bitey posted:

You might get your rear end kicked for this kind of behavior, but I doubt very much you'd be placed on a globally available hit list.

The guy who drew this cartoon (Luz) actually is on such a list. But not for this cartoon.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Kind of (the joke is that "voleur à la tire" is French for pickpocket, but the latter is also used there, as in the famous film by Robert Bresson). Basically the point of his article, if my French is to be trusted, is that it's kind of absurd that people want to know the ethnicity of the perpetrator only when they're one of the minorities they don't like; this seems to be in the context of PM Valls pushing for cataloging the ethnicity of criminals. If you're a French thief, then you're just a criminal. If you're a Roma thief, then that's an aggravated theft, with the added bonus of reflecting poorly on all Roma.

Blue Demon and others fluent in French are welcome to correct me, of course.

Blue Demon posted:

Yes you've understand the whole text. I think it's good to indicate also, that it's a really good example about understanding the cartoon, and where it comes. If you put only the cartoon without the text (and without the signature of Charb), it can be misunderstood by a lot of people, even by people CH were defending, putting it like "See ? They were racist about Roms, thinking they're all pickpocket or robbers!".

The whole text in the link was written by Charb, who also draw the cartoon that was put aside on the text to illustrate it (the image isn't signed, only whith a CH and the text doesn't put also the author, Charb, it just say "from Charlie Hebdo). If I recall, it was every week a piece of Charb that was called "Charb n'aime pas les gens" (=Charb doesn't like people) in page 2 (CHarlie Hebdo is 8 pages long). Every week he was speaking about a news that happen recently. This is why I think it's important to recall why they were so free to draw whatever the wanted because there was always text or other drawing in the newspaper to put thing in perspective. But with the Internet, you can just edit the cartoon, without the text, without the signature and put it just like that and run with it. The picture will move from forum, to other place and will only put rage in people.

In the text, Charb denounces the fact that in France, knowing the origin of the person who commit a felony is now somehow as important as the crime itself. Quoting another famous newspaper of the week (Le Parisien), that said that crime from Roms was on the rise to 69% according to Police statistics :
Aujourd’hui, le pickpocket est d’abord un Roumain ou, si l’on aime la précision, un Rom, avant d’être un pickpocket. Connaître la nature du délit est tout aussi important que de connaître la nationalité ou l’origine ethnique du délinquant. À condition, bien sûr, que le délinquant soit étranger. Ah, bah, oui. Nowaday, the pickpocket is first a Rom before knowing he is a pickpocket. Knowing the felony is as important as knowing the nationality or the ethnical origin of the offender. Providing that the offender is foreigner. Of Course !

He also point at thing, as the fact that we don't use the origin from the french region, as Corse, or Britany
On ne dira pas d’un pickpocket qu’il est breton, même s’il est né à Brest, qu’il habite à Saint-Renan et qu’il vole à Lanildut.

He then remind that in France, ethnics statistics are forbidden :
Alors que les statistiques ethniques sont interdites dans notre pays,

And then he warn the french that to legitimize this kind of statistics is really dangerous :
Lorsqu’on sera tout à fait à l’aise avec les statistiques ethniques, on verra apparaître la proportion de Juifs qu’il y a dans la banque, et puis, tiens, pourquoi pas le nombre de pédés qu’il y a dans les médias "When we will be cool with these statistics, we will know the number of jews in the banks, and then, why not, the number of faggots in the media !"

He finished by criticizing the fact that Manuel Valls (french prime minister now, Ministor of the interior, which is like Homeland security) was commenting that "The rise of the Rom offenders is a reality" was a political operation to satisfy the extreme right :
Valls n’a pas l’impression de faire quelque chose de grave. Il lâche simplement un peu de lest aux beaufs, aux connards, aux fachos, aux petites merdes nazies.
"Valls doesn't seems to understant that he's doing something dangerous. He just drop little ballast to the redneck, the assholes, the fascists and the little nazis scumbags."

So a text that criticize the fact that now in France, it's normal to know where the offender are from, while it's still technically forbidden, and that politics from the left wing doesn't seem to see it a problem and that "it's a reality".

Blue Demon posted:

Lorsqu’on sera tout à fait à l’aise avec les statistiques ethniques, on verra apparaître la proportion de Juifs qu’il y a dans la banque, et puis, tiens, pourquoi pas le nombre de pédés qu’il y a dans les médias "When we will be cool with these statistics, we will know the number of jews in the banks, and then, why not, the number of faggots in the media !"

captainblastum posted:

The irony in decrying bigotry while lumping homosexuals with pedophiles matches the irony in decrying racism with racist caricatures of black people pretty well I think...

captainblastum posted:

The irony in decrying bigotry while lumping homosexuals with pedophiles matches the irony in decrying racism with racist caricatures of black people pretty well I think...

Disinterested posted:

You really are a moron huh

ed: do you think Charb really wanted stats about the number of Jews in the media as well? Be serious.

captainblastum posted:

Why am I a moron?

As for your question, 'no.'

blowfish posted:

The problem with many people who freak out over Charlie Hebdo is that they just see a drawing which they interpret to say "all gypsies are thieves deport them " and then refuse to actually consider the context of defending Roma in France it was made in. When you point this out they essentially go "but what if apathetic idiots who don't know the context looked at it and also thought it was racist but I thought it was racist when I saw it and won't admit it makes sense in context because that means I'm wrong and anyway the world is black and white"

Mormon Star Wars posted:

Actually the problem is that they see the drawing and then they see people like Liberal_L33T co-opting it to push their bizarre agendas ("But how do we know for sure that every masjid isn't teaching beheading 101 on fridays? We better threaten them with guns just in case!") and feel like shrugging their shoulders or agreeing would be giving them support. There's a reason so many people who are mad at the cartoons end up posting something like "I don't feel like feeling as though I need to beatify them" and it's because they actually do feel a kind of post-9/11 pressure - "You are either onboard with our crazy anti-immigrant hysteria or you are pro-murder." Either Charlie Hebdo are saints and martyrs and we have to go after the immigrants to avenge them, or you are a hater of free speech and a race traitor and a supporter of terrorism. Look at Bill Maher with his statements that if you don't positively enjoy the cartoons then you sympathize with terrorists. It's not enough to be like, "They aren't my cup of tea, but a lot of things aren't" - that's terrorist talk, and unless you praise images of the Prophet loving a pig, we can't ever be sure that you aren't one of them.

With that kind of pressure, can a backlash that doesn't take very much context into account be surprising? The people using the cartoons to prop up their hatred are also ignoring the context. Because it's not actually about the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo, it's about the social condition where if you don't wholly praise going after immigrants or non-whites you are an anti-free speech Hamas wanna-be. Charlie Hebdo is just the latest in a long line of co-opted symbols for this fight, which even the surviving members of Charlie Hebdo recognized when they talked about the Pamela Geller cartoon contest.*

Admitting that the cartoons are just normal satire is seen as capitulating to the liberal_l33ts, Pam Gellers, etc, with or without context so it's not surprising that people would hold onto the position even after it's clear what the cartoon is about.



*"Comparing this Pamela Geller thing and Charlie Hebdo is nonsense," Thoret said. "It's an anti-Islamic movement, and she said it's an anti-Islamic movement, fighting against what she called the Islamization of the U.S. Maybe there is just one thing in common: You can't mess with Texas, you can't mess with Charlie Hebdo."

The Charlie Hebdo team, Biard said, simply aims to "comment on the news."

"The difference between us and these people is that these people are organizing contests, anti-Islamist contests," he continued. "It's an obsession ... We are not obsessed. We are just obsessed by the news, and by how the world is going on. The difference with Pamela Geller, she is obsessed by Islam. She waits every morning and thinks, What can I do today to defy these people?"

blowfish posted:

Except the argument isn't with people who say "well yeah it's not my kind of cartoon", but with idiots crowing about how anything they don't personally approve of must necessarily be evil.

Disinterested posted:

One thing I would say is that the cartoonists never signed up to be internationally famous or recognised, or regarded as moral heroes. Since they have been put in the public eye a lot of them have quit - although, in part, this is because the magazine's management is applying pressure on the workers to tone down their material and rock the boat less because they have a newly discovered sales base. It's unlikely the great cartoonists and workers of CH that survived, in large part, will continue to produce material for that mag that have relevance for people like liberal l33t.

Disinterested posted:

Because I'm fairly certain Charb did not lump pedophiles and homosexuals together, and that even if he did it would not be ironic.

blowfish posted:

Is there a good source for this?

quote:

Renald Luzier said his departure in September was unconnected to internal tensions at the publication, but rather that the job without his slain colleagues had become “too much to bear”.

“This is a very personal choice,” Luz, who joined Charlie Hebdo in 1992, said in an interview with French newspaper Libération on Monday.

“Each issue is torture because the others are gone. Spending sleepless nights summoning the dead, wondering what Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous would have done is exhausting,” the cartoonist said, referring to his colleagues killed on 7 January.

In late April, however, Luz announced that he would not draw the prophet again, saying it no longer interested him to do so.

“Many people push me to keep going, but they forget that the worry is finding inspiration,” Luz said.

While he had thought about leaving a long time ago, he said he “continued in solidarity, to let nobody down. Except that at one point, it was too much to bear”.

Charlie Hebdo has been split over the use of the money, however, with some staff members accusing management of not being transparent enough about its plans.

Fifteen of the magazine’s 20 staff members, including Luz, called in April for all employees to become equal shareholders in the magazine.

quote:

But Luz said in a previous interview that financial security had posed questions about its future editorial direction.

quote:

Months after a deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo turned the French satirical weekly into a free speech icon, a management dispute with a high-profile staff journalist has exposed the internal strains within the newly rich magazine.

Earlier this week, Charlie Hebdo management summoned French-Moroccan journalist Zineb El Rhazoui to a “preliminary meeting” to “remind her of her minimum obligations toward her employer following numerous incidents”

While neither El Rhazoui nor the Charlie Hebdo management have commented on the reasons for her summons, at the heart of the latest storm lies the once nearly bankrupt magazine’s increased fortunes following the January 7 attack. The weekly raised nearly €30 million in donations, grants and sales after the attack, sparking differences among editorial staffers over how the magazine’s finances must be handled.

Some of the staffers of the left-wing weekly have warned that the famously anti-establishment magazine might succumb to “the poison of the millions”. The dissidents have called for the magazine to become “a cooperative” and for the new funds to be placed in a trust that would ensure Charlie Hebdo’s survival for “30 years”.

El Rhazoui was one of 15 Charlie Hebdo editorial staffers who wrote an open letter criticizing the magazine’s owners and management in late March.

captainblastum posted:

Is there literally no other word or phrase for homosexuals in French?

My point was to comment on the parallels between the inherent gratuitous intolerance in the language used in that quote and the inherent intolerance in the imagery used in several cartoons (not Charb's cartoons alone, and not all cartoons by him or anybody else). The most common argument I've seen in this thread for why the usage of that imagery is not racist has been 'that's how things are done in French satire.' That feels like a much harder argument to make when the language uses pederast as the word for homosexual - just because it's 'the way it's done in France' doesn't excuse hatefulness of the expression. I'm not trying to make a tone argument here either, I used gratuitous earlier very specifically. When replacing the hateful words or imagery with something else that isn't as hurtful to the people you're trying to defend does not devalue or change the message, it is the more moral choice.

captainblastum posted:

Is there literally no other word or phrase for homosexuals in French?

My point was to comment on the parallels between the inherent gratuitous intolerance in the language used in that quote and the inherent intolerance in the imagery used in several cartoons (not Charb's cartoons alone, and not all cartoons by him or anybody else). The most common argument I've seen in this thread for why the usage of that imagery is not racist has been 'that's how things are done in French satire.' That feels like a much harder argument to make when the language uses pederast as the word for homosexual - just because it's 'the way it's done in France' doesn't excuse hatefulness of the expression. I'm not trying to make a tone argument here either, I used gratuitous earlier very specifically. When replacing the hateful words or imagery with something else that isn't as hurtful to the people you're trying to defend does not devalue or change the message, it is the more moral choice.

blowfish posted:

Except the argument isn't with people who say "well yeah it's not my kind of cartoon", but with idiots crowing about how anything they don't personally approve of must necessarily be evil.

Disinterested posted:

One thing I would say is that the cartoonists never signed up to be internationally famous or recognised, or regarded as moral heroes. Since they have been put in the public eye a lot of them have quit - although, in part, this is because the magazine's management is applying pressure on the workers to tone down their material and rock the boat less because they have a newly discovered sales base. It's unlikely the great cartoonists and workers of CH that survived, in large part, will continue to produce material for that mag that have relevance for people like liberal l33t.

Mormon Star Wars posted:

I don't think their original work had much relevance to those people in the first place. The type of people co-opting them now are the American versions of the people they targeted in France, which makes the situation doubly (triply?) tragic. It's especially sad that Charb died before his book was published, because from what it sounds like, it actually seems as though it lays bare the motives of people like Gellar. I can't wait to be able to purchase an English translation.

Disinterested posted:

The principal argument, by the way, is that hatred of Muslims is primarily racial, and not to do with their religion, and that accusations of 'Islamophobia' obscure that, and that hatred of Muslims as well as the elevation of hateful radical Islamists is primarily caused by the liberal media trying to sell papers through fear.

Orange Devil posted:

Today I learned that the French language is one of those which groups in gay people with pedophiles.

Catullus posted:

Pedicabo vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
Qui me ex uersiculis meis putastis,
Quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.

Disinterested posted:

Someone better equipped than me will have to weigh in, but as I understand it PD or pede is a fairly informal idiomatic way of saying gay in French, and doesn't carry a connotation of meaning pederast now at all, but it is still a bit like 'queer' or another word in English that can be used both aggressively and jokingly and be offensive or not depending on the context of its use. Moreover, as I understand it, that word is drifting towards being more and not less acceptable in colloquial conversation. I believe homosexuel or pederaste is quite an arch and formal way of writing, but French people also say 'gay' and have other softer terms.

Here I think it's pretty evident he is speaking as if he was impersonating a person who doesn't like jews or gay people, so it is being used in its more offensive mode.

It's for a French person to tell me if this is regarded as an offensive way of writing though.

It's also worth pointing out that CH is strongly historically associated with the sexual revolution and with campaigning in support of gay marriage so I doubt people would take it amiss.

Woolie Wool posted:

My guess is it comes from Latin pedicare, "to gently caress [somebody] in the rear end" ("sodomize" isn't really strong enough). So pédés would basically be "buttfuckers".

captainblastum posted:

Is there literally no other word or phrase for homosexuals in French?

Powercrazy posted:

if not, gently caress off human being.

Powercrazy posted:

If you are a concern troll congrats, you got me, if not, gently caress off human being.

Powercrazy posted:

If you are a concern troll congrats, you got me, if not, gently caress off human being.

Woolie Wool posted:

Woolie Wool posted:

You used your rhetorical device very poorly. "It was a joke" or "it was ironic" is not an excuse if you're not actually funny.

Powercrazy posted:

If you are a concern troll congrats, you got me, if not, gently caress off human being.

Powercrazy posted:

That's fine, I don't claim to be funny or ironic.

But his argument comes down to a tone argument

Spaceman Future! posted:

Are you slow or Canadian?

Woolie Wool posted:

Don't do this.

SedanChair posted:

Let's circulate this picture among churches in the rural southern US and see if we can elicit any death threats. And of course if we can, this will reflect on Christian culture worldwide. Right?

Mormon Star Wars posted:

Yeah, so pretty accurate, in other words. It's the same reason why a lot of news organizations bring Anjem Choudary around to represent Muslims.

Mormon Star Wars posted: