Mick Hartley

The Charlie Hebdo shooting was four years ago yesterday. It was, says Jacob Siegel, a key moment in the increasingly common view by many on the left that "free speech" is in reality just a tool of systemic oppression:

The Hebdo attack, it would later become clear, was a pivotal historical moment not because of the event itself but owing to the response. The aftermath of the Hebdo killings galvanized a set of opposing ideas about the nature and causes of the attacks, the value of free expression, the meaning of victimhood, which animated an ongoing conflict for control over cultural values in Western societies.

It only took a few days after the murder of cartoonists for the crime of their drawings that a certain fashionable political reaction coalesced in the American and Western press. While, of course condemning the dreadful murders, certain sensitive observers couldn’t help but note that the scribblers at Hebdo really had gone too far with their drawings. And before long, many very smart and sophisticated people, New Yorker writers and PEN award winners among them, hastened to point out that—yes, yes, it was a very nasty thing, the shooting them down in cold blood—but the cartoonists were, nevertheless, rightfully understood, participating in their own form of violence because their cartoon’s mockery of Islam was an extension of the systemic oppression of Muslims in Europe and elsewhere.

The belief that art can be a form of violence is now a mainstay on elite college campuses and in the cultural landscape. But if you are wondering when it took root, I suggest, that Hebdo played an important role….

The response to Hebdo, I would argue, was a seminal event that formalized a constellation of influential illiberal precepts. Among them, the opposition to free speech as the handmaiden of systemic oppression, and the ideologically driven denial of victimhood to Jews—who had been attacked in alarming and growing numbers throughout France in the years leading up to the Hebdo murders but were seen by influential segments of the European and American left as too powerful to really be victims.

According to the current Charlie Hebdo editor, things have indeed got worse over the past four years:

Charlie Hebdo’s commemorative cover this week depicts both a Catholic bishop and a Muslim imam blowing out a candle flame that represents the light of reason. The headline bemoans a French society it says has become anti-enlightenment ("anti-lumières").

In an interview with AFP, Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Riss, who was the artist behind the cover drawing, said public attitudes had only grown less tolerant since the attacks.

Not only has the tragedy faded from memory but so has the social significance of the event, he said.

“One gets the impression that we have turned our backs to it, so in our opinion the antiquated attitudes are still there, even more so than four or five years ago.”

"The hostility no longer only comes from religious extremists but now also from intellectuals," he observed.

In an editorial for the memorial edition – entitled “Are you still there?” – Riss put it even more bluntly: “Everything has become blasphemous.”

It's also worth watching this MEMRI video clip with former Charlie Hebdo journalist Zineb El Rhazoui, who left the magazine in 2017, accusing it of giving in to Islamist extremists by no longer daring to depict the Prophet Mohammed. She received death threats for saying on TV that Islam must accept criticism and humour, and should abide by the laws of the republic and by French law:

Every time I have faced racist curses in France, it has been by people named Muhammad, Mustafa, Ibrahim, or Ali. It has always been from people who share my background. They would curse me, saying: "You are Moroccan, go back to your country." "You are an Arab", "You are willing to do anything in order to assimilate in France." They are unaware of the fact that I am French because my mother is French. I am proud to be French, to be part of this country, and to respect its laws. […]

In 2015, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, I received a lot of electronic fatwas and threats in Arabic from anonymous people, who claimed they were with ISIS in Syria or whatever… This time around, things are different. This time, they are French youth, who are our fellow countrymen. They enjoy the rights that we, unfortunately, do not have in the Arab countries, yet they believe that I said something that I should be killed for. Is this not disgraceful? Is this not shameful? We all deplore this. How low have we stooped? Has it become a crime and an insult to Muslims to say that Islam needs to abide by the laws of the country and that it must be subject to criticism, humor, and reason? […]

I am a reasonable person and I hope that one day the Islamic world will be freed from this ignorance and backwardness, and that it will one day enjoy enlightenment, culture, and prosperity.