Comment by song
11 years ago
Actually a slogan I saw a lot in the Marche republicaine here in France is:
I'm Muslim, I'm Jewish, I'm Christian, I'm Atheist, I'm a Policeman, I'm Charlie
Which I think is much better and is a much more inclusive symbol.
The thing though is that Charlie Hebdo is not a publication that only published offensive cartoons about Mohammad, they published offensive cartoons about everybody and were quite equal handed in the offensiveness... It's very far from being a racist publication, on the contrary.
But only when they published antisemtic content did they have to do something: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/152585/charlie-hebdo-fired...
I actually didn't know about this (was out of France when it happened). Reading on it, it seems according to some articles by people familiar with the situation that part of the reason for this is that there was an internal conflict between the editor and Siné who used this to fire him.
In term of drawings, there's been a few offensive cartoons of jewish as well as christians (but then again, their caricatures and drawings have traditionally always been more offensive than their columns). See for example: http://www.jewpop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ROD0070417.... or http://www.jewpop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/antisemitis...
I haven't read it that much (I read it a bit more when I was a student) but I definitely never associated that journal with racism in that they've always seemed equally handed in their offensiveness.
> but I definitely never associated that journal with racism in that they've always seemed equally handed in their offensiveness.
After the boko haram kidnapping of many, many young girls, Charlie Hedbo's cover featured the girls saying "Where's my handout?" http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ddd3904e07d024cc09ecc4d...
That seems to me pretty much as racist as you can get.
Aaaand here's another one: http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a262d9096f3a68dd274198c...
Now, you may come back to me and say that I don't understand the context. But you have to understand that sometimes it doesn't matter what the author meant, it matters what the most readily obvious interpretation is because that's how people will will take it. An author is partly responsible for being mindful of this, and good authors have a good understanding of this.
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