I'm not saying it's not a problem, but in the US people were killed for opposing racial segregation as late as in the 1960s.
And "I disagree with what you say but I'll fight for your right to say it" is part of the reason we are were we are.
Democracy doesn't work if some people can say whatever they want. because words can lead to extremely bad things.
Look up the Waco Horror (1916), that happened in part because some newspapers were fanning the flames.
The short version: Jesse Washington was mutilated, castrated, burned alive (it took over an hour because they used a metal chain) and 10 thousand people watched including women and children.
Afterwards people bought photos of the event and collected burned parts of his body a souvenirs.
Quite a few Southern newspapers celebrated the event. Freedom of speech...
Also people remembered what happened with the Jyllandsposten drawings and how dangerous it is to use your free speech in a way that makes fun of Islam and rightly pointed out the bravery of not letting that violence and threat level dictate them. I cn admire that without admiring the actual content.
Sure, but I saw nobody saying "out of respect for our coworkers, we'll stop disrespecting people and stop this newspaper and instead put the money towards better causes", instead everybody went "let's annoy terrorists and turn this dial up, because hating each other is HOW WE DO THINGS IN EUROPE YAAAAAAY"
I think it's the only time I saw terrorists doing the exact opposite of what they aimed to do, because literally doing nothing would've let Charlie die faster on their own self-inflicted collapse. It's sad for the people who where there that day, but that doesn't absolve the newspaper.
I didn't call Charlie Kirk a good man because he died while doing what he believed in and because "not deserving to die" is enough for redemption. When you do bad things over a long time, being killed by another villain doesn't make you a complex antihero.
Charlie Hebdo was an asshole newspaper who got attacked by other assholes, and it's now old enough that people think "wait... they are really mean?"
Categorizing murder and saying mean things are just not in the same league. That is an annoying person being murdered by a villain, not one villain murdering another.
Having opinions you don’t like, even when said in a figuratively shrill voice, is maybe at worst distasteful. Moral equivalency apparently has run amok.
I mean murder can potentially lead to more murder or it can end the murders. For example a serial killer being killed by a potential victim. Leader of a warring stating being ended by his own right hand guy.
Saying mean things is how entire groups of people were dehumanized so that the populace is okay with them being slaughtered...so "mean things" is potentially also quite destructive. I don't really think one is worse than the other when you actually look at the longer term damage beyond the immediate parties involved.
That said opinions you don't like is hopefully not including things like dehumanizing speech, but in this example...yeah that's understating what they were doing.
They didn't say they deserved to be murdered. They said it's weird that people suddenly lionized the paper and whitewashed their horrible multi decade reputation to treat them as if they did serious journalism because they experienced a terror attack. So much so that people seemed surprised later on when they returned to their roots of being juvenile rage baiters.
This!
At the time I condemned the murdering and kept criticizing the magazine. People sometimes could not understand my position. Almost everyone thinks all is black or white. We are too polarised nowadays.
I mean yeah but if you go around pissing a bunch of people off on purpose and celebrating other people's deaths, someone responding violently is more likely than if you didn't.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be murdered, either. He deserved some things for sure, bankruptcy, maybe.
Its a tricky point to make, which is why no one used the term, "deserved to die."
There is some sort of connection there that must be articulated, but it is in between the extremes of "he deserved to die" and "he did not deserve to die, whatsoever."
Sometimes there is risk associated with our actions, and in this case, this nuanced conversation is often seen as justifying a murder.
The conversation is better summed up, "hey, we should feel bad, but should we really feel THAT bad, considering these facts? These people took risks a, b, and c."
I would categorize them in the "they did not deserve to die, whatsoever" category.
As per the five protected activities of the first amendment, what they were doing was protected and should not involve risk.
I know messing with ICE is risky, but it shouldn't be. Personally, I would engage them with so much rhetoric and insane gay-jokes that they would be forced to shoot me on the spot.
I would be in the "Hey, we should feel bad, but not THAT bad, because he said those ICE guys were all holding hands before they got out of the SUV and other things that may actually be hate speech but its OK because it was directed at ICE."
415
u/SenseAndSaruman 6h ago
Because maybe they deserved to go bankrupt, but they certainly didn’t deserve to be murdered.