However Junkyard, when I place Nazi imagery next to Charlie Hebdo cartoons – it is really clear how much of a darker and nastier message the Nazi cartoons are portraying. There is no comparison IMO – I think some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are unfunny, in bad taste and sometimes inaccurate in their commentary. I don’t think they are incitements to hatred though and I do believe in the right to use scathing humor to question the validity of authority be they governments or religion and we have to accept that we won’t always like some of this humor if we find it unfunny, unhelpful or offensive. Think of this as satires equivalent to collateral damage.
In response to your thoughts on “killing the message” of radical Islam, I think we should combine some of the thoughts raised in that Spiked article into a coherent policy as a long term solution to our chronic problems with Islamism. I do think that the short term response to the acute and immediate threats of Islamism should be robust, using measured force.
The more we fail to achieve a cohesive response to Islamism, that placates the public’s fears, the more we play into the hands of the far right. Europe needs to remember and start championing it’s values, the enlightenment, the rule of law etc etc before we forget it and see a reversion to fascism.