Charlie Hebdo: “Je Suis un Idiot”

Joseph Warren, Editor

http://TheIndependentDaily.com

“When the (French) bombs rained down, the people of Konna rushed to hide. Some flung themselves into the river. Many did not survive – including three children who drowned in the river as they struggled to escape…” – Geoffrey York, Globe and Mail

What occurred at the office of Charlie Hebdo the other day is symptomatic of France’s present societal condition, and one that has been in the making for two years since the French invasion of Mali…and before.  Hebdo merely became the target of opportunity for the seething hate brewing in those who shared the same fundamentalist beliefs as those seeking to control regions in Africa today. And with each act of violence by one side - fundamentalist or government military - the other becomes more committed to violence as a solution, just as with us in America. It’s a never-ending cycle of revenge.

Lynching Negroes

Recall that your liberty ends where my nose begins, and consider that for the majority of Muslims, Mohammed was a divine prophet. To deliberately assail Mohammed is something that few Muslims of any nationality will understandably tolerate. It’s also something that few of us “normal people” would think of doing because it is a truncation of logic to attack the persona of a spiritual leader of a religious sect because we do not agree with the tenents of that particular religion, or agree with the practices of a few of its adherents. But times have changed, and we have vilified Muslims in America and across Europe. We have made them into raving blood-crazed lunatics: They have become rabid beasts not deserving of our most base consideration.

Dehumanization is a critical first step toward an all-out campaign of violence against a nationality, religion, or other recognizable division: It makes them “killable.”

Yet in post-war Europe the French, along with many other members of the European community, had legislated tolerance into their societies making the display of Nazi flags and the disparaging of Jews criminal acts, while bigotry against Muslims has become an escalating national pastime in Europe and the US. It’s an interesting paradox, and one Hebdo had dismissed as a traditional element of the little magazine’s satirical content. (In this use, “Satire” is pseudo-intellectual for deprecating depictions of those with whom the editor of Hebdo did not agree.)

We had an interesting satirical tradition in America, too. It was called, Lynching Negroes. We have largely abandoned that tradition because it, too, was a blatant display of ignorance and societal depravity. It was atavistic and indicative of failure, just as is Hebdo’s practices.

Look: In the United States our spectrum of religions is vast ranging from the newly formed, such as Scientology and the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), through to those far more steeped in the experience of time and thus of a more “exceptional” institutional nature. No matter where on the continuum, though, we were more unlikely to slather dung on the fundamental beliefs of any religion simply because we find it entertaining to do so, unlike those characterizations within Charlie Hebdo. That will soon change.

In the last several years, though, this lack of respect for the beliefs of others and those they hold reverent, has become permissible - everywhere. It’s a free-for-all assault against the very thing which gives that religion’s adherents a reason to transcend the day-to-day of their physical selves and strive to achieve some form of enlightenment: It’s tantamount to kicking the crutches out from under a crippled child.

The result this month: A horrible, gruesome, unjustifiable reaction whereby (at least) two radical followers of Mohammed have extrajudicially imposed their will on the lives of several others, taking them in cold blood. Intolerable. And, in a way, understandable as a human reaction to the hate they are experiencing.

I doubt, as an example, if clearly analogous cartoon depictions of Jewish humiliations would have been tolerated. By law and convention it would not have been. For Muslims however, a different set of standards apply, and ridicule of that faith has become a mainstay of the popular media. I also doubt that clear humiliations of Gay and Lesbian practices would have been tolerated.

Notwithstanding, this is a tragedy with repercussions too immense to calculate, both in Europe and in the United States. Here there will likely be a further collapse of tolerance on the streets of America – both in the larger metropolitan and in the more obscure rural neighborhoods across our country. What was already a growing trend in anti-Muslim hate crimes will double – triple. As to Europe: it started some time ago and has been building in Germany, France, and in England.

This is history repeating itself, and is certain to end in tragedy for thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of innocents of all persuasions and religious inclinations.

Tolerance is the fabric of an evolving pluralist society. We must all remember that while it may begin with Muslims, intolerance will eventually include Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Homosexuals, and just about any group characterized by another as undesirable. That’s devolution and that is the course we’ve been on for nearly 20 years.

We need to move beyond that to meet the challenges facing the whole of humanity.

This isn’t about Free Speech: Charlie Hebdo is a flaccid political magazine no different than Mad Magazine of the 1960s. Its characterizations are juvenile and readership was, until this incident, confined to a small group of sub-intellectual widgets within French society: Those who view cartoons as the stimulus of critical thinking.

For those who sorrowfully carry signs and Tweet their sympathies, consider this sign instead: Je suis un idiot.

Remember the Vichy government and you’ll understand the intellectual slant of Hebdo’s readership: They’ve been looking for a new Jew for decades. Interestingly, they and the other mongers of hate in France and elsewhere have found it in the Muslim.