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Robert Spencer in PJM: PEN members forget purpose of free speech

May 6, 2015 11:56 am By Robert Spencer

Over at PJM I discuss the strange spectacle of many members of PEN, which was founded to defend the freedom of speech, lining up in favor of Sharia censorship and submitting to violent intimidation:

With every passing day I feel more like Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski: I feel like opening my office window and bellowing, “Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a s*** about the rules?” The rule in question, of course, is the First Amendment, specifically its protection of the freedom of speech. In this cheap, cowardly, and superficial age, even key members of an organization dedicated to its defense have thrown it under the bus.

PEN was founded to defend free expression.

That is what it had intended to do when it decided to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to two members of the Charlie Hebdo staff who were not murdered in January’s jihad massacre at its offices: Editor in Chief Gerard Biard, and staff member Jean-Baptiste Thoret.

But six PEN members — writers Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi — took umbrage. Sniffed Carey:

A hideous crime was committed, but was it a freedom-of-speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about? All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.

“Cultural arrogance.” The French, you see, and Charlie Hebdo in particular, have manifested “cultural arrogance” by persisting in saying and doing things that offend the sensibilities of Muslims, who in France are “disempowered.”

The idea that the murderers of the cartoonists displayed a good deal of “cultural arrogance” of their own by murdering the cartoonists in the service of Islam’s blasphemy law, to which the cartoonists did not subscribe, doesn’t seem to have entered Casey’s mind. Or if it did, he waved it away — after all, the poor Muslims in France are “disempowered.”

Deborah Eisenberg, another writer dissatisfied with PEN’s decision of award recipient, was likewise solicitous of Muslim feelings:

What I question is what PEN is hoping to convey by awarding a magazine that has become famous both for the horrible murder of staff members by Muslim extremists and for its denigrating portrayals of Muslims. Charlie Hebdo’s symbolic significance is unclear here.

It was left to someone who should well understand the importance of the freedom of speech, and the necessity for free societies to defend it, to explain that significance. Salman Rushdie declared:

It is quite right that PEN should honour [Charlie Hebdo’s] sacrifice and condemn their murder without these disgusting “buts.”

But aren’t Muslims in France “disempowered”? Rushdie waved aside such nonsense:

This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority. It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence. These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of that project. Now they will have the dubious satisfaction of watching PEN tear itself apart in public.

That’s right: we will all get to watch an organization devoted to defending the freedom of expression being torn apart by members who are unwilling to put aside Leftist multiculturalist fantasies long enough to defend the freedom of expression.

Carey said that he wrote to PEN’s president “to say that I did not wish to have my name, without my knowledge or prior approval, publicly linked to a political position I did not hold.” That political position was apparently the idea that Islam, like all other belief systems and ideas, can be criticized, found wanting, rejected, and even mocked.

Carey, like many Leftists today, apparently believes that the freedom of expression should only be accorded to those with whom he agrees. The rest can be forcibly silenced, even murdered — as long as the thugs and murderers are members of a victim class duly recognized by the Left.

What he and the other proponents of self-censorship in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, is that freedom of speech as a legal concept is meant precisely to protect speech that others find offensive. Offense is a subjective judgment, and if the powerful can silence the powerless on the pretext that their speech is offensive, they can establish their tyranny unopposed….

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: free speech, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Francine Prose, Michael Ondaatje, PEN, Peter Carey, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi, Teju Cole


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Comments

  1. ermin says

    May 6, 2015 at 12:09 pm

    My dear Friend , this is the only rule they give a s**** about [$] , unfortunately you did what I did the right & heroic choice i ended up regretting it , those low lives don’t deserve our sacrifices , our kind hearts & our bright minds

    They shall be devoured by their own madness

  2. pongidae rex says

    May 6, 2015 at 12:22 pm

    Denial that you are in a state of War with an adversary changes nothing if the adversary is in a state of war with you. Radical Islam is in an open state of War with what is left of the Free World. They would slaughter non-Muslims by the Billions if it was in their power to do so. The current leadership of the Free World may very well be the worst in history.

  3. Westman says

    May 6, 2015 at 12:29 pm

    “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”

    “If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”

    “…there is much truth in the Italian saying, Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.”

    — Benjamin Franklin

  4. Proud Pork Fan says

    May 6, 2015 at 1:01 pm

    I’d like to correct one thing I often hear in the media: The jihadis are violent because they are “offended” by the cartoons.

    I doubt they ever even saw the cartoons. They are violent because the Koran tells them to get violent with anyone who ridicules Mo. And they are following the violent example of Mo. Again, it is the Islamic ideology and not the “offense”. The Media should be saying “the Jihadis attack was because the Koran tells them to avenge any ridicule of the Mohamed”.

    • Proud Pork Fan says

      May 6, 2015 at 1:18 pm

      Additionally: I just read Laura Ingraham’s statement: “Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid”.

      That statement is stupid. No one was insulted. What happened was that some pious Muslims interpreted the news of the cartoon contest as an opportunity to do jihad because they love death more than they love life and death in jihad allows them to bypass the “day of judgement” and go directly to paradise and the 72 virgins. Period.

      • Myron J. Poltroonian says

        May 7, 2015 at 1:24 pm

        “The Good Shepherd” had another name for the 72 virgins. He called them “A Flock Of Sheep”.

    • Westman says

      May 6, 2015 at 1:28 pm

      Someone should have the news and uber-liberal folks go to this site and ask why it is online and ignored for two years yet the Texas Cartoon Contest is the focus for complaints and violence for depicting Muhammad?

      http://islamcomicbook.com

      Then ask them to explain the weird descriptions of Muhammad that it backs up with references.

  5. Champ says

    May 6, 2015 at 2:27 pm

    “TRUTH: THE NEW HATE SPEECH”

    Hear, hear!

    • Cynt says

      May 6, 2015 at 8:11 pm

      Indeed. Well said by both Mr. S and you.

  6. RonaldB says

    May 6, 2015 at 3:12 pm

    Just on a hunch, I looked up some of Peter Carey’s writings, such as
    http://books.google.com/books?id=aLNXdQRphn8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

    such as Oscar and Lucinda:

    “This sweeping, irrepressibly inventive novel, is a romance, but a romance of the sort that could only take place in nineteenth-century Australia. For only on that sprawling continent–a haven for misfits of both the animal and human kingdoms–could a nervous Anglican minister who gambles on the instructions of the Divine become allied with a teenaged heiress who buys a glassworks to help liberate her sex. ”

    It sounds to me like both the novelist and the reviewers are English-challenged, not to mention idea-challenged. I don’t think leftism is always associated with mediocrity, but it definitely seems to help.

    I look forward to the time when Peter Carey actually deals with some ideas of significance. Perhaps then, he will overlook the patina of political correctness, and deal with the underlying idea of absolute freedom of speech, offensive speech in particular.

    • RonaldB says

      May 6, 2015 at 3:13 pm

      This is the missing link from the above post:
      http://books.google.com/books?id=aLNXdQRphn8C

  7. Mark says

    May 6, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    I’m confused. Why are they members of an organization when they don’t actually believe in its clearly articulated standards?

    It seems to me that the honorable thing would have been to left the organization entirely. The only purpose of remaining is to monkeywrench said organization, right?

    • Cynthia in California says

      May 6, 2015 at 8:13 pm

      I was wondering the same thing: Why are they members? Why do they *remain* members? Is there any further information on these points?

  8. mortimer says

    May 6, 2015 at 4:12 pm

    Peter Carey wrote: (France) “does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.”

    In other words, he is asking France to impose Sharia laws DEATH SENTENCE for blasphemy!

    Absurd idiot.

  9. dumbledoresarmy says

    May 7, 2015 at 4:20 am

    Let’s not, forget, however, that when Carey and his cronies stamped off in a holier-than-thou huff, a bunch of *other* authors with clearer heads and a bit of real backbone stepped up to the plate.

    As reported here:

    http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/60841

    Tuesday, 5 May 2015
    Who Stepped In And Took A Table At The PEN Awards Dinner
    Neil Gaiman Leads Authors Stepping In To Back Charlie Hebdo PEN Award

    Remember those names: Neil Gaiman, Alison Bechdel, Art Spiegelman (Jewish graphic novelist, author of the haunting graphic novel “Maus”), Azar Nafisi, and George Packer. They have all stepped in to attend the dinner. If we hold a dhimmi and anti-dhimmi awards night at the end of this year, they should all get ‘honorable mention’ in the anti-dhimmi category.

    And it’s a black Frenchman, novelist Alain Mabanckou, who will give the award to the Charlie Hebdo rep (who only survived because on that fatal day he was…late to work!).

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