What do I mourn?

 

I am sad. I feel so sad after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo's dedicated and talented crew, which left 11 dead yesterday, possibly more soon given that some wounded victims are currently fighting between life and death. My thoughts go those in mourning.
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But I also am in mourning. Not only because, as a French comics aficionado and former graphic publisher I knew these cartoonists well for their work. We all did, in France. They accompanied us for as long as I can remember, beacon of satirical transgression, release valve along the politically and culturally conformist, religiously correct French pathology.
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I am also in mourning over the fact that we let this happen.
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And I think, while the attack was perpetrated by a handful of murderous fanatics, that there is a part of collective responsibility.
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I mourn the fact that the moderate Muslim community (which is the vast majority in France) did not spend more time to defend freedom of expression, in a more articulate, vocal and visible manner, when many warning bells started to ring the past ten years.

 

לקריאת הטקסט בעברית- הקליקו כאן
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I mourn the existence, in France, of an enabling environment in which fanatic religious murderous crusaders can flourish and get enough support to carry out professionally planned terrorist actions. Gears, equipment, intelligence, training, connections, caches, safe harbours, must have all been necessary to support the three assaillants. How many people knew or suspected something in their communities, but were too disillusioned vis a vis the French societal model of freedom and democracy to act to stop it? Are there enough checks and balances in place in the French religious Muslim community to allow the majority of reasonable and sound religious scholars, teachers and guides to catch the deviant behaviours of their disillusioned and seriously misguided young fanatics early enough to effectively divert them from the dead-end path they can close themselves into? Is there enough of a willingness to speak up against – and, more importantly, publicly stand to – bigotry, misogyny, antisemitism, and hatred? Could this be done in a somewhat well-organized manner through visible and representative associations that would not spend the majority of their energy and limited resources in in-fighting on who gets to represent what? Is there enough of a well-structured and well-resourced moderate Islamic reform movement which could help mainstream the fundamentally Muslim values of peace and tolerance into the French values of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?
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I mourn the many attacks on freedom of expression which quench so-called "shocking" viewpoints, images, slogans and texts, in more insidious ways than we think: from self-censorship of conformist media afraid to chase away their advertisers and emotionally fragile readership, to the constant legal bombardment the artists and their sponsors subject themselves to when they dare to cross the invisible borders of politically incorrect territories.

Charlie Hebdo cover from 2011 with the title "Love stronger than hate"
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I mourn the fact that the French political elites have failed for the past 20 years to offer citizens of all creed and religions a credible common national vision and project, in which the fundamentally composite French citizenry could have identified itself in a manner that would have rejected more strongly the cancer of crusading fanaticism and exclusion which eventually settled in its midst.
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I mourn the subtle complexity of daring intellectual arguments my fellow Frenchmen used to be able to bathe into without the need to oversimplify analyses and situations. Those seem to have been replaced by large and simple chopped blocks of ideas which can easily be consumed and adhered to and quickly adopted by panurgian crowds. Read, on both sides, and just in the last 18 months: Dieudonné, Zemour, Houellebecq. Thank god we still have some Finkelkrauts. Although even those seem to get apt at being promptly misunderstood, taken out of context, and reused for antagonistic political gains. Especially by those political parties who thrive at opposing entire fringes of the population against each other in the hope to get votes on the account of playing whatever they can: the rich against the poors, the religious against the secular, the traditionalists against the progressives, the Muslims against the Christians, the Israelis against the Palestinians, or any other antagonistic permutations one could think of and which could result in securing a constituency.

 

 

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I mourn the necessary and irreverencious social commentary the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and support staff provided, as do the many cohorts of freedom fighters still out there.

 

But despite of this mourning, I rejoice. I rejoice in the fact that so many freedom fighters took to the streets last night. They took to their pen and ink on drawing paper, and massively took to their keyboards on social media, to rally in unison against bigotry and hatred. They avenged the death of fellow free men and women by demonstrating that no attempt at controlling freedom of expression, however murderous it could be, would ever succeed in silencing free will, free thoughts and free spirits.

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In the foreword of "Sarajevo Side Stories" a graphic novel I published many years ago, after the Bosnian war, the great cartoonist and comic book artist Will Eisner once wrote that "Graphic artists contribute to the collective consciousness of our times". This is valid more than ever today, as we collectively mourn the loss of talented cartoonists and dedicated lives, but still find the strength to unite, celebrating together as one, the freedom of our democratic consciousness.

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Because we are more resolute than ever, and are collectively not ready to give up just yet.