Irreverent

Some people simply have no sense of humor.

Last Wednesday, three of such people attacked the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris with assault rifles, killing 12 people. Among those killed were some of France’s most revered cartoonists and satirists as well as two police officers.

Charlie Hebdo is not a very large weekly. On any normal week, it sells about 45,000 copies of the magazine. Today, after the attack, some of its most brilliant cartoons are circulated throughout the world via social media.

Charlie Hebdo might be described as a journal of irreverence. Its writers and cartoonists hold nothing sacred. It has been called anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and about everything else. Its troubles lately related to its unremitting ridicule of Islamist extremists. It was taken to court several times and survived a decade-long hiatus to ridicule everything deserving of such.

The forerunner of Charlie was a monthly magazine called Hara-kiri, founded in 1960. When one angry reader wrote the magazine and denounced it as “dumb and nasty” (bête et mechant), the magazine adopted the phrase as its official slogan.

In 1970, the bold band of artists, satirists and editors decided to establish a weekly magazine. It was named to honor the comics character Charlie Brown. “Hebdo” is short for “hebdomadaire,” French for “weekly.”

When I was a student in France, I was drawn to this magazine and became part of its small cult following. It was a spunky publication, parse in its prose, grand in its artistry and unapologetic about its opinion. It was uninhibited, sharp and unremitting.

The seventies was a good time for a weekly like this one. Everything was under question. Satire was a grand art. The Pill drove the sexual revolution and HIV-AIDS was not yet a plague.

This was the age before “political correctness” became fashionable, taming our wit and restraining our opinion. “Political correctness” wanted all of us to be bland, polite to the point of enduring inanity and careful not to humor the ridiculous.

Overlaying the cult of “political correctness” was some hodge-podge orthodoxy called “multiculturalism” — which basically put the grand and the banal on equal footing, encouraged toleration of every eccentricity and killed debate on what was superior and what was inferior.

“Political correctness” is suffocating. It wants us to completely subordinate our Ego to our Id, harnessing every utterance to the rules of conformism. It killed the art of the Insult, fearing anything that might offend anybody.

A student once asked me what book most influenced my being. Without batting an eyelash, I said that would have to be a volume titled 14,000 Insults for all Occasions. That enabled me not only to survive but to thrive.

Which explains my fondness for Charlie Hebdo. It consistently manages to deliver the perfect insult for anything that deserves insulting. This weekly, more than any other publication, defines the frontier for free expression.

Not everyone is pleased with irreverence, however. Not everyone is entertained by thought-provoking satire. Where banality and fanaticism abounds, humor could be a dangerous craft.

France is a unique country. Satirists and cartoonists here acquire rock-star status. They have pride of place on the pedestal of philosophers.

Satire has a special place in French culture. It was the best weapon wielded by the intellectuals of the Enlightenment against the dogmas espoused by monarchical absolutism.

Satire requires extraordinary literary craftsmanship. Any crude attack on the follies of the absolutist monarch could merit the charge of “lese majeste” — punishable by death prior to the French Revolution. The King could never be insulted baldly. Satire allows the practitioner to insult the King under the veil of comedy, couched in double-edged words (double entendre) or otherwise kept within the realm of private languages and private jokes.

One could understand the outrage that spilled into the streets after the terrorists poured automatic weapons fire on satirists and cartoonists — people whose only weapon is wit. In the span of a day, the expressions of outrage spread globally.

This is not just an attack on an irreverent magazine. This is an attack on free expression everywhere. This is therefore an attack on all who dare think freely.

The extremists who mounted this attack intend to inflict fear on all who dare question their most morbid beliefs. This is censorship by the barrel of a gun, literally. They intend not only to silence a band of irreverent cartoonists. They intend to silence all who might question what they stand for.

There is evident irony here. The attackers might justify their actions by saying their creeds were not respected. But by shooting their critics, they show incapacity to respect adverse opinion. 

If we all succumb to fear of fanatical reprisal, then free thought will not be possible. That runs against the core ethic of liberalism that guides modern civilization: question everything.

This heinous attack on Charlie Hebdo should be an opportunity to reaffirm our faith in a free press and reinforce our defense of free thinkers. Inconvenient they may be, satirists have a special place in our civilization.

Our freedom rests on a fragile foundation: the acceptance that everything should be subject to ridicule. Otherwise we are enveloped by dogmas held as unquestionable.

Over two thousand years ago, a Greek philosopher set down the maxim that defined modern civility: the unexamined life is not worth living. Unfortunately, there are those who fear constant examination of whatever belief they hold dear. They are only too willing to inflict violence to prevent any such examination.

For that, this is the apt battle cry for us all: Je suis Charlie! (I am Charlie!)