Wednesday, January 7, 2015. It’s almost 12pm. The incessant calls I receive on my phone wake me up. “They did it, they fucking did it!” says a friend, his voice emanating anger and fear “they’ve shot Charlie Hebdo”. The membrane of my dream is not fully pierced; I don’t quite grasp the full situation. “Who’s “they”? What the hell are you talking about?” I hang up. My skin turns pale, my arteries stop irrigating my organs, there is a lack of circulation of life in my body. I turn on my laptop to read what’s going on. My screen is full of stories of a shooting that took place in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. That’s the only info I can get. I’m in a dark and surreal state where my spirit can’t judge anymore. On my screen, details are coming forth, words and videos: Charb, Wolinski, Tignous Bernard Maris … the authorities are announcing the death of ten people, including two police officers. Today is the French equivalent to 9/11 – Charb and Cabu were our Twin Towers.
The terrorist attack killed 12 people including 8 journalists/caricaturists/cartoonists –helpful people for a democratic society – from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Although it is true that Charlie Hebdo’s team had a big appetite for risk and were indifferent to the potentially disastrous consequences of religious provocations, they were killed because they drew with conviction and humor. Is that a valid motivation for their murder?
Less than a kilometer away from me, people died for their cartoons: bullets in the head, bullets in the thorax. Another bullet was shot in the soul of the French population. This killing will be stuck in the mind of the minds and the heart of the hearts for a long time.
The Kouachi brothers in the act
Wednesday revealed the limits to our ability to protect freedom of expression and of the Republic’s- though French law has protected freedom of the press since 29th of July 1881. Yet, everybody knew that these cold-blooded murders were not an isolated attack against French freedom of speech, but rather one among many attacks on freedom of speech that have happened across our world. Though their deaths on Wednesday were both tragic and powerfully symbolic, the journalists of Charlie Hebdo are not more or less heroic than the Iraqi, Syrian, Tunisian, or Algerian journalists murdered for the same reason.
Following these murders, questions arise: is this the end of comfortable intellectual discourse? Their ideas were disturbing for some, upsetting for others – but ideas can only be fought with ideas, not people. Some people laughed at their cartoons, others didn’t bother to take a look at them.
Is free speech in danger? Free speech is a knife: on one side of the blade, it regroups an increasingly idealist notion in the West, on the other side of the blade it regroups fanatics who are hungry for bullshit and defamation, and on the sharp side stands the truth – truth is where the fact is being dissected, cut: it’s a painful moment. The truest truth is the most painful – it touches the epidermal membrane where the nerves are the most sensitive and fragile. Charlie Hebdo’s idea of the truth invoked a massacre, it shouldn’t have.
We’re living in strange times. Since last Wednesday, times have become weirder. The corners of the world seem to be closing on us. Paris suffocates and people all around the world are holding their breath – suffused with anger and tears.
But what is it all about? Is humor really incompatible with religion? Is making people laugh an act of resistance? Can we get killed for making a joke?
Everybody was shocked when they heard the news. The attack against the newspaper made us all realized how much this journal was us – even if we disliked it. It made us realized that we all belonged to a community. A community where the freedom to be irreverent, insolent and unreasonable is an inalienable right. Where we have the right to be ourselves, to express our thoughts—with our voices, our writing, or our drawings.
A few days ago, we lost a piece of ourselves. The Kouachi’s brothers- and this does not absolve them of any guilt- were manipulated by radical Muslim ideologues. That’s the truth. There is enough distance between our spirit and our body for people to intercalate doctrines. When fundamentalists and fanatics insert their vision into their disciples’ eyes, the result is often destructive. But why do thousands of young people fall into the clutches of radical, fundamentalist doctrines? The answer is despair: a third of the French population is sinking into sorrow due to political struggle, racism, unemployment, poverty, alienating values and police violence. Despair from the impasse of the institutions that create the relentless anger of minorities. We’re experiencing their revolt now.
Solidarity for the Tragedy
Where is all this craziness leading? Paranoia? Fear? Liberticidal measures? Censorship? Self-censorship? 1.5 million people marched in Paris and 900,000 in the rest of France to expressed their support for Charlie Hebdo and to rally against censorship. The front page of the next issue of Charlie Hebdo represented the prophet Mohamed. The momentum has exceeded the newspaper.
It’s time to pick the right fight.
To Charlie, CARRY ON, and keep drawing with rage, not with tears.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————-
A picture of the author
