'Free Speech' Hypocrisy In The Aftermath Of The Attack On Charlie Hebdo
15 January 2015
By David North
The attack on the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo
has shocked the public, which is horrified by the
violent deaths of 12 people in the center of Paris.
The video images, viewed by millions, of the gunmen
firing their weapons and killing an already-wounded
policeman have imparted to Wednesday’s events an
extraordinary actuality.
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, the state
and media are seeking to exploit the fear and the
confusion of the public. Once again, the political
bankruptcy and essentially reactionary character of
terrorism is exposed. It serves the interests of the
state, which utilizes the opportunity provided by the
terrorists to whip up support for authoritarianism and
militarism. In 2003, when the Bush administration
invaded Iraq, French popular opposition was so
overwhelming that the government led by President
Jacques Chirac was compelled to oppose the war, even
in the face of massive political pressure from the
United States. Now, 12 years later, as President
François Hollande is striving to transform France into
the United States’ principal ally in the “war on
terror,” the attack in Paris plays into his hands.
In these efforts Hollande can rely on the media, which
in such circumstances directs all its energies toward
the emotional manipulation and political
disorientation of the public. The capitalist media,
skillfully combining the suppression of information
with half-truths and outright lies, devises a
narrative that is calculated to appeal not only to the
basest instincts of the broad public, but also to its
democratic and idealistic sentiments.
Throughout Europe and the United States, the claim is
being made that the attack on the magazine Charlie
Hebdo was an assault on the freedom of the press and
the unalienable right of journalists in a democratic
society to express themselves without loss of freedom
or fear for their lives. The killing of the Charlie
Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an
assault on the principles of free speech that are,
supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United
States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus,
presented as another outrage by Muslims who cannot
tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion
must be drawn that the “war on terror”—i.e., the
imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia
and North and Central Africa—is an unavoidable
necessity.
In the midst of this orgy of democratic hypocrisy, no
reference is made to the fact that the American
military, in the course of its wars in the Middle
East, is responsible for the deaths of at least 15
journalists. In the on-going narrative of “Freedom of
Speech Under Attack,” there is no place for any
mention of the 2003 air-to-surface missile attack on
the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three
journalists dead and four wounded.
Nor is anything being written or said about the July
2007 murder of two Reuters journalists working in
Baghdad, staff photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and
driver Saeed Chmagh. Both men were deliberately
targeted by US Apache gunships while on assignment in
East Baghdad.
The American and international public was first able
to view a video of the cold-blooded murder of the two
journalists as well as a group of Iraqis—taken from
one of the gunships—as the result of WikiLeaks’
release of classified material that it had obtained
from an American soldier, Corporal Bradley Chelsea
Manning.
And how has the United States and Europe acted to
protect WikiLeaks’ exercise of free speech? Julian
Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, has
been subjected to relentless persecution. Leading
political and media figures in the United States and
Canada have denounced him as a “terrorist” and
demanded his arrest, with some even calling publicly
for his murder. Assange is being pursued on fraudulent
“rape” allegations concocted by American and Swedish
intelligence services. He has been compelled to seek
sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which
is under constant guard by British police who will
seize Assange if he steps out of the embassy. As for
Chelsea Manning, she is presently in prison, serving
out a 35-year sentence for treason.
That is how the great capitalist “democracies” of
North America and Europe have demonstrated their
commitment to free speech and the safety of
journalists!
The dishonest and hypocritical narrative spun out by
the state and the media requires that Charlie Hebdo
and its murdered cartoonists and journalists be upheld
as martyrs to free speech and representatives of a
revered democratic tradition of hard-hitting
iconoclastic journalism.
In a column published Wednesday in the Financial
Times, the liberal historian Simon Schama places
Charlie Hebdo in a glorious tradition of journalistic
irreverence that “is the lifeblood of freedom.” He
recalls the great European satirists between the
sixteenth and nineteenth centuries who subjected the
great and powerful to their withering scorn. Among
their illustrious targets, Schama reminds us, were the
brutal Duke of Alba, who in the 1500s drowned the
Dutch struggle for freedom in blood; the French “Sun
King,” Louis XIV; the British Prime Minister William
Pitt; and the Prince of Wales. “Satire,” writes Schama,
“became the oxygen of politics, ventilating healthy
howls of derision in coffee houses and taverns where
caricatures circulated every day and every week.”
Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a tradition to which it
does not belong. All the great satirists to whom
Schama refers were representatives of a democratic
Enlightenment who directed their scorn against the
powerful and corrupt defenders of aristocratic
privilege. In its relentlessly degrading portrayals of
Muslims, Charlie Hebdo has mocked the poor and the
powerless.
To speak bluntly and honestly about the sordid,
cynical and degraded character of Charlie Hebdo is not
to condone the killing of its personnel. But when the
slogan “I am Charlie” is adopted and heavily promoted
by the media as the slogan of protest demonstrations,
those who have not been overwhelmed by state and media
propaganda are obligated to reply: “We oppose the
violent assault on the magazine, but we are not—and
have nothing in common with—‘Charlie.’”
Marxists are no strangers to the struggle to overcome
the influence of religion among the masses. But they
conduct this struggle with the understanding that
religious faith is sustained by conditions of
adversity and desperate hardship. Religion is not to
be mocked, but understood and criticized as Karl Marx
understood and criticized it:
“Religious distress is … the expression of real
distress and also the protest against real distress.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit
of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the
people.
“To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the
people is to demand their real happiness. The demand
to give up illusions about the existing affairs is the
demand to give up a state of affairs that needs
illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in
embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of
which is religion.” [Contribution to Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, in Marx and Engels
Collected Works, Volume 3 (New York, 1975), pp.
175-76]
One has only to read these words to see the
intellectual and moral chasm that separates Marxism
from the unhealthy milieu of the ex-left political
cynicism that has found expression in Charlie Hebdo.
There has been nothing enlightening, let alone
edifying, in their puerile and often obscene
denigration of the Muslim religion and its traditions.
The cynically provocative anti-Muslim caricatures that
have appeared on so many covers of Charlie Hebdo have
pandered to and facilitated the growth of right-wing
chauvinist movements in France. It is absurd to claim,
by way of defense of Charlie Hebdo, that its cartoons
are all “in good fun” and have no political
consequences. Aside from the fact that the French
government is desperate to rally support for its
growing military agenda in Africa and the Middle East,
France is a country where the influence of the
neo-fascist National Front is growing rapidly. In this
political context, Charlie Hebdo has facilitated the
growth of a form of politicized anti-Muslim sentiment
that bears a disturbing resemblance to the politicized
anti-Semitism that emerged as a mass movement in
France in the 1890s.
In its use of crude and vulgar caricatures that purvey
a sinister and stereotyped image of Muslims, Charlie
Hebdo recalls the cheap racist publications that
played a significant role in fostering the
anti-Semitic agitation that swept France during the
famous Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in 1894 after a
Jewish officer was accused and falsely convicted of
espionage on behalf of Germany. In whipping up popular
hatred of Jews, La Libre Parole [“Free Speech”],
published by the infamous Edoard Adolfe Drumont, made
highly effective use of cartoons that employed the
familiar anti-Semitic devices. The caricatures served
to inflame public opinion, inciting mobs against
Dreyfus and his defenders, such as Emile Zola, the
great novelist and author of J’Accuse.
The World Socialist Web Site, on the basis of
long-standing political principles, opposes and
unequivocally condemns the terrorist assault on
Charlie Hebdo. But we refuse to join in the portrayal
of Charlie Hebdo as a martyr to the cause of democracy
and free speech, and we warn our readers to be wary of
the reactionary agenda that motivates this
hypocritical and dishonest campaign.
* David North is an American Trotskyist. He is the
national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in
the United States (SEP), formerly the Workers League.
North is also the chairman of the International
Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, where
this article was first published.
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