Tom Slater
Spiked, Jan. 7, 2025
“Like much of Europe, France has only really traded in its old blasphemy laws for new ones.”
As staunch left-wing secularists, the cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo will have no truck with notions of immortality, or an afterlife. But 10 years on from the Islamist massacre at their Paris offices – when two al-Qaeda terrorists gunned down 12 people in cold blood – the spirit of those slain lives on.
Charlie Hebdo has become a symbol. Of freedom of speech in the face of Islamist barbarism. Of laughter in the face of terror. Of courage. As we mark this grim milestone, it is these men and women’s defiance, not their murder, that we should remember.
When Charb, Cabu, Wolinski, Tignous, Honoré, Bernard Maris, Elsa Cayat, Mustapha Ourrad – some of the editors, cartoonists and columnists of the satirical newspaper – lost their lives on 7 January 2015, they’d already been threatened, their offices had been firebombed, they were under police protection.
Their great crime, supposedly, was to publish cartoons of Muhammad. First in 2006, following what is rather limply referred to as the ‘Danish cartoon controversy’, and again whenever someone told them they couldn’t. But as we all know, it doesn’t take much to offend a jihadist. Going to a pop concert will do.
Still, they were resolute. They blew raspberries at the authoritarians, as they always did – whether they were priests, presidents or far-right-wingers. As editor Charb put it in 2012: ‘I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.’ What an indictment it is that he, in 21st-century secular France, was forced to make that choice. SOURCE