Little circle-jerk

The closed intellectual circle and self-proclaimed rational little atoms have now invited Johann Hari, having ran out of idiots from the "cluster-bomb left" group. He's the saner of the lot and his interview has many interesting things to say, if a bit shrill. But their riff on the "cartoon" controversy is stupid. They say it's a free speech issue, of course it is, and who can hate free speech? Those haters are insane, case closed. But it's not, and the racism angle is totally absent, and this is similar to the just as idiotic discussions of the hijab ban in France, and it's more of the same.

First they are missing a lot of context, about hated, scapegoat minorities. Secondly, a bit of transposition can help you see the argument in a clearer way (discarding more or less conscious irrationalities): if a newspaper in china (say) had published a (non-agressive) cartoon of the prophet, would there be world-wide violence protesting this sacrilegous iconoclasm? When people were saying that the outcome of the 2002 election in France was wrong because of the obvious victory for the racist/fascist (not lightly used terms!) FN, were they against "free elections"? Is there any question of the state or anyone censoring the provocative magazine?

There is a lot of dismay at a series of provocative racist attacks in a charged atmosphere. This generates more hatred and violence which feeds back on the racism, just as they wanted. It's all part of the war on rationality, and you think little atoms would catch up on this but I fear they are blinded by they subconscious islamophobia.