cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/487403
The French organizers of the Festival Off Avignon, one of the biggest performing arts festivals in the world, said that they received protests and threats from China after selecting Taiwan as its guest of honour country for this year’s event.
According to Harold David and Laurent Domingos, co-presidents of the Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C), China’s embassy in Paris threatened to withdraw from the event if Taiwan was not dropped as its guest of honour country (‘pays invité d’honneur’).
Domingos said that they had anticipated such a reaction. “We are not stupid, we understand geopolitics,” he said, adding that they have to bear the responsibility for their choice. While the festival’s board has not made a final decision, David and Domingos said they believed the event, which began on Wednesday, should maintain its independence, autonomy, variety and freedom, and keep Taiwan as the guest of honor.
Domingos said that the festival is also planning events for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the People’s Republic of China. The two developments do not conflict with each other, he said.
Taiwan first participated in the Festival Off Avignon 17 years ago, and the country’s selection as a guest of honor was a tribute to its past contributions to the event, David said. The traits Taiwan shares with the festival include diversity, openness to the world, creativity and freedom of speech, he added.
Domingos also lauded the creativity that Taiwan has brought to the festival, which runs until July 21. “Taiwan identifies itself with its culture. It is not recognized by the United Nations and many countries as a ‘country,’ so it defines itself with its cultural identity,” he said, adding that the festival itself was a field to exhibit cultural identity.
Way too many terrible examples. And yet conservatives decided to focus on Facebook and the like as if they have the right of free speech in a non-governmental context.
Government taking away speech? Fine. But how dare they get a 24-hour ban from Facebook for calling 12 different black people the N-word in 5 minutes?!
I suspect that all the “don’t tread on me” “Obama is shredding the constitution” “1776” iconography is deliberately chosen by the propaganda designers, to mentally inoculate the followers against someone pointing out later on that they are treading all over a whole bunch of people and shredding the constitution.