Well that don’t that put the icing on the fucking cake. Yes, our fearless Danish defen-duhs of free speech are back with their latest wizard wheeze.
Remember this is newspaper that set itself up as a shining beacon of free expression by commissioning the ‘Mohammed Cartoons’ only to show up as complete bunch of fucking hypocrites when word got around that a couple of years earlier it had passed on publishing a few piss-takes of Jesus.
In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.
Zieler received an email back from the paper’s Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: “I don’t think Jyllands-Posten’s readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.”
But never fear, our intrepid band of free-dumb loving Danes are fighting back in style – and what could possibly be more stylish than a bit of egregious Jew-baiting:
Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, said today he was trying to get in touch with the Iranian paper, Hamshari, which plans to run an international competition seeking cartoons about the Holocaust.
“My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them,” Mr Rose told CNN.
The Danish editor was also defiantly unapologetic about the original publication of 12 cartoons – one of which featured the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb – in his paper five months ago.
Mr Rose said he did not regret publishing the pictures.
“I think it is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at a discotheque [on] Friday night,” he said.
“If you’re wearing a short skirt that does not necessarily mean you invite everybody to have sex with you. If you make a cartoon, make fun of religion, make fun of religious figures, that does not imply that you humiliate or denigrate or marginalise a religion.”
I do like the rape analogy by the way – nice one guys. All we’re short of now is a good old bout of queer-bashing and a couple spastic jokes and we’ve got the full set.
Just so we’re in no doubt here, the cartoons that Flemming Rose is so keen to publish are going to be ‘satirising’ things like this…
And this…
And, of course, let’s not forget this one either…
Hell, Flemming, why stop at whatever shitbox cartoons the Iranians manage to turn out?
Why not make that day’s edition a holocaust special? Just think of all the fun things you could to show just exactly what kind of defen-duh of free speech you are?
You could start a new five-part serialisation of the Protocols of the Elder’s of Zion?
Or how about a DVD giveaway? They’re always popular with the punters and I’m sure your readers would just lurve a copy of ‘Nuremburg – The Rally Years’.
There’s plenty of great jokes you could be publishing t6o go with it – what about the classic ‘What were Hitler’s last words? Fucking hell Eva, have you seen the size of this gas bill?’
All you’re missing now is a few of those ever popular word games. How about ‘see how many words you can make from the letters of the word ZYKLON B?’ or a super sudoko with a letter grid made up of A, U, S, C, H, W, I, T and – you guessed it – Z.
Oh, and musn’t forget the big name interview – I understand David Irving’s not up to much at the moment.
I guess you’re thinking that maybe I don’t think that the half-arsed results of the Iranian cartoon competition should be published in Europe at all…
…and you’d be completely wrong.
Of course, I want the Jyllands-Posten to publish the fucking things, just to see whether the massed ranks of the 101st Fighting Keyboards are going to be in quite such a rush to leap to the defence of free speech when its the holocaust that’s having the piss taken out of it and not Islam.
Or maybe this is going to the be the point when some of those who’ve jumping on the bandwagon get around to remembering that racist caricatures are nothing new here in Europe, thia is something where we have just a bit of history… a history that looks like this:
And this…
And I think you’ll all enjoy this one…
The caption on this last image reads ‘One eats the other and the Jew devours them all…’ and pushed the idea that Jews orchestrated World War II in order to destroy Nazi Germany.
I dare say that there will be one or two bloggers who will publish this next set of cartoons if they are published by Jyllands-Posten, but if they do I doubt very much they’ll accompanied by the kind of paeons to free expression we’ve seen this last couple of week. No, what we’ll see instead will be just the right kind of moral hand-wringing to go with the occasion – ‘well, yeah, of course I support free speech but I really don’t approve of the these cartoons and I’ve only posted one here to show you just how awful they are…’
Actually I was lying a while back. Much as I would take great pleasure in cataloguing the hypocrisies that would come flooding through the blogosphere were these ‘holocaust cartoons’ published, I really would not like to see them published at all.
You see, not only am I sick of all the macho posturing over this issue – on both sides – but as I’ve said all along while I may have the right to free speech and the right to use that offend, but on things like publishing cartoons of Mohammed when I know full well it causes unecessary and avoidable offence – not just to those who’ve been petrol-bombing embassies and carry placards demand the excution of those insult Islam but to many more ordinary, peaceful, law-abiding and basically decent Muslims across the world, not a few of which live in my own local community – and on things such as a holocaust, which is certainly not something to poke fun at, I can also make a moral and ethical choice not to cause offence and that’s the choice I’ve taken throughout.
As for Flemming Rose and his pretensions of being a defender of free speech all I can say that there are some people for which even the word ‘Cunt’ is not strong enough.
Hat-tip to Al-Hack at Pickled Politics, where I find that Jyllands-Posten’s Editor-in-Chief has now squashed any thought of the newspaper publishing the Iranian holocaust cartoons, which is the right decision, of course.
As someone who supported the original publication on free speech grounds, I will remain consistent and support them if they publish the holocaust cartoons, just as I support the right of the Arab European League to publish theirs. That’s the beauty of the right to free speech “by my words you will know me.” Offensive speech out in the open is under the spotlight for all to see and draw their conclusions. Far better there than festering in the shadows.
So, supporting free speech is not macho posturing, it is recognising the value of what we stand to lose. I make no apology for my position – it has remained consistent throughout.
Hmmm – I think a related post is coming on….
Unity,
Oh my goodness, there is a lot in here and I do have a full time job….
A couple of things…
1) Turning down teh Christian Cartoons. This is only hypocritical if you believe that JP only published the Mohammed cartoons to be *gratuitously offensive*. I don’t. I believe that they published as a statement against a rather insidious form of self-censorship, that illustrators were afraid to draw respectful cartoons for fear of death threats. If there had been no general fear of criticising Islam, there would have been no debate following the article on 17th Sept, and there would have been no cartoons.
Christians do not, as a rule, issue credible death threats (at least not in Denmark), so to publish offensive cartoons would indeed have been gratuitous. There was no higher purpose to defend.
That is my take on it.
2) The holocaust cartoons. If we believe the JP rationale for the Mo cartoons, then neither is this hypocritical. Let’s leave aside the fact that the Iranians are being gratuitously offensive because their media is state controlled: they do not even have a freedom of speech defence. Whilst important, it is not central. The iranians are partyly attempting to draw an equivalence between the offence caused by the mo cartoons and partly to say “you have things that are sacred”.
By reprinting these, JP is saying “we have freedom of the press and freedom of speech, up to and including the freedom to offend”. It is throwing the challenge back at the Iranians.
I also fail to see what higher meaning they will be able to get into these cartoons. Of the 12 Mo cartoons, some were plain or abstract depictions, some referred more to the fear of the illustrators, and some to
specific issues within Islam today (e.g. the use of terrorism, gender inequality, the tendency to take offence). The Middle East has refused even to acknowledge that there are legitimate issues at stake here – issues which the MSM is often reluctant to deal for fear of a backlash. I fail to see how any legitimate issues can be raised in the context of a cartoon about the Holocaust, that have not been dealt with to the nth degree all over the western world already. Indeed, Iran is the current hotbed of denial (both of the perversion of militant Islam and the Holocaust). If there is no other purpose or relevant message, then the cartoon will be merely offensive.
By running the campaign, the Iranians – I assume – are trying to show that there are things that we find offensive that we would not print. By reprinting them, JP is throwing this back in the Iranians face. I doubt these cartoons with raise issues for us to deal with, but if they do, at least we should be able to discuss them. If they don’t, we will be able to see the Iranians being gratuitously offensive. In effect JP will be saying: “This is what these bastards are prepared to print for no good reason”.
That would be worth printing.
As I have said elsewhere, BECAUSE we have free speech, we do not NEED to be offensive. But where freedom of speech is itself in dispute, anything goes. The alternative is far far worse.
this is dashed off really quickly and I suspect you may be able to pull it to bits. That would help my thinking (and I won;t be offended – promise).
PG