Hebdophobia

Three hundred years ago an anonymous writer mocked the plight of starving, dispossessed Irish beggars. He savaged their religion. He suggested that surplus “Papist” children should be sold and eaten to keep the numbers down. He even recommended recipes:

A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

I got given “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick” to read in my first term at high school. It’s a nasty, outrageous, provocative, scathing and deeply sarcastic piece of work. My teachers trusted me at thirteen to be able to consider the rhetoric and think through the historical context, with their help and guidance, and not develop into an adult that thought sauteing Celtic infants was an acceptable solution to an inconvenient population problem. They taught me to appreciate satire. It doesn’t get much more vicious than Jonathan Swift. He became one of my favourite writers.

I was thinking of another Swiftian piece the other day – much less famous, and a lot more straightforward, but still brilliant – after I read this Mirror Online headline

The Mirror hack who wrote that obviously did not have the benefit of my Northern Comprehensive education. Only someone entirely innocent of the history of European satire could fall for such imbecility. The Hebdo cartoons no more exhilarate in the death of a refugee child than Swift licked his lips at the prospect of a Catholic kebab. It’s an irony that any thirteen year old in a crap state school would be able to fathom a mile off. Savage, crass, inappropriate and shocking yes. But actually mocking the death of a child… please, where did you learn to read?

Here’s Swift on how lies and falsehoods spread, and how once they are said there is no unsaying them.

I wonder what he would have made of social media. As a friend said on Twitter, “free speech invites consequences”:

@philkirby don't agree. Free speech invites consequences. Its not a one way street of information. Mirror =inflammatory hebdo= inflammatory

— Punk Rock Kick (@PunkRockKick) September 15, 2015

In this case the Mirror’s lies, innuendos and blatant fabrications invite consequences for Charlie Hebdo.

As a link said in the middle of this article…

indeed. So nice to see the supposedly lefty Mirror suggesting deserved targets.

And lovely that the Society of Black Lawyers jumped on board.

Personally I do not give a damn about the colour, creed or class of my legal representative. I would prefer they were able to read however. And understand satire at least to the level of a spotty Leeds teenager from a failing backwater state comp.