Encouraging Violence

For John, BLUF:  It is bad when one group declares it will kill critics.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Writing in The Washington Post, Law Professor Eugene Volokh talks about Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of the cartoon "Doonsbury", and Mr Trudeau's criticism Friday of the Satirical Magazine Charlie Hebdo, "Adherents of Islam, second largest religion in the world, are a “powerless, disenfranchised minority”?".

Mr Trudeau talked about how Charlie Hebdo was picking on the powerless:

By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech, which in France is only illegal if it directly incites violence.

One of Professor Volokh's point is that Islam isn't some "powerless, disenfranchised minority", but a reviving religion of 1.6 Billion adherents [and with surging social-political threads oppressing or threatening minorities over much of the world].

Here is the Professor's conclusion:

I would have thought that one of the most prominent and (at least in the distant past) iconoclastic cartoonists in the world, receiving an award for his lifetime achievement as a cartoonist, would have explained in a bit more detail just which sorts of ideologies should now be immunized from ridicule, and which sort of cartoons should indeed be criminalized or at least condemned by the cartooning elites.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff