The Telegraph reports on another non-cartoon related issue touching on free speech and religio-ethnic tolerance:
A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country’s 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.
Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.
Bavaria’s interior minister admitted last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to “gauge” audience reaction and identify potential radicals.
Edmund Stoiber, the state’s conservative prime minister, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as “this racist and anti-Western hate film” from their programmes.
The £6 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country’s prime minister.
I am sure the right-wing reaction to this is going to be hostile. How about the left-wing?
To be fair, I don’t know that much about the movie. It certainly sounds atrocious. And if it is as bad as this article makes it sound, it is outrageous that the wife of the Turkey’s prime minister is legitimizing it by attending. But, the proper way to deal with this kind of movie is not to ban it. The proper approach is to shame the theater owners into not showing the movie or to boycott theaters that show it and the advertisers that sponsor those theaters. At least, that is how I see it.