On another level, #jesuischarlie seems to inevitably carry the implication that one tacitly agrees with—or at the very least doesn’t actively object to—the nature of the magazine’s content. On this last point, I have been amazed by the sheer tenacity with which so many French people I know insist on clinging to their belief in the validity and innocuousness of these cartoons. It is one thing to say that we mourn the people killed at Charlie—which I certainly do—and quite another thing to allow oneself to be identified with the publication’s mission, which was frequently an ugly one. What gets lost in all the sudden reflexive sentimentality is the degree to which #jesuischarlie creates a false binary between legally permissible bigotry and murderous terror—a virtually impossible political bind for many of the already marginalized targets of the publication’s relentless ire.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:35:09 +0000
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