Edit: as per u/xwowsersx, the tweet author has updated with "the person who had tweeted they witnessed him walking off stage with assistance has deleted the tweet and said he's unavailable for a media interview, so I would not put too much faith in that particular report. Waiting for an update/clarification."
> To summarize reports: Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed after taking stage at a Chautauqua Institute event. He received aid on-site and was able to eventually walk off stage with assistance. This man has been detained by police:
And observers hoping to police ideas, speech and whether something is offensive, with the intention of shutting someone down. They don't call it censorship.
It's like some sort of revival of Puritanism, but without the warehousing of mentally ill people we did until the 1970s.
>And observers hoping to police ideas, speech and whether something is offensive, with the intention of shutting someone down. They don't call it censorship.
I've heard it said that "problematic" is the woke religion's equivalent to "blasphemous".
I mean you can blame the US for many things, but if you want to blame large groups of people and institution in this case the US is not to blame. He had a fatwa over his head for 25 years. And Islamic people don't take insults of their prophet lightly, not even moderate ones. However there is only a subset, mostly young man, really willing to use violence over it.
tbf, throwing things and little or no crowd control have been around ever since pop concerts became a thing, e.g. shee the Stones at Altamont, or even the Blues Brothers "Rawhide" scene. And people getting shots during public appearances, again, was a thing even before Lincoln.
Mass shootings are definitely a new phenomenon though.
> A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
> A bounty of over $3 million has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.
> Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
Well in the case of Rushdie this probably doesn't have anything to do with the trends you are referring to - the Damocles Sword has been hanging over his head for over 30 years now. I'm just surprised attendants of his lectures didn't have to pass through metal detectors before this incident. And I'm glad he seems to be relatively Ok...
Yeah at the start of the pandemic I was itching to get back to these kind of public events... but with the way things have been going since, I don't think I will.
I think the pandemic combined with the current political climate has pushed mental health to a tipping point that I'm not comfortable with. Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I even feel like people are driving more recklessly.
Seems like this specific attack is more likely religiously motivated though. As others pointed out Rushdie has had a bounty on his head for years.
The other side isn’t any less dystopian, heading toward a world where the powerful get to enrage people and have the state police enforce “civility.”
You either have to recognize that sticks, stones, and words hurt people and police them all or recognize that insulting someone to the point where they put real literal bounties on your head is the cost of sticking your neck out there.
This shitty middle where powerful figures and those “protected but not bound” get to literally fan the flames and then use the police to keep a lid on it created a pressure cooker waiting to explode so here we are.
So sure the dude should be arrested because he caused harm but let’s not pretend that this was unexpected or indicative of anything other than what happens when you deeply insult an entire people. The fact that I think Rushdie is in the right is irrelevant.
I’m not religious so I can’t really understand the emotions first hand but the book is blasphemous, the Catholic Church has executed people and gone to war over less.
I’m sure this is /s but for real Iran treats this guy like the UK treats Margret Thatcher so I’m not about to stand on some high horse and be like “clearly the intense emotions and anger of 80 million people are completely invalid and irrational” and instead take a step back and realize that clearly I lack some critical knowledge and life experience that helps me empathize because nobody gets that angry for no reason.
> You either have to recognize that sticks, stones, and words hurt people and police them all or recognize that insulting someone to the point where they put real literal bounties on your head is the cost of sticking your neck out there.
No I don't. I want to police hurting people with sticks and stones, but not words. Free speech is a human right, and physically attacking other people is not.
I mean this is what I was raised to believe too but this ideology isn’t without its consequences. It denies a very natural and fundamentally human anger and breaks the feedback loop that gives consequences to people who say insulting and hateful things. It takes the “find out” out of “fuck around and find out.” Surely you must see how protecting absolutely a very specific type of harm with no resource has lead to our current political climate.
Hell, we even recognize this problem and try to find “non violent” ways to hurt people who say horrible things like getting them fired, deplatformed, boycotting them, refusing service because a right hook is off the table. The most revered and romanticized political action is a protest which is literally a threat of violence.
And this protection in real life only really extends to the powerful who get the police to insulate them from consequences where if anyone else walked into a bar and said that shit they would leave with a black eye.
This feels conspiratorial, but is actually also incorrect. Rushdie didn't actually receive much support in the media around the fatwa, the popular narrative in certain types of publications was that he had brought it on himself.
Quite a number of people have been assassinated by random people with mental health issues. Of course, it would be naïve to not suspect a relation to Islamic fundamentalism, but as a public person you're kind of always at risk, and you can never know the motivation.
It doesn't really matter if that's reported today or tomorrow, when we can operate on facts rather than assumptions (even if those assumptions are likely to be true). And taking back wrong reporting is basically impossible as many people will never see the correction.
The fact is we don't actually know anything yet. One can suppose that the attacker was angry about something Rushdie said or wrote, but we don't know that yet. For all we know the guy could just be insane, or have a more personal grudge.
He could have posted about it online or have a know connection to Rushdie beforehand. But yes that's what I'm saying, it will be interesting to find out later.
The AP (nor anyone) isn't even reporting Rushdie's medical condition, presumably because it's still unknown. How are they expected to know what's in the just-apprehended attacker's head? The AP article does include context about the fatwa against him and the $3M reward:
> Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
> A bounty of over $3 million has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.
> Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
If it helps, I suspect people are responding as though you're expecting that this would have already been reported because of the second half of your first comment:
> ... the AP doesn't seem to be reporting on that yet.
Seemingly to suggest that they should currently be reporting on it.
(I do understand that you are probably simply pointing out that it is true that they are not reporting on it.)
Yeah I thought it was obvious that I meant that as far as I could tell they didn’t have the information yet, but I’m interested to see what unfolds. Anyone reading my statement to mean that they should already be reporting the motive is projecting something, IMHO.
What’s the solution here? How can people who embrace freedom of the press, freedom of opinion and people who violently disagree with such freedoms, live and thrive?
That's the paradox of open societies. Popper wrote a bunch about it.
Generally speaking, you just draw a line somewhere, and the open society ends there. Nazi apologist in Germany? You won't get the same privileges as the rest of the population. The challenge is to find a location for such line that is not clearly oppressive towards minorities with a right to exist (i.e. not the nazis).
Western democracies don't embrace absolute freedom, nor should they. Intolerating intolerance, violently if we must is the only way for tolerance to exist.
The only problem is that you need a value system geared toward long-term sustainability for any of this to be viable.
No definition is perfect, but there are objectively better and worst definitions. The German constitution called Basic Law is among the best definitions. It seeks to preserve human dignity and provide a decent set of rights, freedoms and equality. It seeks to uphold the division of powers.
> "Intolerating intolerance, violently if we must is the only way for tolerance to exist."
No, That literally is the antithesis of tolerance.
Also, IF (and that's a big if) some things are to be proscribed, they must be proscribed BY THE LAW and with DUE PROCESS, not "violently" as you claim.
Who said anything about not having a due process. Of course we need a constitution, and need laws, but they are all worthless if you don't have a police and a military people can rely on. This is so obvious.
Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying. It sounded like you were saying that the general public should be violent towards people who are "intolerant" as a way to promote tolerance.
But now I see that that could not possibly have been what you meant because this isn't Twitter and people on this forum aren't that dumb.
I don't like that phrase. Because it's extremely vague and implies that things other than physical violence could be a focus of suppression. Intolerant opinions and speech are not and should not be policed in any meaningful way. The free and open exchange of ideas is crucial to a free society. Even those that are "intolerant" or offensive.
And, after seeing what happened over the last couple of years, I wonder how far people these days would take "intolerance of the intolerant"? Can a person who is known to be "intolerant" be banned from a grocery store for no other reason than their opinions? Can they be banned from all grocery stores? Should they be? Should they be fired from their jobs? Should they be harassed whenever they leave their house?
There are way too many ways to abuse the notion that you should be "intolerant of the intolerant".
Free speech absolutism is not practical. Platforms like HN, Twitter, Facebook or Reddit would be quite hostile, it's like letting people out in the streets doing whatever they want. That's not practical.
The irony is that mainstream platforms tend to censor responsibly (even if false positives tend to occur due to the use of bots), while free speech absolutist platforms like Parler would ban you for merely having a different opinion.
The other irony is that free speech absolutists are responsible for nearly all the terror attacks in the United States. The harmful ideas of these absolutists are rejected by society for a reason, but this was the case even before the internet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences.
If the whole world engages in witch-burning, and burn a lot of innocents along with the old women who poison wells, and you build a town and loudly declare it will have no witch-hunts, then you'll get people who want to live in that town- including a lot of witches.
HN, etc. really shouldn't be "platforms" moderated by a central entity, anyway. If I like Dang's moderation, I should be able to pick and choose it. Maybe there's another potential moderator out there whose sensibilities line up more neatly with my own; I should be able to choose their moderation, too.
Decentralized/splintered moderation, that's what we need.
(I've never been on Parler. Do they actually ban people for disagreeing with them?)
(Is it possible that rejecting people from society makes them more likely to be violent?)
It maybe is on a theoretical level, but theoretical purity doesn't exist in the world - I think. At least we tried a bunch of times and it never worked so far. So, you end up with complex situations like this: not tolerating the intolerant, to sustain tolerance on the long term. Being very selectively violent, in order to keep peace. Restrict some freedoms, to enable wider freedoms. And so on.
I don't understand what you mean by "being selectively violent".
Who decides when it's time to be "selectively violent" and who gets to apply this "selective violence"?
Because I'm sure this same principle of "selective violence" could be easily used (and would gladly be used) as justification by the folks who think they're "fighting fascism" and the like.
I was trying to refer to the concept of "monopoly on violence"[0], which is basically giving up the right to be violent, and enable violence to special groups and special occasions (think police, military) in order to have a peaceful society. You're very right that this is a hotbed of abuse, as I think every other power structure is.
The context of this story is words written on paper, not absolute freedom.
Violence in response to words is an escalation, full stop. We don't need to go in to all that abysmal "paradox of tolerance" drivel to agree on this.
This guy is a legend. He lives in the heads of half of the Islamic world rent-free since publishing a book 30 years ago that illustrated just how fragile can be one's perception of reality, opening up many avenues for political manipulation. He touched a sore spot there. And yet he is not the one mocking religion, the religious people are mocking it themselves by treating it and their God as a fragile thing subject to books and magazines written by foreigners thousands of miles away.
I don't get what's so admirable about antagonizing a bunch of people? Obviously he should be allowed to say whatever he wants, but celebrating people who do that always struck me as silly.
To each his own, but I wouldn't be celebrating someone writing books intended to piss off black people or the LGBT community either.
It cuts both ways. Do we celebrate (or even tolerate) people who declare a death sentence on others who violate their extreme rules? Should they be a protected class? Doesn't that elevate them to some kind of privileged people?
The thing is, if you criticize X (for any value of X) then you're always going to antagonize some people. It's exceedingly hard to avoid doing that, no matter how careful you are. Especially if people are looking to be insulted for their own political gain (always good to have a "bad guy" to be antagonizing about, whether that's a single person, group, or vague concept such as "The West").
> I just take issue with deifying and amplifying people who like offending people.
But "like offending people" is not objective. The burden has to lie with offendee as well. Flat earthers might be offended by someone saying Earth is round, but that doesn't mean that person saying that likes offending flat earthers.
You can get banned from HN for mentioning far more obvious facts relevant to many peoples lives, ex. race and crime rates. Arguably more well supported than round earth.
So it's just pure hypocrisy and pretending otherwise is silly.
That's not my point; my point is that any argument which criticizes anything is likely to antagonize people. It's also not my impression that Rushdie "likes offending people"; he wrote a fictional novel and some people took issue with what seem fairly minor points to me and had a massive hissy fit over that (partly motivated for political reasons), but I don't know the man.
> I just take issue with deifying and amplifying people who like offending people...admiring people because of their intent to offend large groups of people is just weird.
This is a false framing. The person who wrote the post you originally replied to does not appear to be doing that; the comment praises Rushdie for saying uncomfortable things and challenging entrenched views, not for insulting people.
It may be (as as been suggested in these comments) that Rushdie was indeed trying to offend people, but even if that were the case, it does not mean that his supporters are celebrating him for that.
In fact, I feel it is fairly safe to say that, for most of his supporters in this matter, he is something of a MacGuffin: they support the position you concur with in your second paragraph, and he just happens to present a case where it is under significant threat. Opposition to terrorism (state-sponsored terrorism, no less) does not necessarily imply or depend on supporting the victim's position or all of their actions, any more than opposition of the death penalty is an endorsement of murder and its perpetrators.
Even people who have reservations about your second paragraph can see that Rushdie was not threatening anyone, directly or indirectly.
I don't think he intended to antagonise anybody when writing that book. The fact that he accidentally did so is because some people are very oversensitive -- and those people deserve to get offended, frankly.
I guess nobody's getting death threats for still saying "blacklist" or "quantum supremacy", but people who are oversensitive enough to care deserve to get offended.
That said, I don't think we should encourage causing people offense. It's worth being aware that a person may get offended by harmless things because of mental illnesses like psychosis, so it's worth being sensitive to that.
The book is fiction and magic-realism at that. The intention of the book was most certainly not meant to antagonize. It is also most certainly not why he's celebrated.
The intention of the book was most certainly not meant to antagonize
I kinda disagree with this. There are certain parts of the book that I don't think could be interpreted any way other than antagonization.
Reading the book, I felt like he even went out of his way to antagonize muslims. There were parts when I had to ask myself, "Is xyz really essential to the plot?"
I'm not muslim, fwiw. And this goes without saying, but no one should be persecuted for what they write.
"Woke" is suspiciously similar to another word that marked the end of its respective culture - "euphoric" as applied to New Atheists. Both words describe basically good things to be - woke people are aware, euphoric people are happy. Both were originally (supposedly) used in a non-ironic way, by true believers, to praise their respective movements. Both sounded so over the top that people started using them to make fun of believers. Both became so iconic that even now, five years later, if someone gets too annoying about atheism, you can just roll your eyes and say "Euphoric!" and it will be universally understood as a devastating retort that means you win the argument.
It very much is related to Iran though. Why has no Grand Ayatolloah since ever rescinded the fatwa? Grand Ayatollahs can supersede their predecessors yet this has never been done. In fact it 1997 it was actually reaffirmed and celebrated by a member of the Assembly of Experts. See:
I'm Christian, so I'm unfortunately also familiar with the feeling of horror and shame when someone does something awful in the name of God. Bad feeling when someone from a group you belong to does harm and claims that you endorse it. I guess we can only pray for everyone involved.
I hope Mr. Rushdie makes a full recovery! He is a very brave man.
I am an Iranian Christian (Catholic) so for me it’s very distressing personally when these things happen as the majority of my family are Muslims. I also get upset when my fellow Christians exhibit similar behaviours in the name of Christ and Lord knows we have seen too many examples of these recently.
I love our Abrahamic brothers despite our differences. I will be praying for Mr Salmon Rushdie as well.
> This kind of behaviour is not related to us or our religion, no matter what the fundamentalists say.
Who gets to say what is done in the name of your religion? There are plenty of islamic clerics (of all stripes) who support these actions and there are many followers of these clerics who do the same. While your denunciation of these activities is commendable it does not mean all your fellows in Mohammed are in agreement. Where the Catholic church has a clearly defined leadership structure which gets to say what goes and what does not in the name of the church this is not the case for Islam nor is it the case for the various Christian Protestant denominations. The lack of a central leadership figure or council means that the denunciation of these activities has to come from the adherents of your religion - like you did here. It also means those adherents need to speak up in public about their denunciation and they need to pressure their leaders - of which there are many - to do the same. It is this what is lacking and it is this what has made it possible for Khomeini's fatwa to still be in force after decades. Speak up and speak loudly, have your mullahs and imams and other leaders do the same so that eventually the fatwa - and all similar fatwas - will be nullified. Until this happens, until those leaders clearly state that they denounce the actions of both those leaders which have called for such manhunts as well as those who heeded those calls it can not be said that those calls are not made in the name of your religion.
A common Muslim like yourself might say these actions are barbaric and not representative of your religion. But Islam isn’t having a reputation of being wholly arbitrary. A vast majority of Islamic scholars will and have justified the injunctions against Rushdie or any blasphemer.
And fundamentalism is a misnomer when it comes to Islam because any deviation from fundamentals is violently opposed. It’s a religion that never moved away from fundamentals. It has never had any reform that secularised and drew power away from the clergy.
You are probably a good, kind person but when this happens to Rushdie or any blasphemer it represents exactly what unreformed Islam is.
I have a serious question regarding sacred texts and original interpretation of said holy text inside the religion.
If lets say 100 people follow religion "X". The religious text says to "Love thy neighbour". After a century, 90 out of the 100 people turn violent on their neighbours. Can the 10 good people of the religion still use the argument that "this kind of behaviour is not related to our religion, no matter what the 90 people did" to defend their religion ?
The 90 that turned violent are just as likely to claim those those who didn't join them are the ones not representing or practicing their religion faithfully, so what do you think?
Don't feel sorry. You did nothing wrong. Please embrace truth. No religion is perfect. First acknowledge that only then reform can happen. Blindly dismissing anything against your religion causes more harm and you are supporting it in a way.
great parallel to the Dave Chapelle attack. modern, extreme political corectness/wokeness is becoming as dogmatic as traditional religions, and equally accepting of violence to whoever questions their dogma. sad to see society regressing before our very eyes
If I recall, Rushdie interviewed Terry Gilliam (Monty Python) in the dvd extras for the documentary “Lost in La Mancha” (2002). That’s a treat. I hope he recovers.
That said, this should remind us death threats are not to be taken..lightly.
Hitoshi Igarashi, Rushdie's Japanese translator, was found by a cleaning lady, stabbed to death on 13 July 1991 on the college campus where he taught near Tokyo. Ten days prior to Igarashi's killing, Rushdie's Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was seriously injured by an attacker at his home in Milan by being stabbed multiple times on 3 July 1991.[18] William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses, was critically injured by being shot three times in the back by an assailant on October 11, 1993 in Oslo. Nygaard survived, but spent months in the hospital recovering. The book's Turkish translator Aziz Nesin was the intended target of a mob of arsonists who set fire to the Madimak Hotel after Friday prayers on 2 July 1993 in Sivas, Turkey, killing 37 people, mostly Alevi scholars, poets and musicians. Nesin escaped death when the fundamentalist mob failed to recognize him early in the attack. Known as the Sivas massacre, it is remembered by Alevi Turks who gather in Sivas annually and hold silent marches, commemorations and vigils for the slain.
133 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 188 ms ] threadhttps://twitter.com/NotThatRKelly/status/1558115783674404864
original comment below:
https://twitter.com/NotThatRKelly/status/1558110761217654787
> To summarize reports: Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed after taking stage at a Chautauqua Institute event. He received aid on-site and was able to eventually walk off stage with assistance. This man has been detained by police:
> The tweets reporting that he walked off stage have been deleted, and no status has been reported.
It's like some sort of revival of Puritanism, but without the warehousing of mentally ill people we did until the 1970s.
I've heard it said that "problematic" is the woke religion's equivalent to "blasphemous".
That's the Ferengi :-)
Mass shootings are definitely a new phenomenon though.
> A bounty of over $3 million has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.
> Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
“The problem is the US”. C’mon.
I think the pandemic combined with the current political climate has pushed mental health to a tipping point that I'm not comfortable with. Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I even feel like people are driving more recklessly.
Seems like this specific attack is more likely religiously motivated though. As others pointed out Rushdie has had a bounty on his head for years.
You either have to recognize that sticks, stones, and words hurt people and police them all or recognize that insulting someone to the point where they put real literal bounties on your head is the cost of sticking your neck out there.
This shitty middle where powerful figures and those “protected but not bound” get to literally fan the flames and then use the police to keep a lid on it created a pressure cooker waiting to explode so here we are.
So sure the dude should be arrested because he caused harm but let’s not pretend that this was unexpected or indicative of anything other than what happens when you deeply insult an entire people. The fact that I think Rushdie is in the right is irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Malagrida
No I don't. I want to police hurting people with sticks and stones, but not words. Free speech is a human right, and physically attacking other people is not.
Hell, we even recognize this problem and try to find “non violent” ways to hurt people who say horrible things like getting them fired, deplatformed, boycotting them, refusing service because a right hook is off the table. The most revered and romanticized political action is a protest which is literally a threat of violence.
And this protection in real life only really extends to the powerful who get the police to insulate them from consequences where if anyone else walked into a bar and said that shit they would leave with a black eye.
I think it's fairly simple and we should be able to put 2 and 2 together.
It doesn't really matter if that's reported today or tomorrow, when we can operate on facts rather than assumptions (even if those assumptions are likely to be true). And taking back wrong reporting is basically impossible as many people will never see the correction.
Many articles mention the calls for his assassination and bounties placed on him by Islamic extremists.
But without learning more about the attacker it would be wrong to rush to accuse anyone.
> Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
> A bounty of over $3 million has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.
> Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
> ... the AP doesn't seem to be reporting on that yet.
Seemingly to suggest that they should currently be reporting on it.
(I do understand that you are probably simply pointing out that it is true that they are not reporting on it.)
let's hope so
Generally speaking, you just draw a line somewhere, and the open society ends there. Nazi apologist in Germany? You won't get the same privileges as the rest of the population. The challenge is to find a location for such line that is not clearly oppressive towards minorities with a right to exist (i.e. not the nazis).
It's not that hard in practical terms. Most children know this... it takes academic philosophers to turn it into a quaqmire.
The only problem is that you need a value system geared toward long-term sustainability for any of this to be viable.
A fatwa is just a declaration of intolerance of intolerance, but with a different working definition.
Tolerance in my mind is usually a cultural idea about how you teat legal behavior you disagree with.
How do you treat someone with different values that you disagree with.
No, That literally is the antithesis of tolerance.
Also, IF (and that's a big if) some things are to be proscribed, they must be proscribed BY THE LAW and with DUE PROCESS, not "violently" as you claim.
But now I see that that could not possibly have been what you meant because this isn't Twitter and people on this forum aren't that dumb.
I don't like that phrase. Because it's extremely vague and implies that things other than physical violence could be a focus of suppression. Intolerant opinions and speech are not and should not be policed in any meaningful way. The free and open exchange of ideas is crucial to a free society. Even those that are "intolerant" or offensive.
And, after seeing what happened over the last couple of years, I wonder how far people these days would take "intolerance of the intolerant"? Can a person who is known to be "intolerant" be banned from a grocery store for no other reason than their opinions? Can they be banned from all grocery stores? Should they be? Should they be fired from their jobs? Should they be harassed whenever they leave their house?
There are way too many ways to abuse the notion that you should be "intolerant of the intolerant".
The irony is that mainstream platforms tend to censor responsibly (even if false positives tend to occur due to the use of bots), while free speech absolutist platforms like Parler would ban you for merely having a different opinion.
The other irony is that free speech absolutists are responsible for nearly all the terror attacks in the United States. The harmful ideas of these absolutists are rejected by society for a reason, but this was the case even before the internet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences.
HN, etc. really shouldn't be "platforms" moderated by a central entity, anyway. If I like Dang's moderation, I should be able to pick and choose it. Maybe there's another potential moderator out there whose sensibilities line up more neatly with my own; I should be able to choose their moderation, too.
Decentralized/splintered moderation, that's what we need.
(I've never been on Parler. Do they actually ban people for disagreeing with them?)
(Is it possible that rejecting people from society makes them more likely to be violent?)
Who decides when it's time to be "selectively violent" and who gets to apply this "selective violence"?
Because I'm sure this same principle of "selective violence" could be easily used (and would gladly be used) as justification by the folks who think they're "fighting fascism" and the like.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/salman-rushdie-rea...
To each his own, but I wouldn't be celebrating someone writing books intended to piss off black people or the LGBT community either.
Someone tried to attack Dave Chapelle on stage just a few weeks ago for making jokes about trans. What rock are you living under?
Yes, you should be allowed to offend whoever you want in a free society.
But admiring people because of their intent to offend large groups of people is just weird.
But "like offending people" is not objective. The burden has to lie with offendee as well. Flat earthers might be offended by someone saying Earth is round, but that doesn't mean that person saying that likes offending flat earthers.
So it's just pure hypocrisy and pretending otherwise is silly.
This is a false framing. The person who wrote the post you originally replied to does not appear to be doing that; the comment praises Rushdie for saying uncomfortable things and challenging entrenched views, not for insulting people.
It may be (as as been suggested in these comments) that Rushdie was indeed trying to offend people, but even if that were the case, it does not mean that his supporters are celebrating him for that.
In fact, I feel it is fairly safe to say that, for most of his supporters in this matter, he is something of a MacGuffin: they support the position you concur with in your second paragraph, and he just happens to present a case where it is under significant threat. Opposition to terrorism (state-sponsored terrorism, no less) does not necessarily imply or depend on supporting the victim's position or all of their actions, any more than opposition of the death penalty is an endorsement of murder and its perpetrators.
Even people who have reservations about your second paragraph can see that Rushdie was not threatening anyone, directly or indirectly.
I guess nobody's getting death threats for still saying "blacklist" or "quantum supremacy", but people who are oversensitive enough to care deserve to get offended.
That said, I don't think we should encourage causing people offense. It's worth being aware that a person may get offended by harmless things because of mental illnesses like psychosis, so it's worth being sensitive to that.
I kinda disagree with this. There are certain parts of the book that I don't think could be interpreted any way other than antagonization.
Reading the book, I felt like he even went out of his way to antagonize muslims. There were parts when I had to ask myself, "Is xyz really essential to the plot?"
I'm not muslim, fwiw. And this goes without saying, but no one should be persecuted for what they write.
Being a voluntary member of an organization is a choice.
Looks like he was stabbed multiple times including in the neck.
"Woke" is suspiciously similar to another word that marked the end of its respective culture - "euphoric" as applied to New Atheists. Both words describe basically good things to be - woke people are aware, euphoric people are happy. Both were originally (supposedly) used in a non-ironic way, by true believers, to praise their respective movements. Both sounded so over the top that people started using them to make fun of believers. Both became so iconic that even now, five years later, if someone gets too annoying about atheism, you can just roll your eyes and say "Euphoric!" and it will be universally understood as a devastating retort that means you win the argument.
This kind of behaviour is not related to us or our religion, no matter what the fundamentalists say.
I hope they punish the attacker(s) in harshest possible way! And that should be a lesson for anyone who attacks defenceless people.
https://www.rferl.org/a/1089601.html
I hope Mr. Rushdie makes a full recovery! He is a very brave man.
I love our Abrahamic brothers despite our differences. I will be praying for Mr Salmon Rushdie as well.
Who gets to say what is done in the name of your religion? There are plenty of islamic clerics (of all stripes) who support these actions and there are many followers of these clerics who do the same. While your denunciation of these activities is commendable it does not mean all your fellows in Mohammed are in agreement. Where the Catholic church has a clearly defined leadership structure which gets to say what goes and what does not in the name of the church this is not the case for Islam nor is it the case for the various Christian Protestant denominations. The lack of a central leadership figure or council means that the denunciation of these activities has to come from the adherents of your religion - like you did here. It also means those adherents need to speak up in public about their denunciation and they need to pressure their leaders - of which there are many - to do the same. It is this what is lacking and it is this what has made it possible for Khomeini's fatwa to still be in force after decades. Speak up and speak loudly, have your mullahs and imams and other leaders do the same so that eventually the fatwa - and all similar fatwas - will be nullified. Until this happens, until those leaders clearly state that they denounce the actions of both those leaders which have called for such manhunts as well as those who heeded those calls it can not be said that those calls are not made in the name of your religion.
And fundamentalism is a misnomer when it comes to Islam because any deviation from fundamentals is violently opposed. It’s a religion that never moved away from fundamentals. It has never had any reform that secularised and drew power away from the clergy.
You are probably a good, kind person but when this happens to Rushdie or any blasphemer it represents exactly what unreformed Islam is.
If lets say 100 people follow religion "X". The religious text says to "Love thy neighbour". After a century, 90 out of the 100 people turn violent on their neighbours. Can the 10 good people of the religion still use the argument that "this kind of behaviour is not related to our religion, no matter what the 90 people did" to defend their religion ?
That said, this should remind us death threats are not to be taken..lightly.