In Paris
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Apparently, he was a teacher who'd shown caricatures of Mohammed to his class.
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That attack came three weeks into an ongoing trial of suspected accomplices of the authors of the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, which also saw a policewoman gunned down in the street.
Two French security officers standing guard on Saturday, January 10, 2015, the day after a terror attack on a kosher market in Paris. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Seventeen people were killed in the three-day spree that heralded a wave of Islamist violence in France that has so far claimed more than 250 lives.The trial has sparked protests across France, with thousands of demonstrators rallying against Charlie Hebdo and the French government.
The RWEC comments: "When thousands demonstrate against the prosecution of alleged murderers, you know you have a problem."
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The silence of the anti-fascists
Anti-fascists are incredibly quiet about the fascist in France who cut off a man’s head because he displayed some cartoons in a classroom. It is two days since the gruesome Islamist murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty for the supposed crime of showing caricatures of Muhammad to his pupils during a classroom discussion about freedom of speech. And yet the self-styled anti-fascists of the European and American left have said barely a word. There have been no big protests outside of France, no angry rallies, no Twitterstorms, no knee-taking or fist-raising, no promises by ‘Antifa’ to face down these extremists who slaughter schoolteachers for talking about liberty. Their craven, cowardly silence is as revealing as it is depressing.
After every Islamist terror attack, we hear the same thing from significant sections of the Western left, including those who style themselves as anti-fascist. Their first concern is always, but always, that an Islamist terror attack might give rise to an ‘Islamophobic’ backlash. We have to be careful about how we talk about Islamist terrorism, they say, or we might help to make Muslim communities into targets for racist violence. This is such a morally warped response to the extremist violence of radical Islamists. Imagine if, following an act of far-right violence carried out by a white man, someone said ‘Let’s not get too angry about this because we might alienate white people and put them at risk’. Imagine if, in the wake of the terrorist attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway or Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand, people’s first response was to wonder if white people would be okay, if white men were feeling safe. That is how crazy leftists sound when their Pavlovian response to the mass murder of children in Manchester or the slaughter of Bastille Day celebrants in Nice or the mowing down of Christmas shoppers in Berlin is to say: ‘I hope Muslims will be okay.’
Their instinct is always to hush and chill discussion of radical Islam. They have developed numerous strategies for doing this. The first, as described above, is to imply that there could be violence against Muslims if we get too angry or heated about an Islamist attack – a form of moral blackmail designed to stymie frank discussion of Islamist violence. Another is to promiscuously deploy the insult of ‘Islamophobe’ against anybody who raises awkward questions about the frequency and bloodiness of Islamist attacks in Europe, or who even uses that i-word at all (Islamist) to describe these acts of violence.
Indeed, in mainstream institutions there have been efforts to expunge words like ‘Islamist’ from the discussion about Islamist terrorism. Police forces in the UK have seriously considered replacing terms like ‘Islamist terrorism’ and ‘jihadis’ with ‘faith-claimed terrorism’ and ‘terrorists abusing religious motivations’. This warped impulse to deny that these acts are motivated by Islamism is designed to disorientate the public response to terrorism and ensure there is no deep or focused discussion about its causes and ideologies. The left continually parrot this institutionalised cowardice by obsessively policing the language that people use and the emotions we express in the wake of Islamist attacks. ‘Don’t say “Islamic violence” because this has nothing to do with Islam’, they say. And of course, ‘Don’t look back in anger’. Cry, change your social-media picture for a week or two, and then move on. Nothing to see here.
And then there is the censorious instinct – the urge, now institutionalised in the modern left, to protect Islam from any kind of criticism or ridicule. This is where we get to the darkest reason why the murder of Samuel Paty hasn’t caused the fury that it ought to have – because there are many people in mainstream political and cultural circles who actually agree that it is wicked to criticise Islam. No, they don’t support the killing of people who criticise Islam, but they do support their punishment, whether that be in the form of No Platforming, or sackings, or expulsion from polite society. This is the problem: so-called anti-fascists share in common with radical Islamists an impulse to censor public discussion and to condemn critics of Islam. The anti-fascists are largely silent on the murder of Mr Paty because they are genuinely not sure which side they are on in this existential battle between regressive Islamists and people who believe in freedom of speech and the right to offend. In short, because they are not anti-fascist at all.
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The first paragraph makes excellent points. But he really flubbed the rest.
Yes, it's actually good to put the brakes on sweeping generalizations when emotionally charged violence takes place. That's one of the reasons why we have the Rule of Law. I've heard enough crazy shit here on this very forum about Muslims, from folks who, surprise, have very few relationships with Muslims, to indicate that temperance is a good idea when it comes to accusing an entire religion of hatred. An Islamic extremist beheaded a guy in Paris? That same day, about a dozen white guys participated in murder in America. Where's the call to snuff out white guy extremism? Why is that ridiculous, but it's completely okay to lump together and condemn 1.8 billion on the planet because of one nutter?
Please love yourself.
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So, it has come to this.
@Doctor-Phibes said in In Paris:
So, it has come to this.
Jeffrey Toobin took his dick out on a Zoom call.
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The first paragraph makes excellent points. But he really flubbed the rest.
Yes, it's actually good to put the brakes on sweeping generalizations when emotionally charged violence takes place. That's one of the reasons why we have the Rule of Law. I've heard enough crazy shit here on this very forum about Muslims, from folks who, surprise, have very few relationships with Muslims, to indicate that temperance is a good idea when it comes to accusing an entire religion of hatred. An Islamic extremist beheaded a guy in Paris? That same day, about a dozen white guys participated in murder in America. Where's the call to snuff out white guy extremism? Why is that ridiculous, but it's completely okay to lump together and condemn 1.8 billion on the planet because of one nutter?
@Aqua-Letifer said in In Paris:
The first paragraph makes excellent points. But he really flubbed the rest.
Yes, it's actually good to put the brakes on sweeping generalizations when emotionally charged violence takes place. That's one of the reasons why we have the Rule of Law. I've heard enough crazy shit here on this very forum about Muslims, from folks who, surprise, have very few relationships with Muslims, to indicate that temperance is a good idea when it comes to accusing an entire religion of hatred. An Islamic extremist beheaded a guy in Paris? That same day, about a dozen white guys participated in murder in America. Where's the call to snuff out white guy extremism? Why is that ridiculous, but it's completely okay to lump together and condemn 1.8 billion on the planet because of one nutter?
The Pavlovian response when a non-Muslim does this type of thing is to describe him as mentally ill, as if this explains everything.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in In Paris:
The first paragraph makes excellent points. But he really flubbed the rest.
Yes, it's actually good to put the brakes on sweeping generalizations when emotionally charged violence takes place. That's one of the reasons why we have the Rule of Law. I've heard enough crazy shit here on this very forum about Muslims, from folks who, surprise, have very few relationships with Muslims, to indicate that temperance is a good idea when it comes to accusing an entire religion of hatred. An Islamic extremist beheaded a guy in Paris? That same day, about a dozen white guys participated in murder in America. Where's the call to snuff out white guy extremism? Why is that ridiculous, but it's completely okay to lump together and condemn 1.8 billion on the planet because of one nutter?
The Pavlovian response when a non-Muslim does this type of thing is to describe him as mentally ill, as if this explains everything.
@Doctor-Phibes said in In Paris:
@Aqua-Letifer said in In Paris:
The first paragraph makes excellent points. But he really flubbed the rest.
Yes, it's actually good to put the brakes on sweeping generalizations when emotionally charged violence takes place. That's one of the reasons why we have the Rule of Law. I've heard enough crazy shit here on this very forum about Muslims, from folks who, surprise, have very few relationships with Muslims, to indicate that temperance is a good idea when it comes to accusing an entire religion of hatred. An Islamic extremist beheaded a guy in Paris? That same day, about a dozen white guys participated in murder in America. Where's the call to snuff out white guy extremism? Why is that ridiculous, but it's completely okay to lump together and condemn 1.8 billion on the planet because of one nutter?
The Pavlovian response when a non-Muslim does this type of thing is to describe him as mentally ill, as if this explains everything.
Ayuh. If your goal is to have more of the same kind of incidents, that's the exact response you should have.
