Following the Paris shootings, I have been thinking a lot about free speech.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo was a blatant attack on free speech. Cartoonists were killed because they expressed themselves through drawings. Those drawings angered a certain group of people and 2 of them decided to kill them and a few other bystanders in the process.
Millions of people rallied in Paris for free speech and against extremism. Yet the day Charlie Hebdo published its new release after the massacre with a cartoon of Mahomet on the cover, French police jailed the stand up comedian, Dieudonne, because he wrote on his Facebook page "Je suis Charlie Coulibaly". He is accused of inciting terrorism because he shows solidarity with Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who killed 1 police woman in the south of Paris and 4 jews in the kosher market. Dieudonne is also known in France for his antisemitic rhetoric. It is not his first time in jail for his ideas.
France is not the only one with hypocrisy about free speech. In 16 European countries you can go to jail for denying the Holocaust. In the US, for example Larry Summers made comments that were deemed sexist while president of Harvard. He later resign from his post and was not able to become secretary of the Treasury.
How can millions of people march in Paris to defend free speech and at the same time jail people for what they write? Wouldn't this give the Muslim world cause to question us?
The attack on Charlie Hebdo was a blatant attack on free speech. Cartoonists were killed because they expressed themselves through drawings. Those drawings angered a certain group of people and 2 of them decided to kill them and a few other bystanders in the process.
Millions of people rallied in Paris for free speech and against extremism. Yet the day Charlie Hebdo published its new release after the massacre with a cartoon of Mahomet on the cover, French police jailed the stand up comedian, Dieudonne, because he wrote on his Facebook page "Je suis Charlie Coulibaly". He is accused of inciting terrorism because he shows solidarity with Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who killed 1 police woman in the south of Paris and 4 jews in the kosher market. Dieudonne is also known in France for his antisemitic rhetoric. It is not his first time in jail for his ideas.
France is not the only one with hypocrisy about free speech. In 16 European countries you can go to jail for denying the Holocaust. In the US, for example Larry Summers made comments that were deemed sexist while president of Harvard. He later resign from his post and was not able to become secretary of the Treasury.
How can millions of people march in Paris to defend free speech and at the same time jail people for what they write? Wouldn't this give the Muslim world cause to question us?
Put the internet to work for you.
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