Paris Magazine Attacks, the Frenchman Responds

The atrocities committed against Charlie Hebdo were accomplished around eleven thirty this morning, in northeast Paris, less than a half hour walk from where my parents live, and where my earliest childhood memories were made. Indeed, the astute among you will have realized that I am – for all intents and purposes – French, and thus particularly liable to dishing out opinions, wanted or not, on a topic such as this.

First and foremost, I feel it is a necessity to start this off with an anticipated response to apologists, who will undoubtedly come creeping out into the limelight soon enough (and who can already be heard practicing their necrotic dances on certain radio stations in the City of Light – where I am currently located). As a satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo issued from one of the greater traditions of the French Republic, that of the constant belittling of obscurantist ideologies in the public sphere (be they religious or not), and the refusal to compromise in the face of violence. You will surely hear from the misinformed that the magazine’s recent attacks on Islamic fanaticism reflected the rise of Far-Right politics in this country. That is of course very far from the truth. Charlie Hebdo has always been a left-wing, ultra-liberal outfit, whose hatred of nationalist bigots is just as important as that of religion. Its recent spat with Islamists stems from its defense, in the name of free speech, of the Danish Mohamed cartoons of 2005, as well as its outright refusal to ever back down under threat – going so far as to escalate its satire every time these were made. Regardless of your views on the taste of such satire, the moral courage (“the only courage that matters in political, or even ‘real’ life”, as Gore Vidal pointed out in an essay on Teddy Roosevelt whose title I cannot remember) involved is tremendous, and should be applauded as such.

In fact, the most recent true ‘parallel’ to these attacks dates from the days of the Algerian War, and was the work of various Far-Right groups.
These terrorists, most notably Commando Delta under the banner of the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète, i.e. the “Secret Army’), butchered from 1961 to 1963 around two thousand people in hundreds of operations in France and Algeria, and opposed the North-African colony’s independence. They targeted with equal barbary Algerian militants and anti-colonial protesters (most notably the French Communist Party), not even hesitating to attack rallies in Paris. Make no mistake here, dear reader, there is always a point where all extremists, no matter the original cause, start resembling each other both in method and ideology.