Category: Freedom of Expression

Silencing Judith Butler

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Censorship, Free Speech, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech, Jewish fascists, Judith Butler, Right Wing

Why Judith Butler had to be shut down

Posted by Cecilie Surasky

The announcement of a prestigious international academic prize doesn’t typically generate endless sturm und drang on the pages of major newspapers around the world, threatening to turn into an international incident. But when that prize is given by a German city, and the recipient is Judith Butler, one of the great thinkers of our time– who also happens to be a vocal critic of Israeli policies—apparently it signifies the end is near.

Within minutes of announcing that Judith Butler, who can best be described as the Mick Jagger of left academia, had won the prestigious Theodor Adorno prize for her extraordinary and wide-ranging body of critical theory work, the hapless judges of the Frankfurt prize were besieged with complaints by those who said it should be revoked immediately.

Writing in the pages of the Wall Street Journal,  Richard Landes and Ben Weinthal claimed the decision to give Butler the award would threaten Germany and Israel’s “special relationship”, and compared it to

Germany’s circumcision bans, Berlin sending submarines to a newly belligerent Egypt, and ugly revelations of German behavior in the Munich Olympics terror attack.

Elsewhere in Opposite-landia, the weird through-the-looking-glass world created by those who would defend Israel at all costs, right-wing critics claimed Judith Butler is anti-Semitic.  Judith Butler loves Hamas. Judith Butler is too political. Judith Butler isn’t political enough . Or my favorite, Judith Butler is ignorant.

But the truth is Butler became a lightning rod because one of the world’s best-known philosophers, who happens to be Jewish, is also deeply engaged in questions of Judaism, Jewish ethics and Zionism. Her lifelong investigation of these questions, in the spirit of Arendt and Buber who inspired because they walked their own paths—led her to keep one foot solidly in Jewish culture while placing the other in solidarity with precisely the people much of the Jewish world want us to forget, Palestinians.

Equally unforgivably, her intellectual and personal journey led her to support a movement that mainstream Jewish institutions are desperately trying to claim as anti-Semitic: the Palestinian-led, nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. (My use of the the word desperately is deliberate. As more and more individual Jews and Jewish organizations support some form of boycott or divestment to pressure Israel into being accountable to international law and basic Jewish ethics, the argument that doing so is essentially anti-Jewish reveals itself for the emptiness that it is.)

Butler wrote her own defense:

I am a scholar who gained an introduction to philosophy through Jewish thought, and I understand myself as defending and continuing a Jewish ethical tradition that includes figures such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt. I received a Jewish education in Cleveland, Ohio at The Temple under the tutelage of Rabbi Daniel Silver where I developed strong ethical views on the basis of Jewish philosophical thought. I learned, and came to accept, that we are called upon by others, and by ourselves, to respond to suffering and to call for its alleviation. But to do this, we have to hear the call, find the resources by which to respond, and sometimes suffer the consequences for speaking out as we do. I was taught at every step in my Jewish education that it is not acceptable to stay silent in the face of injustice. Such an injunction is a difficult one, since it does not tell us exactly when and how to speak, or how to speak in a way that does not produce a new injustice, or how to speak in a way that will be heard and registered in the right way. My actual position is not heard by these detractors, and perhaps that should not surprise me, since their tactic is to destroy the conditions of audibility.

WWTD? What would Theodor Do?

Back in the late 80s as an undergraduate at Brown, my world couldn’t get enough of Adorno and the Frankfurt School. And when the Matrix films came out, we were all certain the Wachowski (then) Brothers had stayed up late nights imbibing Marcuse and Adorno, and probably something a bit stronger, to come up with their too-close-to home dystopian trilogy.

Reading Adorno helped us understand the signs of fascism and our own willing imprisonment. I suppose his criticisms of mass culture helped herald the rise of the corporatocracy.

Adorno was a big Schoenberg fan. He didn’t go for treacly harmonies, for much the same reasons my mother used to refuse to let us watch the Brady Bunch, though the cynical MASH was OK. Adorno liked dissonance. It revealed the dark truth behind harmonious bourgeois culture. I suppose it was the only thing that made sense to someone who witnessed, and escaped, the Nazi Holocaust. (Real differences aside, it could be said that it took the war to help Adorno and others like him see the underlying brutality and dehumanization that colonized peoples of all kinds have always known firsthand at the hands of “the civilized”. Just ask the Congolese about King Leopold. Or just ask…women.)

This is the realm in which Judith Butler and her work dwells that makes her so utterly inspiring–especially to those of us who aspire to justice in Israel and Palestine while remaining firmly grounded in our Jewishness.

There is Butler’s personal willingness to try to embody the best of the Jewish texts she studies. And her willing look at the dark underbelly of “civilized” cultures (think Pamela Geller ads) which declare some people grievable and others entirely unworthy of grieving. (In that sense, the United States and Israel have more than a special relationship, they are conjoined twins, awash in self congratulatory language about democracy and civilization that obscures the foundation of structural violence that in both cases, has never really ceased.)

Adorno is often quoted for sayng that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. But he also wrote:

“The single genuine power standing against the principle of Auschwitz is autonomy, if I might use the Kantian expression: the power of reflection, of self-determination, of not cooperating.”

Hold that thought. Let us all, like JB and so many countless others, refuse to cooperate. We must refuse to be that person laughing at a Tel Aviv café while just miles away a captive population in Gaza is bombed ceaselessly, or to simply ask someone to pass the cereal moments after reading again that the US military drone dropped a bomb on a group of civilians, this time a group of women and girls.

Let us refuse to cooperate with the mythical Jewish consensus that to be a good Jew, one must not mourn Palestinians as one mourns Jews, and one must not hold Israel up to those same standards.

This Yom Kippur, I’m going to think about the times I didn’t refuse.

I hope also that some of the people who called Judith Butler and so many like her anti-Semites, simply in order to maker them “inaudible,” will consider the gravity of their actions. But I’m not holding my breath.

(Oh, and by the way, Judith Butler did get that prize after all. And the room of 700 cheered.)

-Cecilie Surasky

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Masterbating Nuns | Banned Blasphemy Film To Be Released

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Banned Films, Blasphemy Laws, Catholic Celibacy, Catholic Censorship, Catholic Creeps, Catholic Perverts, Creepy Catholicism, Free Speech, Freedom From Religion, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech, God, Jesus Christ, Masterbating Nuns, Perverse Catholic Sex, Suppressed Catholic Sex

Film banned for blasphemy to be released after two decades

The only film ever banned in Britain for being blasphemous is to be released   in its original, uncut form after more than two decades.

Visions-of-Ecstasy

In, 1996, Nigel Wingrove, the director, took the case to the European Court of Human Rights arguing that the ban violated his freedom of expression
Jasper Copping

The 1989 production Visions of Ecstasy was considered so shocking that   the Government even fought a successful battle at the European Court of   Human Rights to uphold the ban.

But the film is now to be released in its original, uncut form after the   British Board of Film Classification overturned its original decision. DVDs   of the film will go on sale tomorrow, at the start of Holy Week.

It comes at a time when many British Christians believe their faith is being   increasingly undermined, over issues such as the wearing of crosses at work   and gay marriage.

The low-budget, arthouse production is about St Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth   century Spanish nun and mystic who had visions of Christ, which lasted   almost uninterrupted for two years. The 18-minute film is an interpretation   of these visions and includes sexual scenes involving St Teresa and another   woman, who represents her psyche. These are intercut with shots of the nun   lying on Christ, who is still nailed to the Cross, and caressing him. The   film was inspired by St Teresa in Ecstasy, the statue by Gian Lorenzo   Bernini, the seventeenth century baroque sculptor, which is located in Rome.

James Ferman, the then BBFC director, ruled that the film’s sexual nature   would inflame Christians and make it liable to prosecution under the   blasphemous libel law.

The furore at the time was such that one Conservative MP, Sir Graham Bright,   called for the film negatives to be destroyed as part of the banning order.

However, the film, which featured three little known actors and music by Steve   Severin of 1980s band Siouxsie And The Banshees, became a cause   célèbre among anticensorship campaigners, among them Salman Rushdie and Fay   Weldon, the authors, and Derek Jarman, the late filmmaker.

In, 1996, Nigel Wingrove, the director, took the case to the European Court of   Human Rights arguing that the ban violated his freedom of expression. But in   a rare victory for the British government, he lost.

Although the court did not consider whether the video itself was blasphemous,   it ruled that the UK’s blasphemy laws were consistent with the European   Convention on Human Rights.

However, in 2008, the laws were abolished by the Criminal Justice and   Immigration Act which meant they could no longer be considered in the   board’s deliberations.

Last December, Mr Wingrove resubmitted the film for approval, after clips   started to appear on the internet. It will go on sale in high street shops   from tomorrow, on DVDs which will also feature two other films by Mr   Wingrove, as well as a gallery of national and international press cuttings   from the time of the ban and a booklet on the subject. It will have an 18   certificate.

Mr Wingrove, who went on to set up a company which specialised in horror   films, said the release was a “victory for freedom of expression”   but that he has “mixed feelings” about the film itself.

“Although there are bits I like about it, there are bits I don’t,”   he added. “I did not make it to hurt or mock and I wasn’t trying to be   over the top.

“At the time, blasphemy was a very big issue and I think the film was caught   up in it. But looked at now, it is very tame and of its time. The imagery is   no different from what you see in many films and pop videos today.”

He said the film was intended to have been launched last month and was only   being released in Holy Week because of a delay in preparing the accompanying   booklet.

However, David Burrowes, the Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate and member   of the Christians in Parliament group, said: “The law may have changed   in the last 20 years, but the potential for this film to offend has not and   it is a shame that a film like this is being released at such a time. The   timing seems particularly provocative.”

The Rev Sally Hitchiner, curate of St John’s, Ealing, said: “I think it’s   interesting that religion continues to fascinate artists and film makers.

“The arts have always be used to express controversial ideas about a whole   range of topics that may be taken as anti-religious but this has never   stopped people using the arts to worship God as they will be in thousands of   special Easter services and events this week.”

The BBFC said that without any possible breach of the law, it had no grounds   on which to refuse classification.

It said it “recognised the content of the film may be deeply offensive to   some viewers”, but that the decision to pass it “reflected the   clear view of the public that adults should have the right to choose their   own viewing, provided that the material in question is neither illegal nor   harmful”.

The BBFC, which is in its centenary year, has refused classification to nearly   1,000 films.

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