Je Suis Charlie!

H. Bruce Rinker
H. Bruce Rinker

On Wednesday, 7 January 2015, people around the world were horror-struck to learn that masked gunmen had stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, killing 12 people including the paper’s editor and two policemen before escaping in a getaway car.

The attack was made allegedly against Charlie Hebdo because of the magazine’s widely recognized anti-religious, Left-wing stances. In recent years, it has fired barbs at the Roman Catholic Church, lampooned politicians on the Right and Left, and caricatured Islam.

But the magazine’s perceived attacks on Muslims had elicited the most controversy.

In 2007, Charlie Hebdo was sued unsuccessfully by two French Muslim associations after it reprinted a dozen cartoons critical of Islam that were originally published in a Danish paper. In 2012, France was forced to shut its embassies and schools in 20 countries after the magazine published gritty cartoons of the Prophet. The Wednesday massacre was likely retaliation from Muslim extremists for the editorial staff’s recalcitrance.

These, and other related incidents, highlighted the intrepid, but sensational reach of the magazine’s satirical work. If provocation is a feature of satire, then the satire came off… but in a disproportionally poignant and infinitely heartbreaking way.

What is satire?

It’s a genre of literature that employs humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize the stupidity or vices of others, thereby shaming them into improvement. One of its features is strong irony or sarcasm. Laughter, however, is not an essential component though it can be an effective initial “hook” to move people to serious reflection.

Images of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons have proliferated on the internet, especially in the aftermath of the carnage at its Paris office. When studying the caricatures, we need to remember the point of satire – to address transgression and to shame into improvement.

On some visceral level, the images have offended – that’s often one of the hallmarks of satire – but, hopefully, those same images have also moved us viewers to reflection and positive attitudinal or behavioral change.

Nonetheless, though satire may be viewed as offensive, such offense must NEVER be used as justification for personal attack, violence, and other intolerant behaviors. In a pluralist society with constitutional guarantees of free speech, someone is bound to be offended by someone, something, or some view or statement or perspective or expression. The jinni of intolerance, nearly always lurking in a fetid field of self-righteousness and cowardice, may be found on the Left as well as the Right.

In my professional career, I have witnessed breathtaking, even debilitating, intolerance in the extreme camps of Left and Right over just about every trigger issue: abortion, minority rights, gay marriage, animal rights, human-accelerated climate change, evolution, legalization of marijuana, corporate privilege, the Keystone XL pipeline, even the American Civil War – just about every facet of our diverse society. They’re trigger issues because they evoke (even provoke) the full spectrum of what it means to be human, including our dark side. Sometimes we’re tempted to paint each uncomfortable issue as black or white, good or bad, when, in fact, very few aspects of humanity can be confined so easily to our fabricated silos of ideology.

Over the years, in response to my column with this newspaper, I have received vague, even not-so-vague threats. For example, one anonymous reader called me a “Zionist pig,” whatever that is, and then cautioned, “We are watching you. We consider you an enemy of the state.” This was in response to an article I wrote about the overwrought commercialization of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Another reader informed this newspaper that he was personally and professionally offended by my satirical comparison of my home state of Virginia with Maine where I once lived, demanding the paper expunge the article. (See http://theroano.wwwmi3-ss14.a2hosted.com/2014/07/02/a-southerner-bids-adieu-to-maine). The editor respectfully declined. Offense, it seems, is often in the eye of a puffed up and cheerless beholder.

Of course, my own experiences do not compare to the murders at Charlie Hebdo, but they may have their origins on the same looming spectrum of ugly intolerance.

Earlier I attributed cowardice to these extremists, Left or Right. They cower behind their anonymity – whether veiled by an on-line pseudonym, a facial mask, a machine gun, or a concealed bomb. They seek to impose their despotic viewpoints on others – quickly, sensationally, brutally – rather than to work out their differences through the established order in a democratic state. Such are the habits of cowards. Whatever happened to the craft of communication and compromise? And a full embrace of diversity rather than a fear of it?

In the aftermath of the massacre in Paris, all the sane world rallied dramatically around the uplifting chant, “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.” And that quickly morphed into “Nous sommes Charlie,” “WE are Charlie.” We are the cartoonists, the police, the Jews, and every other brutalized people around the world. We must be. The murders in Paris on Wednesday were a botched attempt to snuff out free speech and all other constitutional guarantees that we too often take for granted here in the United States. What they did, however, was to unite the threads of free peoples everywhere to confront a common enemy of ignorance, fear, and intolerance.

One of the hallmarks of gods and prophets around the world is a gesture or a statement, “Be not afraid.” Jesus repeated this admonition throughout his ministry. Statues of Shiva and the Buddha often reassure us with the palm of their right hands extended outward. With good reason, “Be not afraid” is a common denominator among the world’s orthodox religions. In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo slayings, let us unite our humanity under this banner, face down these perpetrators of intolerance, and hold them accountable in a society of decency and goodness. They are pariahs to be pitied and punished.

H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D.
Ecologist, Educator, and Explorer
[email protected]

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