Charlie Hebdo And The War For Civilisation
Moore: Heavy price for contrarian speech. (David Shankbone, via flickr)
[dropcap]In 2003[/dropcap] a top security expert told filmmaker Michael Moore, ‘there is no one in America other than President Bush who is in more danger than you’. (Michael Moore, ‘Here Comes Trouble – Stories From My Life,’ Allen Lane, 2011, p.4)
Moore was attacked with a knife, a blunt object and stalked by a man with a gun. Scalding coffee was thrown at his face, punches were thrown in broad daylight. The verbal abuse was ceaseless, including numerous death threats. In his book, ‘Here Comes Trouble’, Moore writes:
But why was Moore a target? Had he published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad?
The problem had begun in the first week of the 2003 Iraq war when Moore’s film ‘Bowling For Columbine’ won the Oscar for best documentary. At the March 23 Academy Awards ceremony, Moore told a global audience:
more of the same, only worse – from all over America.’ (pp.9-10)
This is the reality of respect for free speech in the United States. If, on Oscar night, he had held up a cartoon depicting President Bush naked on all fours, buttocks raised to a pornographic filmmaker, would Moore still be alive today?
War – Total, Merciless, Civilised
In stark contrast to the campaign of near-fatal media vilification of Moore, journalists have responded to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in Paris by passionately defending the right to offend. Or so we are to believe. The Daily Telegraph’s chief interviewer, Allison Pearson, wrote:
yesterday did so on the frontline of a war of civilisations. I salute them, those Martyrs for Freedom of Speech.’
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy agreed, describing the attacks as ‘a war declared on civilisation’. Joan Smith wrote in the Guardian:
tweeted:
The Western tendency to act with ruthless, overwhelming violence is, of course, a key reason why Islamic terrorists are targeting the West. Glenn Greenwald asked Cohen:
replied:
raved:
exhortation:
retweeted Anand Giridharadas, who writes for the New York Times:
managed a rather more nuanced view.
Journalism – Part Of ‘The Murder Machine’
In The Times, the perennially apocalyptic David Aaronovitch wrote:
Yesterday in Paris we in the west crossed a boundary that cannot be recrossed. For the first time since the defeat of fascism a group of citizens were massacred because of what they had drawn, said and published.’
The Guardian took a similar view:
happened on April 23, 1999 when Nato bombed the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television, killing 16 people. The dead included an editor, a programme director, a cameraman, a make-up artist, three security guards and other media support staff. Additional radio and electrical installations throughout the country were also attacked. The New York Times witnessed the carnage:
insisted that the TV station, a ‘ministry of lies’, was a legitimate target and the bombing ‘must be seen as an intensification of our attacks’. A Pentagon spokesman added:
responded:
condemned Nato’s bombing of Libyan state broadcasting facilities on July 30, killing three media workers, with 21 people injured:
confirmed that the bombing had been deliberate:
said al-Jazeera had communicated the location of its office in Kabul to the American authorities.
In April 2003, an al-Jazeera cameraman was killed when the station’s Baghdad office was bombed during a US air raid. In 2005, the Guardian quoted the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ):
Bush Administration Iraq War Criminals. Left to right: Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. (DonkeyHotey.flickr)
According to the Daily Mirror, Bush had told Blair of his plan:
(As we all know, Dubya continues to walk around free, and his once somewhat tarnished image is rapidly being rehabilitated by the American media, with active support from the corporate Democrats, with the Clintons—also war criminals— leading the parade.—Eds)
Similarly, during last summer’s blitz of Gaza, Israel killed 17 journalists. An investigation led by Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli attacks on journalists were one of many ‘apparent violations’ of international law. In a 2012 letter to The New York Times, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, head spokeswoman to foreign media for the Israel Defense Force, wrote:
‘Sorry For Any Offence’
Aaronovitch warned that ‘appalling’ as previous attacks on Western free speech had been, ‘they were generally the work of disorganised loners’, whereas the Paris attacks seemed to have been more organised. What then to say of lethal attacks on journalists conducted, not by a group of religious fanatics, but by democratically elected governments?
Given this context, corporate media commentary on the Charlie Hebdo massacre all but drowns in irony and hypocrisy. The Telegraph commented:
clarified, ‘men of violence’ were among the marchers. Certainly the White House is a good place for people to do some serious thinking about violent extremism and how to stop it.
A Guardian leader observed:
The sentiment was quickly put to the test when BBC reporter Tim Willcox commented in a live TV interview:
backed down:
yesterday – it was entirely unintentional’
A BBC spokesman completed the humiliation:
describes the prevailing rule:
notes:
arrest of a French comedian on charges of ‘defending terrorism’.
The irony of the BBC apology, given recent events, appears to have been invisible to most commentators. Radical comedian Frankie Boyle is a welcome exception, having earlier commented:
The term ‘western misadventures’ is a perfect example of how media like the Guardian work so hard to avoid offending elite interests with more accurate descriptions like ‘Western atrocities’ and ‘Western genocidal crimes’.
A leader in The Times observed of the Charlie Hebdo killers:
apologised for a powerful cartoon by Gerald Scarfe that had appeared in the newspaper. The cartoon depicted the brutal Israeli treatment of Palestinians but was not in any way anti-Semitic. Murdoch, however, tweeted:
The Times went on:
massacre of 1,000 civilian protestors on a single day in August 2013, is hailed as a ‘champion’ of ‘moderate political Islam’.
There is so much more that could be said about just how little passion the corporate media have for defending the right to offend. Anyone in doubt should try, as we have, to discuss their own record of failing to offend the powerful. To criticise ‘mainstream’ media from this perspective is to render oneself a despised unperson. In response to our polite, decidedly inoffensive challenges on Twitter we have been banned by champions of free speech like Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, Peter Beaumont of the Observer and Guardian, and many others.
Even rare dissident fig leaves on newspapers like the Guardian dismiss as asinine and, yes, offensive, the suggestion that they should risk offending their corporate employers and advertisers. Not only is no attempt made to defend such a right, the very idea is dismissed as nonsense unworthy even of discussion.
DE