In today’s Tagesspiegel, an open letter from German cartoonists in support of their colleague Klaus Stuttmann. Stuttmann has had to go into hiding after receiving death threats because of a cartoon his Berlin newspaper published on February 10 (click “Bilderstrecke” to see it). As the paper has tried to explain, the subject is the German debate about security under the upcoming football World Cup. Iranians have used it as a pretext to threaten Stuttmann, demand an apology (very original) and attack the German embassy in Teheran.
A commentary in today’s Tagesspiegel calls what’s happening now an extension of the taboo zone. There’s every reason to fear that. The imbalance between a very real death threat and a mere cartoon makes this an unfair struggle. Who can say that there aren’t small internal censors growing in the heads of writers and cartoonists everywhere now?
In days like these it’s tempting to quote John Stuart Mill. Every day:
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. (from On Liberty).
