Passive violence
Charlie Gere is back; he seems to be enjoying himself.
I unreservedly and completely condemn any form of violence committed by anybody who believes they have been offended. That of course includes those who are offended by criticisms of the freedom of speech.
Okay. Good. Gere condemns violence committed by people who are offended by criticisms of the freedom of speech. Well naturally; don’t we all. Only…can anyone think of any? I can’t. I can’t, with however much furrowing of brow, think of any violence committed by people who are offended by criticisms of the freedom of speech. Can you? Do let me know if anything comes to mind.
What seems to have happened is that “freedom of speech” – rather than the various freedoms and limitations of speech and the ongoing and indeed never-ending negotiations involved in their continued existence – just becomes a tenet of a western fundamentalism that thus shows itself to be little better than those fundamentalisms it is held to be superior to.
Well, no. Even though I do in fact agree that freedom of speech is often used in a too sweeping and absolutist way which does simply ignore the limitations which are universally (or all but universally) accepted; even though I have in fact engaged in arguments on just this subject over the years, and been rewarded with uncomprehending stares in return; I have to point out that the conclusion that Gere draws doesn’t follow. Free speech is not absolute or unlimited, but it doesn’t follow from that that free speech absolutism is a fundamentalism that is ‘little better than those fundamentalisms it is held to be superior to.’ It could be a fundamentalism and still be superior to other fundamentalisms. It’s not absurd to claim that some fundamentalisms are worse than others, and that some are better. An obstinate unquestioned belief that it is imperative to be kind is better than an obstinate unquestioned belief that it is imperative to be cruel. One could multiply examples indefinitely.
What other conclusion can one draw from Rohan Jayasekera, associate editor of Index on Censorship…describing Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker murdered recently in the Netherlands, as a “free-speech martyr”, and thus turning his murder into a form of passive violence on his behalf[?]
…What? Describing Theo van Gogh as a ‘free speech martyr’ is a form of passive violence? What the sam hill does that mean? What is passive violence? And what is violent in any sense about calling van Gogh a free speech martyr? (It’s rhetorical and sentimental, but that’s another matter.)
Is this a case of defining deviancy downwards or something? Playing with terms in such a way that party X is made to be Just As Bad as party Y even though that is in fact obviously not the case? Y murdered van Gogh for being ‘offensive’; X called van Gogh a free speech martyr; they’re both as bad as each other! Really?
Charlie Gere is probably a rising star. Fasten your seat belts.
This is hilarious.
Did you see how clever he was at the end? He really exposed Brian Winston’s hypocrisy!
What is passive violence?”
No problem:
“What is passive violence? According to Gandhi and his grandson Arun, passive violence are the things that we do to disrespect other people’s (and our own) lives, such as name-calling, teasing, judging and criticizing.”
http://www.vov.com/activities/aboutvov.html
So don’t you go a-judging and a-criticising, Ophelia, and all that passive violencing and stuff that you get up to.
I regret the error of my ways!
Jewish people are masters of passive violence. Just ask the Holocaust-deniers. They just slaughtered themselves for sympathy. Those poor Nazis. Oh and of course women who get beaten by their husbands are just doing it for the attention too . . .
Who is this Charlie Gere moron? I’ve never heard of him before. Hey, I’ve got an idea: let’s kill him to show the world what a fundamentalist he is!
First, let me confess to being a fundamentalist.
I am a liberal fundamentalist, or if you would prefer it the other way round, a fundamentalist liberal.
Primacy of the concept may be important in the days ahead following the financial meltdown, if 1929 is anything to go by.
So I followed the Gere link at the head of Ophelia’s piece, because Gere’s train of thought, which charges like an iron horse through the plains in some Western, is a fascinating phenomenon to behold.
Here then is a fuller rendition:
“What other conclusion can one draw from Rohan Jayasekera, associate editor of Index on Censorship… describing Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker murdered recently in the Netherlands, as a ‘free-speech martyr’, and thus turning his murder into a form of passive violence on his behalf; or, in a letter to the Guardian (October 6), Brian Winston, a senior academic in a British university, suggesting, even if it was intended as a joke, that he would like to firebomb my office – and claimed he was only constrained from undertaking such an action by it being a clear threat to public order – because I used my right to freedom of speech to critique the idea of the freedom of speech. The greatest irony, of course, is that Winston appeared to want to do this precisely because he was ‘deeply offended’.
Charlie Gere
Lancaster University”
No, an even greater irony is that Gere acknowledges that Winston was joking (at the expense of Muslim fundamentalists, who never are)and yet within the compass of one sentence, or at the most two, has chosen to forget that fact.
It adds a new dimension to that old hippie phrase ‘get your Gere off.’
What an ass this guy is!
Gere’s identification of a western “fundamentalism” lacks even a basic grasp of what the word “fundamentalism” means.
As for his bizarre theory of passive violence and how it is equivalent to murder, the other conclusion one can draw from Jayasekera’s description is that religious metaphors still inform public life and that anyone seeking to accuse others of fundamentalism really needs to be careful with their literalism.
Gere is on a role, and he’ll be dining out on this controversy (sic) for a while. And yet, strangely, he will not be killed or have his house firebombed by the western fundamentalists he is trying to wish into being to provide an equivalence for the political violence he is trying to excuse. Which might just undermine his argument the tiniest bit, but I’m sure he’ll live with the shame.
Charlie Gere is someone who studied art and then branched out into continental philosophy, without going into it in any detail.
Looking at his website:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/faculty/profiles/420/7/
I can’t see any serious philosophical publications except for a couple about “Brains in vats”. How good these are I don’t know.
He also seems to have no background in sociology and seems to be an arts version of the classic po-mo literary theorist.
Also, he seems to have missed out on the classic recoil argument- if freedom of speech is limited only by culture then why not impose the cultural limitations of the majority non- muslim culture?
A note on Gere’s Lancs bio: The Centre For Electronic Arts at Middlesex was like MIT’s media lab at the time he was there; it taught practical techno-geekery rather than pomo text-frotting. So don’t blame any of this on Middlesex. ;-)
What an idiot. He and those who think like him (Bunting perhaps?) should be called the inoffensive left, or the sensitive left.
Believing in free speech = religious fundamentalism.
No, because though I feel very strongly about free speech (especially when jerks like him attack it) and start sputtering and getting into a rage when it’s under threat, it’s not like religious fundamentalism.
A religious fundamentalist has one thing that can NEVER be compromised – his religion, his holy book and its words, whether Koran, Bible or what have you. That trumps politics, national interest, social peace.
A free speecher allows that in specific instances free speech is not allowed – atomic scientists aren’t supposed to divulge plans to hostile powers, for instance. We compromise it every day, when we say “Fine” to “How are you?” rather than saying, “Pissed off that I have to come to work.”
Sorry to be parochial, but UK politics buffs will remember the miners’ strikes in Britain, led by Arthur Scargill. This was MUCH violence on the part of the miners (and the police, no doubt), but Arthur justified (!) it by saying that closing down coal mines was an ‘act of violence’. So it’s an old rhetorical device. If you want to smash someone over the head you can simply say that whatever comment annoyed you was an act of ‘verbal violence’. Plus ca change!