It sucks. I remember when the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting happened I was more on the New Atheist/ all religions bad side. I’ve since realized that a lot if that is just laundering Islamophobia through the Reason & Logic TM lens, so left leaning people can feel good about it. Muslims are pathologized as being inherently violent and the historical and continuing violence against Muslims is dismissed and ignored.

I’m still an atheist but the both sidesism is totally power flattening. It doesn’t matter that Charlie Hebdo mocks the pope as well, France is a majority catholic country. If you think that is the same as /pol/ meme level racist caricatures targeting a marginalized and oppressed community, I don’t know what to tell you.

And I wasn’t trying to say the teacher or the Charlie Hebdo staff deserved to get murdered, it’s just really fucked that the reaction then and now is “I guess we just haven’t been racist enough, time to double down.”