Are Any of Us Still Charlie?
One man’s Haj to buy a magazine in Paris and what it meant.
I have recently returned from Paris. In addition to some much-needed time off, my trip centred around watching my beloved Scotland rugby team take on our French hosts. Less said about the result, the better, but Gregor Townsend’s men contributed indirectly to England not winning the Six Nations —Tres bon, of a kind
My first visit to the French capital in more than twenty years also allowed me to observe a small ritual that I swore to myself a decade ago I would complete if I ever made it back. It was to buy a copy of a popular, zany French satirical magazine from the admirable number of newsagent kiosks that still ply their reassuring trade in the city.
Paris is like that. People like print.
With my copy purchased, its fully exposed cartoon nipple on the cover and jokes in a language I can’t read inside, I posed for a picture in front of the Arc de Triomphe to mark this act of pilgrimage, reflection, and remembrance.
The paper was Charlie Hebdo and ten years ago, two Muslim terrorists claiming to be linked with al-Qaeda, entered their offices in Paris and killed 12 people, injuring 11 others, for the crime of drawing the ‘prophet’ they like and making jokes about him.
Note: In reality, there are no prophets, but mental illness is very common.
In 2015, I was taking my first, tentative steps into writing, having been mainly a student radio broadcaster until then, and I remember reacting viscerally to the slaughter in a way that no other case of multiple murder had brought out in me. There was something especially profane and cruel about killing people whose entire job was to be rude and provocative in the name of free speech that resonated with me. It turns my stomach still.
I am not a spiritual or religious man, but buying a copy of Charlie Hebdo on the Champs-Elysees was a profound experience. It felt like, in the smallest possible way, taking a stand against that which is worst in the world — censorship, blind faith, unreason, bullying, and murder.
That Charlie Hebdo did not stop publishing and even reprinted its cartoons of Mohammad shows the calibre of the people involved and the magazine they work for. They did not bow to the ignorant pigs who murdered their colleagues, nor did they even think about it. As one moving cartoon showed, they picked up pencils dropped by the dead and carried on doodling.
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Charlie Hebdo’s response was defiant. They continued publishing and refused to stop doing what the French constitution and their essential human morality give them the right to—write, publish, and draw whatever they saw fit. In doing so, they mocked, derided, and lampooned anything they wanted, regardless of how precious the subject matter may be to some people. They are inspirational.
Ten years before the Charlie Hebdo attack, across the continent in lovely Denmark, cartoonists were threatened with and subjected to violence for similar drawings. Jyllands-Posten, a liberal conservative broadsheet newspaper, published drawings of Muhammad and was met with over 250 death threats, violence against individuals, and plots to attack Danish and other European diplomatic institutions.
It is worth noting that amid this tension, diplomats from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya, Morocco — and the Head of the Palestinian General Delegation — all urged the Danes to put pressure on the paper to apologise and retract the cartoon. Notable religious figures, from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury, also condemned the cartoons, rather than the frothing, neanderthal rage and violence. Their response was thick as pigshit, but nowhere near as useful.
Other unedifying behaviours included protestors mocking up of fake cartoons (including showing Muhammad as a pig, to attempt credibility for their imagined sleight) and the burning of flags of Denmark and the European Union.
Prior to that incident, there was the 1988 case of Salman Rushdie, the brilliant novelist of The Satanic Verses, who found himself under 24 hour armed protection in Washington after the leader of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, offered a cash reward for his murder. This for a work of fiction that Khomeini probably didn’t and couldn’t read in the language in which is was published.
This is why I was brought to tears in the shadow of the beautiful archway, providing its generous shade to the tomb of the unknown soldier, and spawning stunning boulevards leading away from the centre. As I clutched the latest Charlie Hebdo under my arm, it felt like joining in the essential constant crusade against these and the countless other acts of barbarism that have been conducted against those who write, draw, create, think, and publish.
A decade on, it’s worth asking plus ca change? With the Russian monster once again taking huge bites out of Europe’s eastern flank and the religions of peace waging war, either by state means or through mass slaughter at public events, in the Middle East, a madman in the White House, and omnipresent political reductionism elevated by social media so that complex arguments and discussions are banished to seconds long, bad faith, videos, who is concerned about the freedom to speak one’s mind, in whatever way, and using whatever method, one sees fit?
Now that the black and white Je Suis Charlie placards have wilted and discoloured and the ten year anniversary of the attack has passed with relatively little fanfare, why there has not been a great flourishing of free speech and a rededication to the right to be scorching rude to whoever you feel like, even, and especially because, it may hurt their feelings, wound their ego, or tarnish their most deeply held beliefs?
“Je Suis Charlie” should have become verbal shorthand across the civilised world for standing up to censorship and the shutting down of debate and discussion. But it did not.
In the aftermath of the attack, we saw moving scenes of people coming together to reaffirm their right to free speech… but it dissipated and evaporated.
With this in mind we need to ask ourselves if we are still all Charlie, or if any of us ever were in the first place? I have the sinking feeling that many of us may not like the answer very much.
Alan Grant is a writer and columnist.
