AFTER CHARLIE HEBDO: THE APOLOGETIC COWARDICE OF THE WESTERN MEDIA

Summary: as nearly a million Parisians and an estimated 40 world leaders march today in homage to the memory of the Charlie Hebdo massacre victims, a growing cleavage is emerging between those who march and those in the chattering classes who seem more busy finding excuses for blaming the victims and pontificating on how tasteless, offensive, and all round icky their work was, as if freedom of expression were a Western value so hedged about with conditions, caveats, and expressions as to be virtually meaningless.  The cowardice of many English-language media outlets, including CNN, the AP, NPR, and the New York Times, to say nothing of many digital media outlets as well, has been appalling to see.  Equally appalling has been the implication coming out of many of these English-language media that we who have been outraged by what happened, from Salman Rushdie and Bill Maher to the average Frenchman or Frenchwoman demonstrating in the streets of Paris, are somehow a bunch of Islamophobic, racist, cryptofascists.  If this is the way in which many of our English-language media defend the most important Western value there is, we won’t have a West to defend for much longer.

As Parisians march in their hundreds of thousands in homage to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a growing cleavage is emerging between what may be called the “Western Street,” which has shown its outrage and solidarity after the terrorist outrages against Parisian satire magazine Charlie Hebdo on one side, and opinionators and media outlets in much of the English-speaking world which have been busily promulgating a victim-blaming narrative, on the other.

Frankly, the performance of much of the English-speaking media, whether traditional or online, has been remarkably craven.  Many English-speaking media outlets have shown a disturbing willingness to engage in a kind of American rape culture enterprise of blaming the victims, while others have apparently been too prudish to share with their constituencies images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons which apparently offended certain Islamist extremists to the point of terrorism.

The list of media cowards is long and inclusive.  The New York Times and NPR apparently decided that their constituencies were too infantile to be trusted with the information in question.  The New Yorker, too, was also quick to take a judgmental tone against the victims.  NPR’s attempt at explaining itself was particularly and insultingly condescending.  Citing their so-called “high bar” NPR, in effect, said “we decide what you children should be allowed to see and hear.”

Among the online media, numerous websites rushed to judge the victims and to imply that because the Charlie Hebdo work product had somehow been “icky,” “tasteless,” or “offensive,” or because it ruffled the amour propre of the bien pensant, the Charlie Hebdo victims somehow deserved it and had it coming, and that the outrage of the civilized world — and our sympathy for the victims — was somehow not only misplaced, but also outright wrong, and that those of us who were outraged by what happened are little better than white, racist, Islamophobic, crypto-fascists.

What’s worse, many of the handwringing, profoundly illiberal commentators who have eagerly taken up the trope that the Charlie Hebdo victims somehow got what they deserved are the same kind of people who regularly get themselves worked up into conniptions over what they have defined as “Rape Culture.”  Would Vox.com, Slate.com, The Daily Beast, NPR, the New Yorker, and various other English-language media outlets that have covered themselves with dishonor this week ever allow themselves to be complicit in blaming rape victims?  I expect that the answer would not only not only be "no," but that these outlets would blare forth with a full throated emphatic “no.”

But while it’s not okay to blame rape victims, it apparently is perfectly permissible to do that very thing to the Charlie Hebdo victims.  Commentators, pundits, and bloviators on social media have all lined up to hold the Charlie Hebdo victims responsible for what many of them see as a whole catalog of Western villainy toward the poor, much put upon, Muslim Ummah.  As much as American Republicans spent most of 2013 and 2014 screaming “Benghazi!”  at anything President Obama said or did, English-language media opinionators have spent the last several days screaming “drones!”  “Abu Ghraib,” “CIA!” or any of a variety of other proper nouns intended to act as shorthand for a litany of grievances some parts of the Islamic community nurture against the West.  Hell, I’ve even seen apologists for the terrorists invoking the CIA-assisted overthrow of Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh more than half a century ago, proffered as justification for this act of mass murder.

If the assassinations of January 7 ((les evenements du 7 Janvier) have been a litmus test of how the English-language media defend the very value of free expression those media so routinely invoke with a view to evading accountability for frequent acts of journalistic malpractice such as the ones in which they have recently been engaged, then much of the English-language media have failed dismally to defend the nonnegotiable Western value of free expression at a time when a wholehearted, unapologetic, uncompromising defense thereof should have been expected, nay, demanded.

Instead, many English-language media, particularly here in the United States, have made a fundamental error.  By explicitly linking what they consider the objectionable content of Charlie Hebdo’s work product with the murders, they have managed to muddy the issue and to create a clear impression that most American English-language media outlets are prepared to see free expression as a highly conditional value, hedged about with so many conditions, caveats, and exceptions that it means nothing at all.

Yet, as Americans, as citizens of one of the most diverse societies in human history, we don’t have the luxury of seeing free expression as a limited or negotiable Western liberal value.

Free expression isnt just a part of what we are; it is entirely what we are. 

As Justice Louis D Brandeis observed so famously, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies [of “offensive” speech]..., the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Whitney v. California (1927) 274 U.S. 357, Brandeis, J., concurring at 377.  If the cure for offensive speech is more speech, then our cowards  in the media should stop justifying terrorism by characterizing speech as “offensive.” and thus presumptively unworthy of protection

My freedom to write this blog, and to share with my readers the concerns I have as an out gay man, is a direct function of our long-standing American commitment to the nonnegotiable Western liberal value of free expression.  It’s not “free expression, but...,” it’s free expression altogether, unconditional, warts-and-all, damn-the-torpedoes, no-holds-barred free speech.

In my previous post, I mentioned that Salman Rushdie, who can probably speak with more moral authority on the issue of being threatened and proscribed than any author currently living, made two powerful points.  First, he declared that we in the West must not yield “a fucking inch” on freedom of expression.  Second, he decried what he called the “But Brigade,” of people who believe in free speech, but...: “Free speech is fine, but...,” “Freedom of the press is fine, but...,” “Free expression is wonderful, but....”

Unfortunately, the But Brigade, made up of people who can’t or won’t stand up for what is perhaps the core value of our entire Western liberal experience, seems to be controlling too damn much of the narrative.  Either we stand up for free expression, or we don’t.  Either we say to the terrorists this far and no further, or we don’t.  Either we commit to the Western values we all take for granted, or we don’t.

And if we don’t vigorously defend our Western liberal values, we sure as hell won’t have for much longer a West to defend, or to bequeath to the next generation.

 It’s a shame the craven ones of so much of our Western media don’t understand that. 

Je suis toujours Charlie!

-xxx-