The new century is yet in its adolescence, and
in a moment of historical Necessity the rallying cry – “Je suis Charlie” – has
been taken up again, but in contemporary translation, to unite “free hearts,
free foreheads” around a still young idea, only little more than two centuries
old, that men will be happier when allowed to live out their lives in freedom,
that liberty and equality will yield a greater harvest of human joy and fulfillment
than any form of tyranny, whether of religion or of state. To borrow Abraham
Lincoln’s rhythms—we are now engaged in an historical wager, to test whether Men
so conceived and so dedicated in Liberty, can long endure.
The following text is Phrontisterion’s translation of Riss’s Editorial from February 25,
2015 (CH #1179), the second edition of Charlie
Hebdo to appear on the newsstands after the slaughter of its editorial
staff by religious fundamentalists in Paris on February 7th.
“For a long time I thought that the worst
thing that could happen to a political cartoonist would be to be poisoned, which
is what happened to Daumier and Philipon under the reign of the old fool
Louis-Philippe. So when Charb, Luz, or myself, young cartoonists, would propose
some sketch to satiric newspapers at the beginning of the 1990s, there was
nothing to fear, because the benevolent angel of our craft was hovering just
above our heads: the sacrosanct Freedom of Expression.
With just our cartoons we were hoping to
laugh and to make others laugh; but after several years, and after drawing all
the famous celebrities in laughable situations, a question came to our minds:
to caricature, to make drawings—at the end of the day what is the purpose of it?
After all, a drawing is just a drawing. Just a little scribbled something that
tries to be humorous all the while hoping to get someone to think. To laugh and
to make one think: this is what makes an ideal caricature! The pleasure of
surprising the reader by taking an unusual point of view, by doing a little
side-step that obliges the reader to look at things obliquely, from an angle
that is unfamiliar, different from mainstream seeing. The exaggeration and the embellishment, which
are the much-criticized stock in trade of the political cartoonists at “Charlie
Hebdo,” are nothing more than a means of exploring roads less traveled by.
It is perhaps this that the assassins of
January 7th could not tolerate, those who, if truth be told, never really
tried to do anything. They just allowed themselves to be coddled by the
comforts of a religion that already has all the responses, and that allows one
to dispense with thinking and doubting; because doubt is the worst enemy of
religion. There can be no more doubting when someone has chosen to enter into a
newspaper office in order to kill everyone.
The cartoonists and the editors at
“Charlie,” on the other hand, spend all their time doubting. About everything,
and especially about themselves, their talent, and their inspiration. Which
sometimes makes them infuriating. Wolinski wondered after the fire in 2011:
“Have we perhaps gone too far?” Only an honest man asks this type of question.
Never a killer. Wolinski had the courage to put his his own doubts on display.
He chose to make the expression of his vulnerability an art. This is why a
cartoonist will never become a killer, and why it is dishonest to make the
violence of the assassins comparable to the so-called “provocations” of the
cartoonists by proclaiming, “they were asking for it.”
In order to doubt, though, one needs
others, all those who do not think like you do. How boring it would be if
everyone thought like us! The killers of January 7th must sure have lived
in a sad world… an inflexible world where any head that is out of place gets
decapitated, where any discordant voice is cut off. So, imagine, for these of little
brain, even just the idea of making pint-sized cartoons about the prophet!
These miserable wretches threw away the lives of others in order to forget that
they had thrown away their own. As Luz wrote on the front cover of “Charlie,”
we should almost forgive them just for being what little they were.
Despite the floods of encouragement and
support, it is still right for us to wonder who really has the courage to lead in
this battle. Because, frankly, who wants to fight against blasphemy, who wants
to defy those who are religious, if it is only to end up being protected by the
police 24 hours a day? No one. Everyone came out in support of “Charlie”: “Keep
it up, guys! We’re with you!” But how many will dare to draw and to publish
blasphemous cartoons? Too few. The crowd has come out in support of “Charlie” like the crowd backs the bull in the
ring, because who knows, perhaps one day, exhausted by the banderillas, “Charlie”
will also die to the rousing applause of the admiring crowd.
And, behold, precisely at the time when
“Charlie” is getting ready to make its appearance again, an almost identical
assassination attempt occurs in Copenhagen, with fewer mortalities but the same
objectives: to silence those who believe in the liberty of expression and to exterminate
the Jews. Those who try to find explanations for the killers, not to say
excuses, by blaming the cartoonists for “throwing oil on the fire,” what
rationalizations will they find in order to lessen the responsibility of these anti-Semitic
murderers? Because the Jews who were the victims in the Hyper Cacher or in
Copenhagen did not draw any caricatures of Mohammed; and yet they were
assassinated. To accept such violence is already exasperating, but then to have
to listen to more or less accommodating pseudo-intellectual speeches, is just
intolerable.
The attacks in Paris and Copenhagen are,
first and foremost, attacks against a modern conception of the relationship
between individuals, against diversity in ideas and among men. For centuries
religions fought violently against precisely these values; and one had the
impression that the modern world had been able to reason with these retrograde
religions and their hegemonic intention to control men and minds. The attacks in Paris and Copenhagen suggest
that more time and more blood will yet be necessary before all religions finally
accept, for good, this non-negotiable framework of democracy.”
-Riss-
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