to the literally hundreds of slur laden provocations Phelps and his Church took directly to our funerals and homes? Phelps and his Church did these events for years and in all 50 States with virtually no push back from Straight Americans, including the folks on DU who are affecting a great passion about 'hate speech'. Sat back and watched your LGBT neighbors be stalked and harassed for years without speaking up about it at all.

And the fact that this week Straight America does not even seem to remember Phelps is sickening. This pretense that you have not seen anything like Geller before is insulting and offensive.

When Phelps did his thing and they still do it, I never heard even one Straight person call for limits to religious speech. In fact, even with all of the current events, you and your cohort seem intent on allowing religious people to spew endless venom at LGBT people while limiting our ability to answer their vicious attacks.
Where is the historical context in your thinking? How dare you pretend this is the fist time a minority has been held up for denigration, Straight Religion does this to LGBT people every single day and Straight Democrats say and do nothing in response, shit just a couple of years ago most of you were saying 'one man, one woman, civil Unions maybe but marriage is sacred' just like the right wing.
I look, I see no righteousness, just straight people calling themselves righteous.

[hughee99]

22. Yes, but the way they are similar is the only thing

That really matters. Try as some will to come up with some justification why they aren't being hypocritical supporting free speech in one case but not the other, I think most people see that.

[metalbot]

23. A possible counterpoint

Geller held an event, which was not in anyone's face. It would have received no coverage whatsoever from the MSM (even Fox "news&quot had there not been a shooting. MSM news on the shooting didn't break for nearly an hour after the shooting, because nobody was actually covering the event. You would think that if your fourth point were valid (that there were ongoing tensions in Garland between Muslims and "everyone else&quot that this would have received more coverage. There were tensions between Muslims and the same group of crazies that are anti-Muslim in the entire rest of the US, but there's nothing special about Garland. The venue was specifically chosen because a pro-Islam event had been held there in January, but this isn't exactly "ongoing tension".

Contrast that to Charlie Hebdo, a publication which was visible to everyone who walked by a news stand.

Which one was more "in your face" to Muslims? I could argue that Charlie Hebdo was _much_ more provocative. To your fifth point, do you think that the attackers cared about the fact that Charlie Hebdo jabbed other religions?

Gellar is pretty much a horrible person, and she did what she did in hopes of provoking a response. I think she had fantasies about men in beards shouting outside the event and calling for Sharia law in front of cameras. The actual response? The local mosque ignored her. There were no protests. It was a non-event until two guys from Arizona drove 1000 miles to shoot up the event. If what she did was so incredibly provocative, you would think it might have triggered some action that was a middle ground between "do nothing" and "let's take a road trip and shoot the place up".