Es-Tu Charlie?
Accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award Sunday at the Golden Globes, George Clooney was met with standing ovation for his comments on the #jesuischarlie movement and the Hebdo attacks. “Today was an extraordinary day,” he said, “there were millions of people who marched not just in Paris, but around the world. And they didn’t march in protest; they marched in support of the idea that we will not walk in fear. So, Je Suis Charlie.”
In the wake of events in Paris that have been described in turn as “an inhuman assault,” “a slaughter” and “a threat to free speech everywhere,” millions have taken to the streets to express their discontent and rage at the death of 12 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine that was attacked for its obscene portrayal of Mohammed on January 7. The attacks were truly inhuman and deserve to be condemned.
It is worrying to see that, with the trajectory American news outlets are taking, the only message many will walk away from this with is that of amplified Islamophobia. Asked, “Are we at war with a strain of Islam, or is this a perversion [within Islam itself] that we pretend doesn’t exist?” Reza Aslan, a prominent scholar, described Islamists, extremism and attacks like these as a virus, saying, “The work is being done, the voice of condemnation is deafening and if you don’t hear it you’re not listening.” 1.7 billion people are not responsible for these attacks, Aslan asserts.
The double standard that Aslan illuminates is frightening. When abortion clinics are bombed, 2.2 billion Christians are not asked to answer for a few. When violence occurs against Muslims in Sri Lanka, we do not demand answers from 400 million Buddhists. Yet, when a few Muslims attack based on fundamentalist principles, we want mainstream Islam to take responsibility.
As Teju Cole rightly comments in The New Yorker, “The West” is by no means a sanctuary of freedom of speech. Even Charlie Hebdo is not without fault. In 2008, Maurice Sinet was fired for a column that was deemed “anti-Semitic.” Sinet, who insinuated that then-president Sarkozy had converted to Judaism for financial benefit (obviously for comedic purposes), claimed he was wrongly fired, and won 40,000 euros in court. Given this precedent of censorship, what could have possibly justified the string—nay, barrage—of Islamophobic images that has plagued Charlie Hebdo? Writers claim that it’s because they care, because they are worried for the Arab population, because they want to help them integrate into French society. Yet, we see that this strange, blasphemous, offensive brand of “tough love” has had fatal costs. The writers of Charlie Hebdo have alienated the very people they wanted to move to the center.
When we condemn extremists for being “unable to play along”, or blame them for being “bad sports,” we fail to recognize the censorship that we perpetuate in our day-to-day life, the censorship that we overlook and don’t condemn. A study by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Boston Globe reports, found that 55 percent of colleges have codes that “substantially prohibit speech protected by the First Amendment.”
Though it’s easy to get lost in statistics, it is extremely difficult to argue with the stories of students commenting on censorship at Exeter and the widespread “fear culture” that has been cultivated by faculty. If one were to write an Op-Ed with an “un-PC” or socially unaccepted viewpoint, it would be immediately shut down. Imagine a student putting the images produced by “Charlie Hebdo” in the humor section.
We saw censorship in our individual responses to Ferguson: when we saw a bigoted opinion, we just scrolled past, or unfollowed. Though we can censor our friends by clicking, “I don’t like this,” there is no equivalent in the real world and the streets of Paris. In effect, we shut down any conservative discussion of Ferguson because it was racist and bigoted. Yet, discussion is impossible without acknowledging the “other side;” without allowing, as David Brooks puts it in the New York Times, the “kids table” to speak.
The truth is, none of us at Exeter could possibly say “je suis Charlie” and really mean it. Because the blame for the massacre is misplaced. Because Charlie Hebdo was not the beacon of unadulterated offense, it is being idolized to be. Because we, on a day-to-day basis, take part in and concede to a system that limits our freedom of speech, and we are okay with that.
Again, this is not to justify the attacks or the mindless violence that people of extremist Islamist sects have dealt in the past; such attacks are deplorable, animalistic and low. But to become part of a mass mindlessly chanting a slogan? What part of that is retaliation? What part of that is progress?
Despite Charlie Hebdo’s obvious pitfalls as a “free-speech saint”, the butchery in Paris is a prime opportunity for us to reconsider the censorship that we perform in the “free world.” As David Brooks puts it in the New York Times, “The massacre at Charlie Hebdo should be an occasion to end speech codes. And it should remind us to be legally tolerant toward offensive voices, even as we are socially discriminating.”
In an age of hashtag diplomacy and a largely uninformed public, it is easy to think 140 characters relieves of your political responsibility for the day. Yet to idolize the writers of Charlie Hebdo as martyrs for freedom of speech, for universal lampooning, is misled and idiotic. Unless you are a racist Islamophobe willing to alienate entire populations for the sake of your toilet humor, you are not “Charlie.” Unless you are against religion and the freedom to express religion, you are not “Charlie.” It is difficult to make sense of mindless acts of violence, but we must swallow our pride for fear of being hypocrites. I am not “Charlie.” Neither are you. ♥