Charlie Hebdo and the Future of Free Speech Henry Glitz
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Charlie Hebdo and the Future of Free Speech Henry Glitz On the morning of Jan. 7, 2015, at Luz’s uncertainty of how to act in the around 11:30 p.m., the French cartoonist wake of the attack, which killed 12 and injured Rénald “Luz” Luzier was intercepted by a 11, is eminently understandable. “The fear, group of bystanders outside his place of work the anxiety, the petrification” felt in the French — the Parisian offices of the far-left satirical capital during and immediately after the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Late to work, he assault was something Western citizens was told that “two armed men” had just gone believed to “happen in Syria, in Africa”, but into the building. The chilling tattoo of gunfire never in a city like Paris. 4 The Charlie Hebdo came out of the building, and, shortly attack and its aftermath was the most thereafter, so did several masked jihadists, significant France had experienced since a dressed in black. Running inside, Luz 1962 train bombing — related to the war in confronted “bloody footsteps” which he later Algeria — outside Paris.5 Moreover, it seems realized were “the bloodstains of my friends”.1 altogether foreign and incomprehensible to Seeing people strewn “on the ground” of the the relatively liberal standards of our society office, he noticed “a friend face-down”.2 “No that the motivation for such atrocious violence one”, he commented in an interview more was vengeance for the mere act, conflated than three weeks after the attack, “knows how into a crime, of drawing a cartoon. to react to that” situation.3 The reaction was swift: the French nearly unanimously rallied behind the pro-free 1 speech banner of a movement calling itself The trend toward an ever-increasingly “Je Suis Charlie” or “I Am Charlie”, holding liberal society in Europe and North America aloft pens and signs emblazoned “Liberty” to stretches back as far as the Enlightenment. In symbolize their support for free expression. fact, there is an almost innate feeling of The Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie was coined support for what has become the Western by French journalist Joachim Roncin mere ideal of freedom of expression. Given the hours after the shooting itself, and within ten passionate voice in the First Amendment to hours it was being tweeted at a rate of the U.S. Constitution and the French approximately 6,000 times an hour, one of the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, the most meteoric rises to popularity of a news Western pursuit of freedom of speech as an story in Twitter’s history.6 François Hollande, ideal was expressed authoritatively in 1949 the least popular French president since with the United Nations’ Universal Declaration World War II, saw his popularity more than of Human Rights. The international community double in the weeks following the terrorist reaffirmed a connection between the “dignity attacks.7 The response wasn’t limited to and worth of the human person” upheld in the France, however. Rallies were held across U.N. Charter and a “right to freedom of Europe and the United States in solidarity with opinion and expression”, implying furthermore Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists. Every major a right “to seek, receive, and impart Western head of state expressed support for information and ideas through any media and Charlie Hebdo’s cause of free speech, and regardless of frontiers” without being beholden President Obama created a minor uproar in to the wishes of governments, private the U.S. when he chose not to attend a individuals or religious organizations.10, 11 solidarity march in Paris on Jan. 11. Ensured ability to “seek, receive, and impart information” also ties the freedom of While it may seem natural to most expression to the right to know of citizens Westerners, the response to the Jan. 7 concerned with the workings of their attacks looks almost absurd when approached government. Thus, becoming ultimately from a different point of view. Luz himself connected to the idea of democracy itself, free highlights the irony of Western leaders — who speech has gained ingrained support in the more often than not look at satirists like those European, and particularly the American, employed at Charlie Hebdo as “agitators” — psyche. declaring the slain satirists “white knights defending free speech”.8 The definitive Despite the immense public, political characteristic transformed a weekly and cultural motivation to put support behind burlesque, whose parent publication the #jesuischarlie movement, there are some described itself as a “stupid and vicious Westerners who refused to do so. Calling magazine”, into a hero of modernity.9 This themselves “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie” — “I Am reflects, quite simply, a feeling throughout the Not Charlie” — some detractors accuse Western world that intrinsic rights are under European governments of blatant hypocrisy in attack. their support for Charlie Hebdo. While 2 European heads of state defend alleged admittedly very often racy and aggressively bigotry against what’s probably the most anti-religious.16 Many consider former French marginalized group in modern European president Nicolas Sarkozy’s calling the society — Muslims, most of whom are terrorist attack a “war declared on civilization” immigrants — a strong stance against typical of the movement in that it employs Holocaust denial and hate speech directed racist generalizations of “backward, barbaric towards Europe’s Jews is a staple of most Muslims”.17 “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie” less- modern European legal systems. Belgium’s than-subtly suggests, in the best interest of law prohibiting not only the denial, but also both the teller and the butt of the joke, that the “the minimization, the justification, or the speech exemplified in Charlie Hebdo’s Muslim approval” of the Holocaust, is fairly cartoons should be treated the same way as commonplace.12 In France, the penalties for anti-Semitic speech. There are certain expressing anti-Semitic ideas are, symbols, these skeptics claim, that are off- sympathetically, considerably severe. French limits to all iconoclasts. comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala is one of Although these Westerners declare the most prominent examples of the practical themselves against absolute freedom of application of the law. After a new comic expression, it wasn’t they who perpetrated the routine functionally entitled “Anti-Semitism”, attack on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, but François Hollande warned police across rather radical Islamists. Although there’s an France to be “vigilant and inflexible” for incredible diversity of opinion in both Islamic “contemptible provocations” while Dieudonné countries and the West, there can be little is performing. 13, 14 In December 2013, the doubt that many Islamic countries possess comedian said of a prominent French Jewish considerably different cultural, religious and journalist that it was “too bad” that he hadn’t political heritages than those of the West. been put in a “gas chamber”. He was later Notably, Saudi Arabian delegates abstained fined 36,000 euros by the French courts and from voting for the U.N. Universal Declaration is at risk of losing 45,000 more and up to a of Human Rights because it ostensibly year in prison for two more untried offenses.15 violated Sharia law. Moreover, representatives Beyond the European laws against to the UN from Iran have called the anti-Semitic expressions, which many Muslims declaration of rights “a secular understanding in Europe believe to support a double of the Judeo-Christian tradition” that “could not standard protecting only non-Muslim be implemented by Muslims and did not minorities from defamation, several skeptics accord with [their] system of values.”18 The perceived a “certain, virulently racist brand of “universal declaration” was, according to the French xenophobia” and Islamophobia in Iranians, not as universal as some Western cartoons, ranging from straightforward powers believed. depictions of Muhammad to portrayals of Most Muslim-majority countries in the Boko Haram’s Muslim sex slaves as welfare U.N. eventually signed an altered version of queens and everything in between, that were 3 the Declaration that had been authored by the the author himself escaped harm by going into pan-Islam Organization of Islamic hiding for more than a year. Rushdie, a Cooperation. This document, called the Cairo British Muslim, proclaimed his lack of patience Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, for the “but brigade” — those who give only a guarantees that “everyone shall have the right qualified affirmation of free speech — in the to express his opinion freely”, provided they wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack: “the are not “contrary to the principles of the moment somebody says, ‘Yes, I believe in Sharia” or “in such a way as may violate free speech, but,’ I stop listening.”21 By sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, advocating for a literally senseless attachment undermine moral and ethical Values or to free speech, Rushdie exposes the disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or fundamental problem with the Western weaken its faith”.19 The signing countries, in response to the Jan. 7 attacks: both the other words, subordinated free speech solely restriction of the right to free speech, and that to public morality. Although the ideals may be the categorical veneration of unnecessarily different, the sentiment is hardly foreign to incendiary speech is unfaithful to the Western American and Western politics. Even in cases ideals it purports to uphold. The refusal to touted as victories for free speech, like the listen, encompassing both of these extremes, 1957 obscenity trial dealing with Allen is poisonous to the willingness to consider, Ginsberg’s poem Howl, the reasoning behind discuss and persuade — the essential tolerance cites “redeeming social importance” counterpart to free expression. rather than devotion to the principle of Speech should be free.