Satire Does Not Always Involve Humor. The Most Powerful Satire Never Does.

[teleharmonium]

56. satire is an extremely generous term here. Or maybe just wrong.

Anyone who wants to understand the situation in France needs to look at it in its entirety.

Muslims are an unpopular minority and are frequent targets of violence, particularly single veiled women on the street. It's not like violence is a one sided thing, or just started yesterday.

Charlie Hebdo is the bleeding edge expression of this animosity. It's true that they are critical of all kinds of things, including capitalism and other religions aside from Islam. However, Islam is a favorite target, and the anti Islam cartoons are frequently racist and deeply offensive to anyone with a basic sense of decency and respect for different kinds of people.

For instance, in early July 2013 the elected Islamist leader of Egypt was removed by a military coup. After this there were widespread protests resulting in deaths and injuries of thousands of people at the hands of the army.

Here's the cover of Charlie Hebdo from that time:



The words that go with the image say "Massacre in Egypt", "The Koran is shit", and (the arrow pointing to the Koran) "It can't stop bullets".

Since you acknowledge that their cartoons are not necessarily funny, I'll skip making that point.

It's not that hard to imagine this same cartoon in a different context. For example, let's say there had just been a large number of Israeli civilians killed and injured, and a few days later the same cartoon runs on the cover of Charlie Hebdo, except with a Torah instead of a Koran, and a stereotypical Jew not unlike the one on the left in this cartoon -



is pictured instead of the Muslim.

Would it still feel like satire ? Or might there be a whiff of something else ?

Violence is wrong. Both sides use it. Those artists and writers should not have been murdered. They also should not have been purposely offending a minority group on a regular basis on the most offensive religious and sexual basis they could think of.

To declare them categorically blameless is absurd. That's denying the context, which is denying reality and substituting a convenient fairy tale. Some (not all) of them did everything they could to push the envelope; there is no denying their role in creating this situation. If you poke a bear long enough, it's going to take a swipe at you. Only an idiot would be surprised when that happens. This is true no matter where on the world you may be or what religion or lack thereof you subscribe to. Only the most advanced Buddhist would accept the thesis that no amount provocation should ever lead to violent reprisal no matter what, and there are plenty of Buddhist anecdotes that contradict that (whether or not they are intended to be taken at face value).

We do not have to give up basic decency and associate ourselves with racist, xenophobic elements in "solidarity" in order to have freedom of speech. We can have both. Don't let dualistic thinkers tell you otherwise, whatever side or self interest they represent.