On January 7, 2015, terrorists attacked the offices of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing twelve, including the editor and several cartoonists. Charlie Hebdo, an over-the-top magazine keen to satirize ideologues, politicians, and the generally humorless, had gone too far, in the eyes of these religious fanatics, whose rampage was payback for Charlie cartoons and articles lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. Over the course of three days, the terrorists killed seventeen people, injured others, and took others hostage. The attacks moved from the offices of the journal to the streets, and finally to a kosher supermarket at the edge of Paris.
Much of the world denounced this brutal attack on a magazine that at one time or another had infuriated many who were now supporting it. Three years earlier, the French government had condemned Charlie Hebdo for re-publishing Danish newspaper cartoons satirizing Islam, cartoons which sparked riots around the world. But now, French president François Hollande was expressing outrage over the murder of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists, and millions of ordinary people rallied at the Place de la République in Paris, in the squares of other French cities, and in cities abroad as well, to reassert their commitment to free speech. Je suis Charlie became the chant of the day.
Over 1 million people gathered at the Place de la République in Paris to support free speech and protest the Charlie Hebdo killings.
For a few days, the pencil became mightier than the gun, as political cartoonists mourned their murdered colleagues with cartoons of well-sharpened No. 2’s triumphing over censorship and hate. The message resonated: so long as we can draw and Photoshop, resistance is not futile.
The old anarchist says, “I’ve got a pencil, and I know how to use it.” As an occasional cartoonist, I too felt the need to respond to the Charlie Hebdo murders with a cartoon.
But Charlie fever proved all too brief. On January 11, the same world leaders who were chanting “Je suis Charlie” called for increased police powers to spy on the internet activities and mobile phones of terrorists, suspected terrorists, people who might one day become terrorists, and for good measure, just about everybody else on the planet, including cartoonists. There was little outrage that this surveillance, calculated to protect everyone’s speech, could actually wind up suppressing speech. And by the time the survivors of the Charlie Hebdo massacre published a new issue on January 14, with a cover of Muhammad shedding a tear and holding a sign that says, “Je suis Charlie,” many of those who had condemned the murder of cartoonists now said, free speech is important, but insulting religion invites serious consequences.
The Charlie Hebdo attacks expose the paradox of free speech: like it or not, freedom of speech and the control of speech are always intertwined. Speak out, especially on something controversial, and someone—government, church, school, parent, troll, or terrorist—may try to stop or punish you. Laws may protect speech, but they always leave some speech unprotected.
The United States enshrines free speech in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Even so, the government can abridge some forms of speech: the First Amendment does not protect incitement to riot, fighting words, or obscenity, though their definitions are always hard to pin down. Also unprotected are defamation, false advertising, and blaring a loudspeaker in the middle of the night in a residential neighborhood. In the private sector, most employees can be fired for anything they say at work or outside of work, if the boss doesn’t like it. And in the post-9/11 era, American law has added a new category of banned speech, terroristic threats, though that too is difficult to define, and it has yet to undergo a definitive court test.
British law identifies even more unprotected speech, criminalizing insults to race or religion (that will get you up to seven years imprisonment) along with online harassment (that brings a fine and up to five years in prison). French law echoes these bans and in addition punishes anyone who celebrates or excuses a terrorist act with up to five years in jail and a €75,000 fine. At least one Facebook user was arrested in Alsace for posts supporting the Charlie Hebdo attackers.
Governments see no irony in simultaneously embracing and banning speech. The French Ministry of the Interior announces that “the internet is a space of freedom” on the website that encourages users to report online discrimination, threats, defamation, or incitement to criminal activity or violence.
Website set up by the French Ministry of the Interior for reporting inappropriate web content. The instructions explain, “The internet is a space of freedom where everyone can communicate and express themselves. Everyone’s rights must be respected there so that the ‘web’ can be a place for exchange and respect . . . . The government provides this site. By clicking ‘Report’ you can report illicit content that you have found while using the internet.”
Laws in Britain and France even permit journalists to be punished for what they say. When Fox News erroneously reported that parts of Paris were off-limits to non-Muslims, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, threatened to sue for harm to the image and honor of the city. But British Prime Minister David Cameron simply brushed off the equally far-fetched report that there are similar no-go areas in Birmingham by saying that the reporter was “clearly an idiot.” Not that Britain lets the press go unchecked. In 2013, the British government threatened the editor of the Guardian with terrorism charges for publishing documents that revealed secret NSA and GCHQ spying.
Even when speech is protected, no speaker can be fully shielded from the consequences of their words. When vigilantes decide to punish speech, as they did with Charlie Hebdo, the public focus quickly shifts from a defense of speech to a condemnation of violence. Once that happens, sympathy for the speech that provoked the violence declines: As Pope Francis told reporters about the post-attack Charlie Hebdo cover, if you say “a swear word against my mother,” you can expect “a punch in the nose.”
In an apparent copycat crime, on Feb. 14 a gunman went on a murderous rampage at a symposium on free speech and art at a Copenhagen café, following up with a similar attack on a synagogue. News reports immediately drew parallels to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But in stories on these latest killings, the media focused, not on the right to draw offensive cartoons, but on the horrors of terrorism and antisemitism in a city usually celebrated for its tolerance. Observing the crowds that gathered in Copenhagen in the wake of the attacks, the Guardian reported that the obligatory defense of free speech was leavened with the growing acknowledgment that satire constitutes “fighting words”:
Many in the crowd defended the Danish tradition of freedom of speech while also saying it was important to respect minorities and not fall into provocation.
The Charlie Hebdo app on iTunes warns, “frequent or intense scenes of vulgar or blasphemous humor . . . . or of a sexual nature, or of nudity.”
Charlie Hebdo—still billing itself as a “journal irresponsable”—has now resumed publication. It remains to be seen whether the millions who in January chanted, “Je suis Charlie” will shake their heads when the next provocative cartoon hits the newsstands and say, “Don’t these people ever learn?”
This will only confirm the prediction by the Charlie staff that their new-found friends would soon desert them. Millions may rally for free speech for an afternoon, but in places like France, where speech is mostly free, most of the time, it’s just too abstract a cause to champion every day. Cartoonists know this, just as they know that even at Charlie Hebdo, where it’s all satire, all the time, there is some speech that’s too extreme: in 2009, the journal fired one of its cartoonists for antisemitism.
Everyone, from the sternest censors to the staunchest First Amendment advocates, draws a line between protected and unprotected speech. The trick is to be on the right side of that line, or at least under a heavy desk in the editorial room, when the bullets start to fly.
Charlie Hebdo, (the name means ‘Charlie Weekly’) is named after Charlie Brown, the cartoon character who is often rewarded for his eternal innocence and optimism with pratfalls and humiliation.
