The poster named Kapitano, who took issue with me about the Danish caricatures in a thread below, has his own blog and he's decided to continue the argument there. The problem is, he's completely misrepresenting my position in the process. The first paragraph of his attempt to address it is just riddled with both misrepresentations and logical errors.
The dominant position seems to be that the cartoons were a valid (if crude) criticism of the whole of Islamic faith and politics, and as such are justified under freedom of speech. Oh and by the way the response of the homogenous islamic world shows the criticisms to be accurate.
First, the obvious logical error: the phrase "justified under freedom of speech" is a meaningless phrase. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with whether the criticism was or wasn't justified. Even if it was completely unjustified and intended solely to demean every Muslim (or Christian, or atheist, or red-headed people, or whatever) on the face of the earth, they would still have the right to say it under any meaningful definition of freedom of speech. Whether the newspaper should or shouldn't have the right to print any criticism of any group has nothing at all to do with whether that criticism is justified or valid or true.
Second, he is completely misrepresenting my position and the position of those who agreed with me in that thread. No one takes the position that it is justified or valid (again, as opposed to legal, an entirely separate question) to criticize "the whole of Islamic faith and politics" for being violent, nor does anyone take the position that the Islamic world is "homogenous" or that the criticisms apply to every Muslim. In fact, I quite explicitly said the opposite. The fact that Kapitano, and a couple others, continue to claim that I take a position completely opposed to my words is evidence, I think, of the vacuousness of their position. They cannot engage my actual position, so they invent an easier one and attempt to foist it upon me. It's highly dishonest and quite absurd, but hardly uncommon.
As usual, I was accused of being a "postmodern relativist" for mentioning context, and of supporting terrorism.
The first part of this sentence is true; the second is a baldfaced lie. Kapitano's position is one of postmodern relativism. He bluntly takes the position that criticism of an ideology is legitimate if those who hold that ideology are in power, but illegitimate if they are not. That is the very essence of postmodernism, the notion that there is no objective truth to be concerned about when evaluating any idea, there are only power relationships to attempt to change. He said this quite plainly and when I called him on it he only confirmed it by replying, "In politics, power imbalances are what matter, not the truth or falsity of any given belief system."
This is a patently absurd position and I'll give you a perfect example why. One of the ideas that appears to be popular among radical Muslims (note once again: I am not talking about all Muslims but by those who hold to the most reactionary interpretation of it. I don't know why I bother to make that clear, since my opponents continue to play pretend and ignore them anyway, but I still want to be very clear in what I say) is called an "honor killing". If a young girl is raped, then she will no longer be a virgin when she is married and thus is considered ruined for any future husband (women, of course, are viewed solely as the property of a future husband, not as a genuine human being with their own self-determination). So when this happens, the victim's male relatives will get together and kill her to spare their family the shame of having her live unwanted by any man.
Now, this is an absolutely vile idea, I hope everyone will agree. If you don't agree with that, I frankly think you're insane and dangerous. But under Kapitano's position, it would be perfectly fine to criticize this action if it was committed in a nation where Muslims are powerful, but illegitimate to criticize in a nation like Denmark, where they are a poor minority.
The second part of his claim, that he was accused of "supporting terrorism" is simply a lie. Neither I nor anyone else ever accused him of supporting terrorism. If he can find anything in that thread that accuses him of supporting terrorism, let him post it. But he can't. I don't think Kapitano supports terrorism and I never said he did. I do think he's suffering, quite obviously, from the cognitive dissonance that comes from trying to maintain so many inconsistencies in his position. And the result of that is that he has clearly lost his ability to debate honestly. He cannot engage my actual position, so he invents an "Ed in his head" who says entirely different things, things that are much easier to attack.
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Ed said:
Greatest. Christmas gift idea. Ever.
First off, I have not decided to continue the argument on my blog. I have only noted that the argument took place. I had no intention of arguing with you any further.
I actually feel quite hurt that you've made this personal.
Second, I'm not entirely happy that you've linked to my blog. My blog is a personal diary, not a public forum like ScienceBlogs. How did you find it anyway? WHY did you find it? I didn't give out the URL.
You did indeed not accuse me of supporting terrorism. I'm sorry that I got a bit sloppy and carried away when writing that entry, and I'll modify it.
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Now, I am a relativist in the sense that I believe we need to know the details and context of an event to understand it's meaning. In the case of the cartoons, you need to know the targets of the 'humour', the position of the targets in Denmark society, the intent of the magazine editors, their position in society etc.
Someone without power mocking someone with power over them is doing something brave - though probably hopeless. They are striking a blow (largely symbolic) against their own subjugation.
Someone with power over another who mocks them is reinforcing that subjugation. The same act - mocking - achieves a different end. This should be obvious.
In Denmark, the political right - and to some extent the far right to which the magazine belongs - is powerful. Muslims are dispised and ghettoised. This is the context of the cartoons, and that's all I was really saying.
What would have happened if the cartoons had been published by a Jewish magazine in Iran? They might not have been admirable, but their cultural impact would be different.
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About the phrase "justified under freedom of speech". There are two different senses of "justified" here - I meant one, you took the other.
(1) "The criticism is justified", meaning "The act of criticising someone is permitted because the speaker has the right to criticise"
(2) "The criticism is justified", meaning "The criticism is accurate, valid, true"
The difference is between (1) the act of criticising being justified by the speaker's right to freedom of speech and (2) the content of the criticism being justified by being true.
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About postmodernism. I was obliged to study it during various degrees, and I explicitly reject the epistemological and ethical solipsism that it preaches.
Perhaps I am as intellectually lazy as you say - but it is equally lazy to throw the epithet 'postmodernist' at someone because they emphasise social context more than you do.
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Honour killings. Of course it's wrong, and I don't defend it. I defend people when they are being attacked, and I defend the people these victims themselves attack.
You are misrepresenting my position if you think I defend the barbaric practices of an opressed group. There is a difference between defending the group and defending the wicked things they sometimes do.
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As to whether truth matters in politics - it doesn't matter much. Being right doesn't win wars - being better at killing enemy soldiers is what counts. Being right doesn't even usually win arguments.
In the 'war' between creationism and darwinism, the fact that darwinism has all the evidence on it's side doesn't persuade the creationists that they're wrong. The vast majority of the public who accept evolution don't do so because of the evidence - they don't know or particularly care what the evidence is, and aren't interested enough to study it.
Evidence matters if you're searching for truth. Fear, habit and authority matter if you want to influence the beliefs of large number of people.
Here in England most people are atheists or agnostics (or very very vague christians). Is it because we've all read the bible and traced the problems? No - we've just grown up in a country where religion isn't considered very important.
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Right. I shall continue to read and enjoy your posts, and probably disagree with you on matters of detail without making it personal.
I think you've made very good points, Kapitano.
A couple of comments from the sidelines:
My blog is a personal diary, not a public forum like ScienceBlogs
Everything on the internet is public, buddy. Sorry. My students are finally getting the notion that MySpace is not the best place to share your age, drinking habits, sexual adventures, party pix, and personal info with the world at large. You want your blog to be private, then require visitors to log in. If you don't want others intruding on your private comments, then don't link to their site. That's probably how Ed found your post.
"honor killing". If a young girl is raped, then she will no longer be a virgin when she is married and thus is considered ruined for any future husband ...
As Ed rightfully notes, radicals take this extreme measure, but there is nothing in the Quran that suggests the practice. Rather, it has ancient cultural origins. Remember, Jesus stopped the stoning of an adulteress to death, and that was 2000 years ago. I refer you to this wikpedia article for details.
Uh... I think there's a small qualitative difference between having funny cartoons posted about you and being murdered by your own family.
Ed,
May I suggest that this is not, in fact, an occasion of someone deliberately taking an erroenous version of your views and objecting to them, but rather a case of genuine misunderstanding or miscommunication. It does happen. There are a lot of intricacies in this issue which can be easily muddled in conversation, especially when things get passionate. So, how about trying to not be so passionate?
Oh, and Kapitano-- The Jyllands Posten is not a "far-right agitational magazine."
Kapitano wrote:
Let me see if I understand this. You posted a link from your blog to mine in which you completely misrepresented my position in at least two different ways, making my position sound completely ridiculous, and now you're hurt and unhappy that I linked back to those misrepresentations and responded to them? This sounds like more of that silly relativism, implying that it's okay to distort someone's position (alternate term: lie about their position) on a "personal diary" but it's not okay to tell the truth about someone's position on a "public forum" when both are equally accessible to the public. Finding your distortions was inevitable. I have a little Google extension for Firefox that does a search for any links to my blog every time I access it. It's more reliable than trackbacks and it's quite simple to use, so if anyone links to anything I've written on any other blog, it will show up quickly. Personal diaries are kept in a drawer by one's bed, not stored in a publicly accessible webpage for everyone in the world to view.
While you're at it, how about taking out the equally dishonest claim that I said that the cartoons were a valid criticism of "the whole of Islamic faith and politics" and that I said the Muslim faith was "homogenous" - I said the precise opposite of that, not once but several times.
Except that you completely ignore everything but their "position in society". You ignore the historical context in which they appeared, you ignore the fact that the cartoons did not appear on their own but with a detailed explanation of the reason why they were commissioned and a discussion of the very important issue they were intended to address. You ignore all of that so that you can falsely claim that they didn't address any serious issue at all, they were just a "deliberate, calculated insult" (that's a direct quote from you, by the way). The only thing that appears to matter to you is that one side is "far right" - which isn't even true, much less relevant - and the other is "powerless"; this is the sole basis for your argument. And when challenged on that, when it is pointed out that this position is identical to the argument from postmodernism that the truth of an idea doesn't matter but only the relative positions of power within a society, your response was not to deny this but to confirm it by saying that "In politics, power imbalances are what matter, not the truth or falsity of any given belief system." It's easy to say that you're not engaging in postmodernism, but the argument you're making is clearly postmodernist despite your (current) denials.
I couldn't possibly care any less whether the criticism is "brave"; I only care whether it's true and accurate and whether it addresses an issue of importance. You don't seem to care at all about truth and accuracy, only about this exaggerated sense of power imbalance. In what way are Muslims "subjugated" in Denmark? They may be predominately poor, but they are free to exercise their religion and have the same rights any other citizen has. You make it sound as though they were imported as slaves rather than being willing immigrants to a free country.
I would suggest that it's far lazier to engage in postmodern reasoning, confirm that position when challenged on it, and then deny doing it when it's convenient. The problem is not that you "emphasize social context" more than me because you completely ignore the entire social context other than what you perceive as a relative power imbalance. The fact that Danish artists were being intimidated by fear of violence is also part of the social context in which this criticism appears; so is the fact that those same artists are now living under death threats. Those aspects of the social context clearly make the cartoons a justified and accurate criticism, yet you ignore that social context completely and focus solely on one factor to the exclusion of any analysis of the validity of the criticism.
Of course you don't support honor killings; I never claimed you did. The point, though, is that the argument you make would apply just as well in that situation as it does here because it focuses solely on perceived social imbalances and not on the validity of the criticism.
I couldn't possibly care less about politics. This discussion isn't about politics, it's about the validity of a position. My argument has nothing to do with winning any political battles, it has to do solely with evaluating the legitimacy of the caricatures and the criticism that they were intended to communicate. But notice that - again - after denying that you're making a postmodern argument, you're still claiming that truth doesn't matter, only power does. For crying out loud, that is a postmodern argument and even after denying that you're doing it, you do it again.
And that is exactly what I'm doing. And what you're actively avoiding doing. And therein lies the problem.
Gretchen wrote:
This is not a case where intricacies matter much to what is being said. When someone says that I take the position that the Muslim world is "homogenous" and that it's okay to insult "the whole of Islamic faith" - and I've said the exact opposite of that loudly and repeatedly - it's not a misunderstanding, it's a distortion. It's about as blatant as me saying something is black and someone else saying I said it's white.
Someone without power mocking someone with power over them is doing something brave - though probably hopeless.
So Kapitano seems to have given up, in advance, on people's actual ability to effect change and fight injustice, even in a relatively democratic country like Denmark? I find it interesting that he's so silent about this subject, despite all his talk about power imbalance and oppression.
In politics, power imbalances are what matter, not the truth or falsity of any given belief system.
So it's perfectly okay for those out of power to act in total disregard for even the most basic principles of fairness and decent conduct, even as they use their oppressors' wrongdoing to excuse their own? This is the "saintly victim" mentality -- a.k.a. "the logic of the bully," which is suspiciously similar to that of the chronic crybaby -- at its most shameless and hypocritical.
(So where is Kapitano on the evil oppressor/saintly victim scale? Is he a victim himself? Or is he just another comfy fake radical pretending to understand and sympathize with people of whom he knows nothing?)
Always remember this: the worst victimizers are those who insist on thinking of themselves (rightly or wrongly) as victims.
Kapitano's postmodernist victimological hypocricy is also evident in the fact that he first attacks Ed on his own blog, then accuses Ed of "getting personal" by responding; and by saying he's done arguing, then continuing the argument; and by wondering how Ed found a "personal" blog on which he had attacked another person.
Please tell me where this guy went to school, so I can warn all the parents I know to keep their kids away from it.
See, there's the problem. There's a blurry part about the meaning of "okay" in this context-- does it mean socially/morally acceptable? Logically coherent? Legal? All of the above? Libertarians especially have to be very careful that issue....as I'm sure you don't need to be told.
Rightly or wrongly? So people who rightly consider themselves victims are "the worst victimizers" now? Are you sure you want to say that, Raging Bee?
Gretchen: yes, I'm sure I want to say it. Abused children grow up to become abusive parents; bullied children become bullies (especially if they never get to fight back against their own bullies); oppressed people become oppressors, and explicitly blame past oppression when their acts are questioned. Ever heard of a guy named Mugabe? The Iranian mullahs are STILL blaming the US for all their current problems, A QUARTER-CENTURY after our guy in Tehran buggered off. Palestinian terrorists blame Israel for their own murderous actions. And the idiots on the Western left routinely blame the US for just about all of the world's problems, and routinely invoke "US imperialism" to excuse, or distract attention from, atrocities committed by people who claim to oppose the US. All of this is, consciously or not, a manifestation of the victim-ethic that says "You can't expect me to obey the rules 'cause I was hurt more than you were, and you don't understand how much I suffered!"
Actually, the libertarians are the ones who have the least to answer for: they're taking reasonable and internally-consistent positions based on principles that are, at the very least, better thought out than anything the left have had to offer since about 1968.
Gretchen wrote:
The only one of those meanings I could even possibly be accused of is arguing that it is legal (which I have, and do), but that wasn't the subject under discussion. There's no way any reasonable person could construe what I've said as meaning that I think that the Muslim faith is homogenous or that I think we should call all of them terrorists. That leaves only two possibilities - either he's completely clueless and can't understand basic English, or he's intentionally distorting what I said to make it easier to attack.
Raging Bee-- There's a world of difference between noting that victims sometimes become victimizers, and saying that people who are victims are victimizers...much less "the worst" kind. It makes it sound like you're claiming that they are victimizers by virtue of their status as victims, which is absurd.
I couldn't get the "Ed in his head" concept out of my mind, so I did what artists do -- I drew it so it could infect other people as well. Sharing is a virtue. So here it is, along with a Grateful Dead "EdHead" ripoff. Enjoy!
http://www.heromachine.com/edheads.gif
HA! That's great, Jeff. Can I use those here? Hilarious.
Sure, you're welcome to them. I'll send you the source file too -- it's in Illustrator so you can use it for printing pretty much anything.
Jeff, can you split the two pictures into separate files? I'd love to post them, along with a link to your webpage in case someone needs any graphic art work done.
Done and on their way to you now. I don't really freelance any more as the day job, HeroMachine, and just-for-fun stuff (like at http://nerdcountry.blogspot.com/2006/03/more-illustrations.html) keep my creative juices pretty much tied up. I did the EdHead ones just because the idea struck my funny bone.
"Gretchen: yes, I'm sure I want to say it. Abused children grow up to become abusive parents; bullied children become bullies (especially if they never get to fight back against their own bullies); oppressed people become oppressors, and explicitly blame past oppression when their acts are questioned. Ever heard of a guy named Mugabe? The Iranian mullahs are STILL blaming the US for all their current problems, A QUARTER-CENTURY after our guy in Tehran buggered off."
Raging Bee, the above paragraph is so full of blatant overgeneralizations and inaccurate cause-and-effect scenarios that I would almost find it laughable if you didn't take your words as seriously as you seem to.
Gretchen: I am not claiming that "people who are victims are victimizers;" I am claiming that people who think of themselves as victims, and make their victimhood central to their identity and priorities, will tend to victimize others, either because it's the behavior they learned, or because they consider their victimhood as justification for similar actions against others.
Sexy Sadie: Yes, I'm quite aware that I'm generalizing; but I'm quite prepared to stand by it, with all the appropriate caveats and qualifications. For the purposes of debunking Kapitano's muddle-headed rubbish at least, it's perfectly justifiable.