France | The Digital Dispatch

If a suspected terrorist sneezes in Europe, we see security camera footage repeated day and night with endless speculation and commentary on CNN, but there has been a virtual mainstream media blackout here in the United States of news about the French working class rising up over the past two weeks.

On March 31, thousands of French activists gathered at the Place de la République to protest French President François Hollande’s labor reforms, and they’ve been staying “up all night” ever since. The “Nuit Debout” protests are now spreading to Belgium, Britain, Spain and Germany.

In an email interview to Vidya Venkat of The Hindu, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, explained the difference between critiquing a religion and ridiculing it, and why it is one thing to oppose censorship and quite another thing to reprint Charlie Hebdo cartoons in solidarity.

“The problem with the ongoing discussion of Charlie Hebdo is that it tends to confuse bigotry with blasphemy. I am personally more favorable to blasphemy, but have no time for bigots or bigotry.”

Read the interview: ‘Charlie Hebdo cartoons are bigoted’ – The Hindu.

Europe Is Up All Night

Conflating Bigotry and Blasphemy