No.

[sevenswells]

I've been crying for the past two days. I knew these people. Not personally, but their drawings have accompanied me throughout my life. I started crying when I heard that they had killed Cabu. Cabu who was a kind, poetic, pacifist, humanist, pro-environment artist with a bad haircut and soft manners. And no, not all the stuff Charlie Hebdo did was, as Tumblr-speak would have it, "problematic". They fought against far-right political parties, death penalty, and the meeting they were holding when they were shot was about fighting racism. They were deeply left-wing, sometimes very misguided and not funny, but they tried, and they would have been devastated to learn that they're being depicted after their deaths as some kind of 1920s racist propaganda paper by some idiots on the internet who know nothing. They made a mockery of religions and religious people (all of religious people, ALL of religions) because they believed that religion is a poison and that it was their right to do that; not only their right, but their duty in a democracy such as ours.

Right now, we're all very emotional. Two cars exploded last night in my neighborhood, and it has very probably nothing to do with the attacks, but it just reminded us that we're currently living in fear and that it's not going to get better right away. So we're not ready to hear stuff like "yeah but Charlie Hebdo were racist" because right now your rationality sits very badly with us and feels like a gratuitous slap in the face of our suffering. Charlie Hebdo have been called out on their "problematic" stuff when they were alive and they've been prosecuted for that, because we happen to have a democratic and judiciary system that works. We French know very well that some of the stuff they did was actually not only offensive, but could be harmful for people that are oppressed, and we have opposed them for that, in a peaceful, democratic way -- not that they were some sort of all-powerful untouchable media moghuls on a crusade, just a bunch of old guys making distasteful jokes in a failing satyrical newspaper.

At any rate, "when they were alive" was an appropriate time to do that, and we didn't wait for your social justice high horse to take care of it. Right now? You're being inappropriate and a dick. Calling them racist now achieves nothing, you're just pissing mourning people off and smearing murdered people's reputation for the sake of it. Saying "je ne suis pas Charlie" may make you a special snowflake, but the phrase "je suis Charlie" is not about adhering to some of the bad stuff that Charlie Hebdo published: it's about what they represented and what they were killed for; it's about unity in our country against terror. We weren't Charlie, we are now.
Would it be so hard for you to wait for their bodies to grow cold before starting with the "yes, but..."s?

I've read some people saying that Charlie Hebdo was promoting hate and that this is not about free speech and free press at all, let me just say: I despise you, and you have no idea what free speech is about if you think that that's not exactly what we're defending and what we're rising up for.

Comments

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear from you! I've been very worried.

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your concern dear! I'm okay, good thing about my job is I get to stay at home to work :) I'm fine, really, just extremely upset

[jainas.livejournal.com]

Je me suis tenu à distance de tumblr - ou du moins des parties de tumblr qui parlent du sujet et il semblerait que j'ai bien fait. Tu n'est pas la seule à donner des échos d'un état d'esprit assez malsain et d'autant plus insupportable pour tous les français qui se sentent si intimement frappés.
Cela dit, j'ai dû me faire violence à plusieurs reprise pour ne pas entrer dans des débats stériles en ligne (je n'ai pas toujours réussit). A chaque fois je me rappelle le comic de Xkcd "someone is wrong on the internet", je respire un grand coup et je me force à effacer le message de réaction enflammé que j'avais commencé à écrire.
Cela dit, j'ai quand même enlevé de ma liste d'ami facebook un membre de la famille éloignée qui postait des liens du FM aux relents anti-musulman et des commentaires aux accents suspicieusement jubilatoires à l'issue des prises d'otage.

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

Ha mais ça a clairement fait sortir les cons de terre cette histoire, et de tous bords effectivement. Ce que je décris dans ce post, j'ai l'impression que du côté des Français c'est surtout l'exaspération qui ressort, contre ces gens qui ont jamais connu la gauche telle que la France l'a connue et qui sont donc totalement incapables de comprendre ce que représentait Charlie Hebdo, tout en essayant d'appliquer leur idéologie inapplicable sur un événement et des émotions qui se passeraient bien de leurs lumières.

Comme tu dis, la vraie technique au final c'est de respirer un grand coup et d'essayer d'ignorer...

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Je peux poster l'image et linker ton pose de mon tumblr? J'ai vu aussi beaucoup de réactions qui m'ont mise hors de moi et j'aimerais pouvoir montrer les mots justes de quelqu'un qui connais mieux que moi Charlie Hebdo.

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

Pas de souci, je te donne mon feu vert!
J'ai oublié de créditer l'auteur du strip, il s'appelle Balak (il a pas vraiment de site que je puisse te mettre en lien, c'est un copain auteur et qui a posté ce strip sur Facebook)

Si tu veux tu peux aussi leur linker cet article de Slate que je trouve très nuancé et documenté qui replace bien Charlie Hebdo dans son contexte sans pour autant tout excuser (c'est vraiment très rare, dans toute la foule d'articles dont on est inondés et qui sont souvent à côté de la plaque quand ils ne sont pas écrits par des Français)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/01/charlie_hebdo_cartoons_the_anti_clerical_newspaper_tradition_that_s_as_french.html

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Merci!

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

voilà: http://demoiselledefortune.tumblr.com/post/107693699568/no

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

Tu peux aussi utiliser, dans une certaine mesure, la comparaison avec South Park, et si Trey Parker et Matt Stone étaient assassinés demain et qu'on retirait certaines de leurs blagues de leur contexte, ça passerait sans doute tout aussi mal

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

heh cette comparaison là j'avais commencé à la faire de moi-même.