Je Suis Charlie Hebdo - Paris 7th January 2014

Time to Stop Being Scared of Speaking the Truth

The internet is filling up with the horror that occurred this morning in the beautiful, open, intelligent and liberal city of Paris. So far 12 people have died following a ‘war-like’ attack on the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

There is no official report yet on who carried out this brutality; but we all know, don’t we?

The satirical journalists and cartoon artists at Charlie Hebdo magazine are braver than most of us, they tell it like it is, they don’t self-censor out of fear of being reprimanded, sacked, mugged or murdered for simply saying what we are all thinking.

If the President of France seems to be ruled by his dick rather than his brain the journalists at Charlie Hebdo say it on their front page. 

If the Pope or Israel, if President Obama or the EU, if Gerard Depardieu or FIFA do something laughable then the journalists at Charlie Hebdo will point out their foolishness with neither fear nor favour.

The difference is that the Pope, the President of France and Gerard Depardieu do not decide to respond to their front page mockery by turning up at Charlie Hebdo’s office with automatic machine guns and murdering whoever happens to be in the building whilst exclaiming that their “God is”, apparently,  “Great”. 

After 9-11, after 7^th July, after the beheadings of journalists, the kidnapping of female children, the attacks on Christians and Jews, the Nairobi shopping mall outrage, the murder of Lee Rigby and the Taj Mahal Hotel attack, after all of these things and so much more, is it not time for people who treasure freedom, intelligence and democracy to start to tell the truth?

Is it not time for us to stop being petrified of speaking our minds.

Is it not our duty to refuse to leave pointing out the evil that is amongst us to the nasty and reactionary bigots of the far right?

The progressives, the libertarians, the academics, the journalists and our democratic politicians must step up to the plate and tell the truth and point the finger at the vicious, violent, intolerant, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-semitic and downright frightening force that is consuming and ruining both our culture and our lives.

If this contemporary strain of fundamentalist Islam was analysed honestly and without the filter of white western guilt giving it a permanent pass, we might recognize it for the oppressive and fascistic ideology that it fundamentally is and we would treat it as we such.