FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

When advocates of ‘freedom’ go too far

When advocates of ‘freedom’ go too far

I’m all for press freedom, but I’m not defending Charlie Hebdo’s earthquake cartoon for one reason, and one reason only.

If I defended its right to ridicule, I would have to defend a horrible attack on its office in January last year as well. I mean, if you are ready to take it to the limit, you must be prepared to accept any consequence.
Twelve Charlie Hebdo journalists died in that attack. Defending the earthquake cartoon, which depicts victims “crushed” between layers of lasagne, equals defending a cartoon that mocked those 12 deaths. From what I’ve seen, Charlie Hebdo wouldn’t care anyway about such mocking, but I’d rather stay away from a controversy.
Charlie Hebdo is taking freedom of expression to the extreme. In a fair world, people should be able to go to similar extremes with the publication as well. I doubt that grieving relatives of the Italian earthquake victims will choose to bomb Charlie Hebdo’s office, but who would blame them if they did?
Freedom without responsibility can morph into anarchy. What Charlie Hebdo does means different things to different people. The publication satirises, provokes and insults. As the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Or in this case, one man’s champion of free expression is another man’s vicious provocateur.
The Italian relatives could easily lose the case if they decided to sue Charlie Hebdo. “Freedom of expression” seems to dictate the weekly magazine can publish any image it likes. But that’s the whole point. If you can’t win legally against the publication, what else can you do?
Make no mistake. I’m not calling for the publication’s offices to be mobbed or subjected to anything worse. But if I were, I could conveniently invoke my “freedom of expression”. You would condemn supporting such an attack as “indefensible”, or “taking it to the extreme”. But that’s precisely what I’m saying.
Some 18 months after the attack that made Charlie Hebdo a beacon of press freedom, the publication is forcing even its most ardent supporters to think twice. There have been some attempts to defend the paper, mind you. One webboard poster invoked a famous defence often attributed to Voltaire: “I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Another said: “The thing about freedom of speech is that we are free to accept or reject what we agree with or find offensive.”
But others argue that the right to ridicule must be exercised with human decency. The earthquake cartoon, they say, carries no redeeming value or hidden intellectual meaning. “There’s no thought. Nothing of substance. It’s not even outrageous, or sensationalist fodder,” one said. The comment ended with: “Apparently the only Charlie Hebdo employees with sharp minds and souls were lost in that attack on their office?”
If you think that remark was insensitive, then you haven’t seen the cartoon, which has gone viral in just the way Charlie Hebdo must have desired. The paper ran it in a special issue focused on the devastating 6.2-magnitude quake that hit central Italy late last month, killing hundreds of people and reducing ancient towns to rubble.
The cartoon carries the banner “Italian Earthquake” and depicts two people – a man and a woman – standing bruised and bloodied next to layers of rubble from which the feet of people are protruding. The man is dubbed “Tomato sauce penne” and the woman “Penne gratin”. The people crushed between layers are captioned “Lasagna”.
Charlie Hebdo has always stood by its right to mock. But in drawing and publishing the cartoon, the weekly was effectively drafting the argument for “the right to respond”. What Charlie Hebdo has done is take a tragedy and twist the knife even further.
Critics said that, just as the paper deserved full sympathy following the massacre at its Paris office last year, it should extend similar treatment to those ordinary folk – none of whom were powerful or political figures – who lost everything in the earthquake. 
When people wept for the murdered Charlie Hebdo employees, at least we knew the reasons behind the brutal attack. In contrast the quake victims had crossed nobody and suffered a natural disaster that came out of the blue.
Unlike the “freedom of expression” that seems to be written in stone everywhere, such sympathy exists only in our hearts. They don’t throw you in jail for not having it, but you should have it all the same. And Charlie Hebdo journalists, of all people, should have learned to be compassionate to others suffering in dire and unforeseen circumstances.
RELATED
nationthailand