[Peace-discuss] re: Hate speech

[Thomas Mackaman]

The notion that what is involved in the cartoon uproar is a question of free 
speech is a red herring.  Noone protesting the cartoons has any state control to 
prohibit what the corporate press in the West prints.  On the contrary, the cries 
of "freedom of press" are being used as blunt instrument to silence the 
righteous outrage of masses of people who have, quite correctlly taken offense 
at the images.    

As we should know only too well, what the mainstream press chooses to print 
(and what it doesn't) actually result from countless different pressures, including 
the profit motive.  But at heart these decisions always reflect, even if in distorted 
fashion, the interests of the ruling elite.

Pasted below is a letter to the editor of the DI, which I hope will be printed.

Best,
Tom
*********
   
It’s Not Just the Cartoons


The anger of Muslims unleashed by the racist “prophet” cartoons must be 
contextualized.  In Europe, Denmark included, Muslims are a poor and 
exploited, but growing, section of the population.  European politicians have 
increasingly promoted anti-Islamic chauvinism as a means of diverting anger 
from unpopular “austerity” social policies.  On Europe's extreme right, anti-
Muslim chauvinism is truly blood-curdling (Le Pen in France, Bossi in Italy, 
Haider in Austria, etc.)  The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which first 
published the cartoons, is cut from this cloth.  It supports the anti-immigrant 
Danish People's Party, and has historical ties to German fascism.  This is no 
friend of freedom of speech! 

To this must be added the deep anger resulting from the continuing oppression 
of the working masses of the Middle East and South Asia at the hands of 
Western imperialism.  It is within living memory that the entire Muslim world, 
from West Africa to Indonesia, was under the yoke of British, French, Italian, and 
Dutch imperialism.  Israel was carved out of Arab lands with the backing of the 
Western powers, and continues the process of dispossessing the native 
Palestinian population.  And now the US has placed Afghanistan and Iraq —
where the images of sadistic torture at Abu Graib have been seared into the 
consciousness of a generation—under de facto colonial rule while menacing Iran 
and Syria with wider war.  

Indeed, lurking behind the utterly hypocritical lectures on the violence and 
supposed “irrantionality” of Islamic culture creeps yet another pretext for the 
predatory machinations of Western imperialism.           



Tom Macakman
Students for Social Equality