Editorial Tuesday January 13, 2015

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

No place for hate

ONE-TIME broadcaster, Mayor and Maori Party candidate Derek Fox knows what it's like to hold (and express) a minority view, but that hardly excuses his extraordinary response to last week's al Qaeda-linked slaughter in Paris.

While the rest of the world expressed outrage and dismay, and France observed a day of national mourning, Mr Fox aired the view that Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of the eight journalists and cartoonists who died, had had it coming. Charbonnier was a bully who had abused his right to freedom of speech, he said, and was responsible for the deaths of his colleagues, a visitor to the magazine's office and two police officers, one of whom was executed as he lay, wounded, on the footpath outside the building.

Mr Fox's laying of blame may not be totally without support. There will be others who believe that if one pokes a dangerous animal with a sharp stick often enough, sooner or later it will retaliate. That is obviously how he saw what happened in Paris, but he went much further. As someone who has long worked in the media, and who has rarely shied from expressing views that have not been universally popular, one might have expected that his defence of freedom of speech would have been a little more robust.

For all its popularity, Charlie Hebdo was not everyone's cup of tea. Its saving grace perhaps was that it poked fun at all manner of targets, including the Pope and the Catholic Church, politicians and the prophet Muhammad. As we in New Zealand know full well, politicians are fair game and the Catholic Church is supposedly unoffendable - remember the Virgin in a Condom that remained part of an art exhibition some years ago despite the offence it caused?

It's a different story with Islam. Followers of Muhammad have been making that clear for years, beginning perhaps with the fatwa calling for the slaying of author Salman Rushdie in 1989, his novel The Satanic Verses having been judged as blasphemous. Those who died in Paris last week had already fallen foul of Islam, and were apparently living under police protection.

Charbonnier never showed any sign of contrition, or any loss of fervour for challenging the taboos and sacred cows that he made it his life's work to attack. He obviously knew the risk he was taking given that he was in need of police protection - the Charlie Hebdo offices had already been fire bombed - but lived by the philosophy that he would prefer to die standing than live on his knees.

He and a total of 19 others died standing in Paris last week, prompting Mr Fox to muse on his alleged abuse of free speech.

Charbonnier, he said, had paid the price for his assumption of cultural superiority and arrogance. He was a bully who had believed he could insult other people's culture with impunity, and that he would be protected "in his racism and bigotry" by the French state.

"Well he was wrong; unfortunately, in paying the price for his arrogance, he took another 11 people with him," he added.

"Power cultures all like to use the old chestnut of freedom of speech when they choose to ridicule people who aren't exactly like them, and mostly they get away with it ... These guys liked the privilege [of free speech] but didn't think they'd be caught up in the ramifications - they were wrong."

Many might agree with Mr Fox up to that point, perhaps. The initial display of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo in France and elsewhere - even Auckland - was soon tempered with suggestions that this might not be a bad time to discuss freedom of speech and its limitations, and whether anyone has a fundamental right to offend others. This newspaper would not be alone in saying there is no such fundamental right. Old-fashioned as it might be, it clings to the view that with every right comes an obligation. In the case of free speech, that obligation is to refrain from wilfully hurting others.

The question in Paris, however, is whether the hurt allegedly caused by those who died warranted the awful response meted out last week. The answer has to be no, although Mr Fox doesn't seem to agree.

He said what happened in Paris should serve as a lesson to others who believe they can use the power they wield by way of dominating the media to abuse and ridicule others they believe to be inferior to them, "just like [in] this country."

He should be ashamed of himself for that comment. He will not be the only person on this planet who believes that freedom of religion should extend to Islam as much as it does to any other faith (although he probably wasn't surprised that angry Catholics haven't responded to satirising of their church with a similarly murderous attack), but his inference that media in this country dole out abuse and ridicule others they believe to be inferior is laughable.

The media in this country might not always be at the top of their game in terms of accuracy and balance, but where is the evidence of cultural superiority and arrogance? Where, in a country that has become consumed with political correctness, is the evidence that anyone is dominating the media to impose their cultural values or superiority on others? And if such evidence does exist, does that mean that those responsible deserve the same summary justice that was dished out in Paris?

It was a ridiculous thing to say given the lengths to which society in New Zealand goes to show respect for minorities. Mr Fox is surely aware that if offence is given, and goes largely unremarked upon, the target will invariably be Pakeha and their institutions. Indeed the only person in this country is who is expected to take it on the chin is the Pakeha male. Everyone else, from women and children, the elderly, the religious (apart from Christians) to the uneducated, the wastrel, and especially ethnic minorities, enjoys a significant level of state-supported protection from insult or slander.

Mr Fox must know as well as anyone that the right to express minority views is sacrosanct in this country, and that the media, who necessarily play a role in allowing such views to be expressed, are hardly the epitome of cultural arrogance or bullying. And to suggest that there are some within this country's media who are running the risk of retaliation a la Paris last week was, to quote MP Chris Bishop, horrific, ridiculous and shameful.

What we are now seeing on a global scale is a lack of tolerance, often exhibited by people who are the first to demand tolerance. Unlike many, however, we fortunate few live in an extremely tolerant society, a fact that has benefited Mr Fox's career significantly.

It is frightening to witness the extension of religious bigotry to countries that we empathise with, and that share our core values, and the day might yet come when hatred of a nature that is utterly abhorrent to most will lead to violence here.

How we might prepare for that isn't clear, but what we should not be doing is listening to people who are prepared to use the terror that was visited upon France last week to promote some misguided philosophy that portrays New Zealand as something it isn't, never has been and hopefully never will be.