Oh China, they ought to name a drink after you

[commodorified]

...It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It’s really not very fucking complicated. Cry Free Speech in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about & criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? This assertive & idiotic failure to understand that juridical permissibility backed up by the state is not the horizon of politics or morality is absurdly resilient.)
...
Who, after all, could forget the monstrous erasure performed by Stalin on Trotsky, by putting a warning sticker on him & refusing to shelve him alongside The Gruffalo?
...
It is a strange, depraved morality that chooses relentless fidelity to racist texts over consideration of the day-to-day lives of children & others.

No. I cannot extract. I cannot asplain. I cannot sum up. I can only say "Go. Go and Read."

Comments

[kindkit]

Miéville is awesome, as always.

Tintin--and I love Tintin in many ways--is often racist, and Tintin in the Congo is hideously so. And what one might call the Greater Tintin Fandom, which includes a lot of people who grew up with the comic and consider it a precious relic of their childhoods but who aren't necessarily "fannish" in the usual sense, can be scary: homophobic, defensive about the comic's racism, etc. *sigh*

I like the idea of naming a drink after Miéville, though. What should be in it?

[commodorified]

I am not entirely certain, though certainly an overall astringency and a faint, far-off undertone of bitters will be wanted.

[staranise]

So... paint thinner?

[commodorified]

No, more like Angostura and a really good gin.

[random]

Thanks to tumblr, I'll raise you TinTin mashed up with the "great" xenophobic racist fantasist of the 30s.

[anatsuno]

thank you so much for this <3