Je suis Charlie

[DieterM]

Their arsenal of mass destruction:
pencils, crayons, watercolours.

They aimed them at politicians
and priests who know it all,
at rabbis, imams, vicars,
at puffed-up, loaded businessmen,
narcissistic mayfly starlets,
prophets and messiahs.
Their job was to mock
those who want to prevent us
from using our brains.

Against the narrowminded
they brandished satire, wit,
freedom of speech.
Words.
Paper bullets.
How many killed,
how many injured
by their deeds?

“I’d rather die standing
than live on my knees”,
one of them said.
His lethal error was
to blank out
that you can’t vanquish humourlessness
with humour.
With drawings
you can fight ignorance
but not someone
pulling the trigger of his
Kalachnikov.


Paris 2015-01-07
For the journalists of the satirical weekly "Charlie Hebdo"
killed today by two terrorists. RIP.

[artemmedvedev]

Jan. 7th, 2015

Je suis Charlie

I’m Charlie. Aren’t you?
You draw and I write,
Sometimes we are wrong,
Sometimes we are right,
Sometimes it’s too much,
And sometimes not enough,
Sometimes someone’s angry
Or calls our bluff,
Or threatens to kill us,
Or kills us indeed,
But we don’t surrender,
Although we may bleed.
Our murder just strengthens
Our courage to fight,
Our passion to laugh,
Our desire to write,
Our deep love for sharing
All things that are true.
Today and forever
I’m Charlie. Aren’t you?
AM

[DieterM]

Thank you, artemmedvedev, to join this thread not by commenting as usual, but by sharing your own thoughts, your own poetry. I'm very glad you did. It reminds me of Voltaire's famous question, "Should we fight for our ideas, or should we fight with our ideas?"

[cacian]

ouch i thought i was about to read french but...all the same..
quite a strong and upsetting piece. terrorism is upsetting.

[Pompey Bum]

Je Suis Charlie

Je suis Charlie. You fear me.
My thoughts and my voice,
The catch of my laughter,
The scratch of my pen,
The tap of my keyboard
As it laughs at you, too.

Je suis Charlie. I saw you--
Your ludicrous air,
The self-important way
That you wielded your weapon
And looked for your shoe.
These things laugh at you, too.

Paris laughs as she does,
We laugh as we can.
For our city of minds,
For light, for her nights,
Pour les blagues, for these things
You could never undo.

Je suis Charlie. You know me.
And I laugh at you, too.

[Jerrybaldy]

They came with bile and guns
And a desire to die
To be going on up
To those virgins in the sky.

Charlie's boys
Accepted their fate
Rather than cower
To men of hate.

For freedom or against?
Who do you chose to be?
Stand up and be counted.
Je suis Charlie.

[DieterM]

Thanks everybody for sharing your thoughts and poems! My hope will only die with me one (faraway) day, I guess…

[virtuoso]

I agree with your freedom of speech mantra, but too often some of the so-called open-minded intelligentsia lash out in an intemperate manner. I do not think that it is prudent to attack any of the major doctrines of a religion. It is alright to question those tenants in a respectful manner, but I do not have any sympathy for the Salman Rushdies of this world. They bring the trouble justifiably onto themselves.

[Ecurb]

I agree with your freedom of speech mantra, but too often some of the so-called open-minded intelligentsia lash out in an intemperate manner. I do not think that it is prudent to attack any of the major doctrines of a religion. It is alright to question those tenants in a respectful manner, but I do not have any sympathy for the Salman Rushdies of this world. They bring the trouble justifiably onto themselves.

Intentionally performing blasphemous and sacrilegious acts to twit and goad the faithful is rude and imprudent. However, people who perform such acts do NOT "bring the trouble justifiably onto themselves." Nor should we withhold our "sympathy" from them. That's ridiculous. Rude behavior is no excuse for murder, and suggesting otherwise constitutes blaming the victims. It's reasonable to suggest that we should all be respectful of others' fervent and deeply held beliefs; it's unreasonable to claim that if we are not, horrific crimes are "justified".

[Ecurb]

Here's Adam Gopnik writing about Charlie Hebdo for "The New Yorker":

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...9/satire-lives

[Pompey Bum]

Thank you for posting that link, Ecurb. It puts into context the asinine comments made by Pope Francis in reference to the Charlie Hebdo killings, in which he defended freedom of speech as a human right "but said it must not cause offense." (NPR), adding: "You cannot make provocations" and "You cannot insult people's faith."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...-within-limits

The Pope's comments are placed under a sharper focus by some of the points made in Gopnik's article:

[The murdered satirists] worked instead in a peculiarly French and savage tradition, forged in a long nineteenth-century guerrilla war between republicans and the Church and the monarchy.

***
Before Pope Francis' recent comments:

It is wonderful to see Pope Francis condemning the horror, but also worth remembering that magazine’s special Christmas issue, titled “The True Story of Baby Jesus,” whose cover bore a drawing of a startled Mary giving notably frontal birth to her child. (Did the Pope see it?)

***
Wolinski and his confederates represented the true Rabelaisian spirit of French civilization, in their acceptance of human appetite and their contempt for false high-mindedness of any kind, including the secular high-mindedness that liberal-minded people hold dear. The magazine was offensive to Jews, offensive to Muslims, offensive to Catholics, offensive to feminists, offensive to the right and to the left, while being aligned with it—offensive to everybody, equally.

***
I was amused to hear Pope Francis' doublethink parroted by a network news "anchor" who only a few days before had self-righteously explained to me that the worldwide reaction of horror to the killings was because "nothing is more important to democracy than journalism." Tonight, he assured me that the same sanctimonious tone that the Pope was merely stating "what everyone has been thinking." In other words, the time for pious hand-wringing is over and the ugly truth is wriggling out: satire will not be tolerated; not by militant extremists; not by normative western religion; and not by liberal western media (who will tell you exactly what "everyone has been thinking," thank you very much). Not real satire. If it can't be controlled, it won't be tolerated. This is an Ecumenism that John XXIII never dreamt of. Crazies of all stripes arm in arm. We are the world.

It is also a call to arms--to pens, to brushes, to keyboards. No one loves a satirist, not a real one. It is never going to be okay to say that the king is a fink--and mean it. It is never going to okay to say that there are some damned silly things about our religions--and mean it. It is never going to be okay to hold up a mirror to the media (everyone hates them anyway, they just won't report it). And that is to say nothing of Russia and China.

But as a skinny Woody Guthrie wannabe groaned many years ago: "the times they are a'changing." And this time, I suspect he may be onto something. I hear people on the left and right and middle say that they are not going to put up with PC anymore. It's not important that we all define PC as the other person's viewpoint: because the real point is that once you recognize that your political opposites are accepting prepackaged opinions handed down to them from on high--things that make them feel comfortable, or smart, or smug--it is only a matter of time until the virus of reason makes its way to your inner ear and whispers, "Oh yeah man, there's a lot of that going around."

And they're killing the satirists now, that's the pertinent point. They are all done not loving them and they have started actually wasting them. And the supposed defenders of human rights and Constitutional liberties have already started to equivocate.

JerryBaldy made a call a few posts back to stand up and be counted. Fine. Personally, I make a point of not satirizing individuals on a site like this. I have no desire to hurt people's feelings, and if I do hurt them, I apologize immediately. And that apology is sincere. And I will continue to respect the "check your politics at the door" policy of this site, which I believe to be a wise one. But as of this moment, Pope Francis (and others) are officially on-limits. Je suis Charlie. Nous sommes tous Charlie. It's only scary if you cower alone.

[DieterM]

I agree with your freedom of speech mantra, but too often some of the so-called open-minded intelligentsia lash out in an intemperate manner. I do not think that it is prudent to attack any of the major doctrines of a religion. It is alright to question those tenants in a respectful manner, but I do not have any sympathy for the Salman Rushdies of this world. They bring the trouble justifiably onto themselves.

Allow me, virtuoso, to protest most vividly! If I understand you right, you hold Salman Rushdie responsible for the abominable death sentence a senile fascist leader in Iran launched against him (I say "fascist" because any regime based on religion is perforce fascist; in democracy you can refute, contradict, and fight with democratic means any law you don't like; in a religious regime, the base of society is a law written by God, thus indisputable, thus immutable, thus un- and antidemocratic). That's your right. And it's my right to think the very idea just as abominable as the silly fatwa itself. I haven't read a single book Mr. Rushdie has written, but I have all the sympathy of the world for him. Freedom of speech is not a mantra, it has nothing "so-called open-minded", it is never intemperate. Either one accepts freedom of speech (within the limits of national and international law, I insist on that point) or one does not. There's no in-between. As to the prudence of attacking a religion—the question is not whether it is prudent or not, but whether it is permitted and permissible or not. As luck would have it, blasphemy is not mentioned in French law. Therefore, you are allowed to say, sing, write, draw, yell blasphemy all day long. Why should one "question [religion] in a respectful manner"? You can discuss and attack and ridicule and refute socialism, conservatism, ecologism, what have you not; so of course you are allowed to discuss and attack and ridicule and refute any religious doctrine you like. I know you wrote "religious doctrines" in one sentence and "tenants" in the next. The difference is absolute, and "Charlie" never mistook one for the other. They always mocked the doctrine, never made any attacks "ad hominem". Because you can insult a person; you cannot insult a belief, a philosophy, etc. In democracy, the only thing that should count is the democratically voted law. The rest belongs to your private sphere.

[DieterM]

As for the rest, I wanted to say I'd like this thread to become a poetry-thread again. Otherwise, I'm quite afraid this site's mods might close it, which I would really find regrettable. If anyone wants to start a related thread in the General Discussion section, say, or the Philosophy section, I'd be the first to participate. I think there's a whole lot of things to discuss re. this issue, especially for us, who per definitionem, as readers and writers, are concerned by it. But please—if you want to comment on the poems already present in this thread, or if you want to share your own, related poem, be my guest. Otherwise, please, let's discuss the core subject in another section (and if anyone opens that thread, please share the link so that we can all move there and debate).

Thank you.

[virtuoso]

I agree Dieter that everybody should have the freedom of speech to say what they want. However, if you ridicule the devout, fervent disciple who is ready to die for his beliefs, then you are asking for it. Those who use satire to make a mockery of a deeply held belief system are not honorable in my view. I do not believe in using violence as a means to address even blasphemy, but some of the more fundamental Islamic and Christian sects have believed in it. All I am saying is that if you want to question their beliefs in a vitriolic, sacrilegious manner, then you deserve to live your life looking in the rear view mirror. You mock a lion, then you must expect him to act with rage. I did not mean to imply that any columnist or analyst deserved death, but they do deserve to live in a bit of fear.

[Pompey Bum]

Out of respect for Dieter's request, I have opened a thread in the Serious Discussions forum for any who wish to discuss this topic further. As requested, here is the link:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...sommes-Charlie