Bosch Fawstin: Free Speech in the Crosshairs
“Speech is Violence!” –the violent enemies of Free Speech.
The violent enemies of free speech, mostly on the left and in Islam, want to equate the words of their ideological opponents with violence. They want to justify their initiation of violence against those who say things they don’t like, as if they’re justifiably “retaliating” against “violence”. I can’t say how many times Muslims have accused me of being a “terrorist”, and my cartoons of being “terrorism”, and of leftists accusing me -a cartoonist- of being as equally “extreme” as jihadists.
All Muslims oppose Mohammad cartoons, and so they all oppose free speech. And too many non-Muslims oppose Mohammad cartoons, and so oppose free speech. If you want to know who really supports Free Speech, find out what they think about Mohammad cartoons. Mohammad cartoons have become the litmus test for support of Free Speech today.
It’s been a year since I released my first volume of Mohammad cartoons, and I’ve drawn Mohammad over a hundred times since. I’m still asked why I draw Mohammad, and why I continue drawing him after I’ve drawn him so many times already, with some even pretending that the point has been made about the importance of Free Speech, and that we have the right to draw Mohammad, and so it need not be made anymore. We’re still at war, and the fight for Free Speech is never-ending, as there are always those who want to end Free Speech.
Mohammad should be drawn until drawing him loses all power, but almost no one draws Mohammad today, which makes us more closely resemble the Free Speech-less part of the world that forbids drawing Mohammad. This is intolerable to me, which is a big reason why I’ve drawn Mohammad over 300 times now. Those who bite their tongues and don’t draw Mohammad see those who speak out against Islam and draw Mohammad as a threat to their own safety, more so than the actual threat of jihadists. They act as if our words incite violence, and not the words in the Koran which call for Muslims to kill. And they begin seeing us as the problem, when in reality, their silence and inaction against this threat makes the threat far greater than it ever had a right to be.
It’s ludicrous to seriously consider anything that Muslims and leftists have to say about Free Speech, when they’ve proven themselves to be opposed to it in every imaginable way. People being free to say whatever they want hurts Muslims and leftists because their ideologies cannot withstand scrutiny.
A punk’s words come to mind, one who was trying to rally others at his university to fire Camille Paglia after her decades of employment at the university, for saying things he didn’t like. And he put it this way: “I had concern that she would be able to speak”.
Those who cannot bear to hear the words of others, whatever those words may be, cannot operate in a free society, and so work towards totalitarianism, all in the name of making the entire world a “safe space” from Free Speech. Some say that those who want to censor others only want Free Speech for themselves; the truth is that those who most want to censor others have already censored themselves, and resent those who haven’t, and want to shut them up.
Journalist Gary Webb said, “I’ve never written anything important enough to suppress.” So keep that in mind regarding those who have yet to be punished for their speech, because when the enemies of free speech have silenced the loudest voices against Islam and leftism, they will go after the rest, no matter how immune the rest thought they made themselves with their self-censored speech.
And even beyond violent people claiming that words are violence, they go so far as to claim that silence is violence. That if you don’t say what they want you to say, and if you remain silent, that you’ve incited violence somehow. To them, everything is violence except violence.
Free Speech is uncontrollable, and that’s intolerable to totalitarians. So we must remain vigilant and always defend Free Speech, because its enemies are out in full force. So long as there’s freedom, its enemies will work night and day against it.
One last thing, sparked by a post on Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, who writes that Facebook now “proactively identifies 65% of hate speech” on its platform, whatever the hell that means. And naturally, a number of Muslims were cheerleading him. About so-called “hate speech”: There is no “balance” to be made between “hate speech” and Free Speech, because so-called “hate speech” IS Free Speech. Speech you love is Free Speech, speech you hate is Free Speech, and speech you’re indifferent to is Free Speech. The left hates Free Speech because it’s uncontrollable, and people can say things that they hate. But even leftists know that they can’t openly oppose Free Speech, so they oppose speech that they hate by calling it “hate speech”, and work towards punishing those who say things that they hate.
Here’s the left’s support for free speech in a nutshell:
“F*** America” is free speech. “F*** Islam” is hate speech.
Never go full leftist.
For my new book, I added more Mohammad cartoons, another article and more extras, so it went from 100 pages to 128, for the same price. It will be available to ship out next week, and you can order it here.
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