February 08, 2006
Are anti-china cartoons next?
I had been thinking about this issue this morning and just found this comment from AndrewSullivan:
If Chinese radicals were ransacking Western embassies because of a cartoon, and were backed by the Chinese government, we would be outraged, demanding apologies, severing relations, and so on. But when Muslims do it, backed by Islamist governments, we are supposed to take it on the chin, to "respect" their religious traditions, issue mealy-mouthed statements, etc.
Which leads to the interesting question, what if some western news organs were to engage in massively provocative cartoons directed at the Chinese? What if, for example, some Japanese paper started making cartoons talking about how they enjoyed the Chinese women during their occupation of Manchuria?
The Chinese government would have to put troops in front of the Japanese embassy to prevent it from being burned. Would Japanese owns factories be sacked? etc.
The Chinese government would have the choice of a massive crackdown, explaining to their people the value of free speech, or going to war. Since the government is not stupid enough to start a war over this sort of thing and since a crackdown would be massively expensive....
Not entirely sure how this would work, but it may be an interesting general way to topple dictatorships...
Posted by Alex at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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