Not content with glorifying pedophilia in Cuties, Netflix in season three of the animated Paradise P.D. features an episode that, according to NewsBusters, is not only devoted to “attacking gun rights,” but was also “blasphemous against Christianity, featuring a video of a gun-wielding Jesus that turns into a porno.” Great, Netflix! Edgy! Courageous! Cutting edge! Stunning and brave! Now, when is your cartoon show featuring, say, a machete-wielding Muhammad who takes up with a nine-year-old Aisha? If we had any actual journalists, they would be asking Netflix officials that question, and there is no doubt about what the answer would be: Netflix has far too much respect for Muslims and Islam to produce a show like that.
Ah yes, respect. As Bob Dylan’s character Jack Fate puts it in Dylan’s underappreciated movie Masked and Anonymous, “I got a lot of respect for a gun.” As everyone knows, the real reason why Netflix doesn’t hesitate to make fun of Jesus and Christians but wouldn’t dream of subjecting Muhammad and Muslims to the same treatment is because they know that Christians won’t kill them for doing so, not even those crazed “right-wing extremists” that we keep hearing about who are supposedly the greatest terror threat we face today. But with Muslims, it’s a different story: Netflix, if it ever dared to produce an animated show about Muhammad, knows that it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that a jihadi could emerge who would be intent upon separating the heads of Netflix executives from their bodies. That’s how “respect” is born these days.
But Netflix didn’t care to demonstrate any respect for Christians the fiendishly obscene episode of Paradise P.D. entitled “Trigger Warning.” In it, according to NewsBusters, a foe of disarming the populace offers to take proponents of that disarming on a tour of the National Rifle Association. “The tour includes a gun pit with a dead kid buried in it and the corpse of Charlton Heston used as a statue, complete with a quote – ‘Pry this gun from my cold, dead hands and win a Republican Senate seat.’ The head of the NRA, Mr. Chip F**k-Yeah, shows them a video using Jesus as a prop to show how “guns make a better world.” The video is horrifically offensive, with Jesus coming down from the Cross to kill his persecutors with machine guns then have sex with two women.”
Believe it or not, it just gets worse from there. But aside from this article and a few others, no one will take any particular note. The establishment media certainly won’t: today’s “journalists” generally hate Christianity as much as Netflix does. But a particularly piquant comparison comes from France. Shortly after a Muslim beheaded schoolteacher Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020 for showing a cartoon of Muhammad in his class, it came to light that French police called in Paty and interrogated him over allegations of “Islamophobia.” Paty told them, and he was right, that “I did not commit any offense.”
In today’s world, however, he did. It is a massive de facto offense against contemporary woke sensibilities to offend Islam and violate Sharia blasphemy laws. That is true in the United States no less than it is in France. When Pamela Geller and I held our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in 2015 in defense of the freedom of speech, and Islamic State jihadis attempted to kill us all, Geller was roundly condemned not just by leftists by even by prominent people who are often considered conservatives (including Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and Greta van Susteren) for daring to commit what they considered to be a gratuitous offense to Muslims. The idea that it is important to defend the freedom of speech against violent intimidation, and not validate that intimidation by giving in to it, did not impress them at all.
The freedom of speech is the foundation of any free society, and so Netflix is entirely free to depict Jesus in a lewd and ridiculous manner, and to mock gun owners as paranoid lunatics. The double standard, however, grows ever more glaring. If Netflix had been operating in France and made fun of Muhammad, police would have called in its executives for questioning. In the United States, if it had made fun of Muhammad, they might not have had to talk to the cops, but they would have been inundated with charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.”
What is all this going to look like five or ten or twenty years down the road, as Americans, and Westerners in general, grow ever more accustomed to the idea that one must adhere to Sharia blasphemy restrictions on mockery, or even criticism, of Islam, but the West’s own culture and traditions, rife as they are with “white supremacism” and “hate,” are fair game. It seems to be a recipe for cultural and societal surrender.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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