Appeasement doesn’t pay, or does it?

“It was a very explosive situation,” artist Jan Egesborg, whose satirical art group Surrend created the Berlin Galerie Nord exhibition, told German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. He just had been confronted with unruly objections by pious adversaries of satire. Being Danish, irreverent to authorities–both religious and secular–, and having been a journalist for Jyllands Posten certainly didn’t help. “We don’t want to be part of the current Islamophobic tendency in Europe. We weren’t trying to provoke Muslims. [...] If we were trying to provoke anyone, then it was the neo-Nazis,” Egesborg said. He described the exhibition, which also satirizes Jewish extremists, as “very balanced,” adding: “That’s why the attack is so ignorant. We are surprised as a group by the reaction.” And why shouldn’t he.

Being nice to the naughties is one funny attitude. Noel Coward knew that in 1945 already: Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans. Enraged communities and their grievances being–pardon the pun–all the rage of our time, some things just never seem to go out of style.