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Why do free speech debates make us so angry?

We try to pin down definitions and enforce rules – but often what we’re really arguing about is characterIn January 2015, two members of al-Qaida gunned down cartoonists at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo in retaliation for their publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. In the following weeks, my Facebook page split in two. Many of my childhood friends (I grew up in France and went to school near Paris) expressed their sadness at the death of artists they had been familiar with for decades, their anger over religious extremism and their fear about the waning of free speech.Meanwhile, many of my British and American academic colleagues, who were discovering Charlie Hebdo and its garishly offensive cartoons for the first time, worried about the stigmatisation of French Muslims and cast doubt on the wisdom of publishing the images in the first place; one reposted a link to a blog that described the murdered cartoonists as “racist assholes”. Continue reading...