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Paul Vallely: Free-speech absolutism is on the wane

17 January 2025

French views have changed since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, says Paul Vallely

Alamy

A DECADE ago, two million people marched through the centre of Paris chanting “Je suis Charlie,” after two Islamist killers burst into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and murdered its star cartoonists in revenge for the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (News, 16 January 2015). How things have changed.

In the intervening years, there has been an intriguing shift in public opinion over what was once seen as an uncomplicated litmus test of free speech. Today, as many as 31 per cent of the French population think that the cartoonists brought the attack upon themselves by an “unnecessary provocation” — a view supported by 69 per cent of French Muslims. The same poll shows the opening up of a generational divide: 21 per cent of all under-25s now refuse to condemn the attacks. Even the leader of the French Left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon — who, at the time, attacked French secularism’s “oldest, cruellest, most constant and most narrow-minded enemies, the religious fanatics” — has gone cool on the Charlie cause.

Free speech is one of the cornerstones of Western democracy; but it is not the only one. It is free speech that gives minorities the right to practise their religion. But the French Revolution spoke of “liberty, equality, fraternity”, and — as the Revd Dr Sam Wells and Mona Siddiqui presciently pointed out on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day at the time of the attack — free speech is not just about liberty. It is also about equality in the sense that it embodies a respect for others. But it must, additionally, be about fraternity in the care we take in exercising it. Virtues hunt in packs. They cannot be championed in isolation.

It seems that many people in France are coming to realise this. Free-speech absolutists, alarmed at the shift in public opinion, are shouting about spineless cowardice, craven fear of being called racist, or naked capitulation to terrorism. Many are persuaded. In 2022, a group of retired generals won tens of thousands of supporters after declaring war against “Islamists and others who want to destroy us”. Marine Le Pen has only to utter the word “Islam” at one of her rallies to provoke shouts of anger from the crowd.

The surge in Charlie Hebdo’s popularity after the attack has faded. Instead, it is now condemned for having an “obsession with Muslims” which is part of a world-view which critics attack as right-wing, misogynistic, and, at times, racist. Its recent 32-page special “Laughing at God” cartoon competition has been condemned as crass and promoting division and hatred.

The purpose of satire, it has been said, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It should puncture the pomposity of the powerful. That means punching up — not punching down at France’s most marginalised community.

Reducing the Charlie Hebdo affair to just an issue of free speech ignores the long European historical and ideological anti-Islamic legacy that stretches from the Crusades, through Dante and Luther, to Enlightenment icons such as Voltaire and Kant. Freedom of speech is not to be unequivocally defended when it seeks to dominate and degrade marginalised minorities with actions which will only entrench social tensions about Muslims. When that happens, it is time to declare: “Mais Charlie je ne suis pas.”

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