“Charlie Hebdo”, not racist? If you say so… (written in 2013 by and ex-Charlie Hebdo employee)

[Luminous Animal]

Last edited Wed Jan 14, 2015, 03:26 PM - Edit history (1)

A very good read from a former employee of Charlie Hebdo. It's long and difficult to pull some snips but here goes…

To Charlie Hebdo, it’s always been good form to scoff at the “fat idiots” who like football and watching TF1 [television network]. A slippery slope. Belief in one’s own superiority, accustomed to looking down on the common herd, is the surest way to sabotage one’s own intellectual defences and to allow them to fall over in the least gust of wind. Your own, although supported by a good education, comfortable income and the pleasant team spirit of “Charlie’s gang”, collapsed at a stupefying speed. I remember a full-page article by Caroline Fourest which appeared on June 11 2008. In it, she recounted her friendly meeting with the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot, who had gotten some grief for representing his Muslim fellow-countrymen in a particularly hilarious way. Judge for yourself: an imam dressed as Santa Claus buggering a goat, with the caption: “We have to share our traditions”. Or an Arab, slumped on a couch and lost in thought: “The Qur’an doesn’t say if you have to do anything to be on the dole for 30 years.” Or even the “monument to the slavery of white indigenous taxpayers”: a Dutch person in foot shackles, carrying a black person on his back, arms crossed and sucking on a pacifier. Foul racism? Oh come on, it’s freedom of expression! Certainly, Fourest granted, the slightly coarse humour of her friend “doesn’t always travel well”, but it must be understood “in the Dutch context which is ultra-tolerant, even angelic, towards fundamentalism.” Whose fault is it if Muslims leave themselves open to gags with export difficulties? That of Muslims themselves and their over-angelic allies, obviously. As Nekschot himself explained to Charlie Hebdo’s readers, “Muslims must understand that humour has been part of our tradition for centuries.”

No-one in your office up and quit after this insufficiently-noticed page, which after all did no more than sanctify a process which had begun six or seven years earlier. Birds of a tolerant feather flock together. But when I read this in your Le Monde article: “We are almost ashamed to remind you that anti-racism and passion for equality of all human beings are and will remain the founding principles of Charlie Hebdo”, the only information I got from it is that your team are not completely immune to shame. Really?

After Val and Fourest left in 2009, called to higher things - one as head of a public radio network, the other to the podiums of official anti-racism - we might have wondered if you would continue to follow their lead in their absence. The least we can say is that you have remained faithful to their line. You’ve absorbed it down to the core, it seems.

Today, those flies which Tignous never fails to add buzzing round the heads of his “beards” are more than ever attracted to your imagination, as soon as you “laugh at” Muslims. In a video posted on the Charlie Hebdo website at the end of 2011, we saw you, Charb, imitate the Islamic call to prayer, to the rapt giggles of your little buddies. What a hilarious new version of the Qur’anic recitation for your magazine’s deadline; Michel Leeb [famous French impressionist - trans.] could not have done better. What collective poison would you have had to stew in to get to this point? From what psychological depths did you drag up the nerve to “laugh” at a cartoon representing veiled women baring their buttocks as they bow in prayer towards “Mecca-relle” [a pun on maquerelle, the madam of a brothel - trans.]? This pathetic stream of crap isn’t even shameful; its stupidity embarrasses you, even before it reveals your state of mind, your vision of the world.

http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm

(Edited the title… I meant to point out that this was originally written in 2013)

[Desert805]

1. "This pathetic stream of crap isn’t even shameful; its stupidity embarrasses you, even before..."

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Still not racist.

Religion still isn't a race.

[Blue_Tires]

2. I've still read nothing which would justify shooting up their office...

[Luminous Animal]

3. Neither does the article in the OP.

[KoKo]

4. No he doesn't...and here's more of the article...that I thought was an interesting read:

I do know, Charb, that you’ve received death threats and that maybe some crazies out there want to do you violence. That saddens me. Despite all my criticisms of you - and the others - I don’t like the thought of you permanently tailed by two cops, costing your beloved Republic an arm and a leg. I also fear that your guard-dogs might influence you, like Val influenced the whole team. But if you’re really afraid that French Muslims are turning into serial killers of holy war, maybe you will get some small comfort in seeing the calm manner in which these people react to the real or symbolic attacks which are their daily lot. When a mosque is covered in racist graffiti, do you think that its leaders or the local faithful break out in cries of vengeance, or vows to put the Presidential Palace to fire and the sword? No, every time they declare that they are leaving it all up to “our national justice system”. Among those whom I know, your skills at whipping up media froth just add a little bit extra to their burden. I’m not sure I’d have the same patience.

Hunkered down behind your aching sides, you claim the sacred right “to laugh” equally at imams, priests and rabbis. Why not, if you still really applied this principle. Have you forgotten the Siné incident [where a CH cartoonist was sacked for anti-Semitism in 2008 - trans.], where you had to draw a cartoon? A proven report of Islamophobia, and you burst out laughing. A misleading accusation of anti-Semitism, and someone gets fired. This kind of thing goes back to the Val years, but the cowardly approval which your boss received back then from “the whole gang” - and particularly from you, Charb - shows that the system of “one law for some, one for others” in action at that time wasn’t the fault of just one man. The same rule is still in force. To this day, I’m told, the special “Shari`a Hebdo” issue hasn’t been joined by a “Talmud Hebdo”. Please believe me, I’m not upset about that.

You claim for yourself the tradition of anticlericalism, but pretend not to know the fundamental difference between this and Islamophobia. The first comes from a long, hard and fierce struggle against a Catholic priesthood which actually had formidable power, which had - and still has - its own newspapers, legislators, lobbies, literary salons and a huge property portfolio. The second attacks members of a minority faith deprived of any kind of influence in the corridors of power. It consists of distracting attention from the well-fed interests which rule this country, in favour of inciting the mob against citizens who haven’t been invited to the party, if you want to take the trouble to realise that - for most of them - colonisation, immigration and discrimination have not given them the most favourable place in French society. Is it too much to ask a team which, in your words “is divided between leftists, extreme leftists, anarchists and Greens”, to take a tiny bit of interest in the history of our country and its social reality?

I do like swipes at the priesthood, I grew up with them and they helped me develop solid defences against fairy stories and abuses of power. It’s partly that heritage which raises my hackles against the lazy intellectual arrogance of a Muslim-basher. An anti-religious posture gives such a person a convenient way to relax in their ignorance, to dress up their knee-jerk mental reactions as defiance. It gives respectability to a gaping lack of imagination, and a conformity which is corrupted by the come-hither eyes of the extreme right.

“Encoding racism to make it imperceptible, and therefore socially acceptable”, is how Thomas Deltombe defines the function of Islamophobia, also described as a “machine for refining crude racism”[17]. These two formulas fit you like a glove. So don’t get on your high horse when your critics use strong language against you. In the last few days, you’ve cried scandal because a rapper of no great skill called for a “burning at the stake for those Charlie Hebdo dogs”, as part of an ensemble piece on the soundtrack of the film La Marche. As if your magazine were nothing but love and poetry, you let the whole world know that you were “shocked” by such “violence”. Yet, you weren’t appalled when the Tunisian rapper Weld El 15 described his own country’s police as “dogs who should have their throats cut like sheep”. On the contrary, you interviewed him, with all the respect due to a “fighter for free expression”[18]. The verbal violence of Weld El 15 seemed sweet to your eyes because it was aimed at a government dominated by Islamists who wanted to send him to prison. But when the canine metaphor was aimed at you, it was a completely different kettle of fish. So long, freedom of expression: let’s rally around neo-conservative talking points on rap like “appeal to hate” or “communalist religious chant”[19].

The machine for refining crude racism isn’t just profitable, but also extremely fragile.

[Sparhawk60]

8. I Agree

The magazine is a bigoted rag with third rate illustrations that goes out of their way to insult people. I would not take a copy even if it was handed out for free.

And yet, NOTHING justifies shooting up the office and killing even a single person.

[KoKo]

5. This was an interesting read from a different perspective.

Thanks for posting it!

[markpkessinger]

6. K&R! n/t

[roody]

7. knr