Republished from the blogger Antony Loewenstein's blog today:
"Yesterday’s massacre in Paris at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is shocking and unforgettable. The publication may have been frequently racist against Muslims and a whole host of “enemies” but the right to offend is a key attribute in a democracy. This doesn’t mean we have to applaud editors and writers who trade in racial stereotyping.
As a journalist, such an attack affects me deeply. The only response is standing up for what we believe and stating it strongly and frequently. We will not be silenced. We will write. We will speak out. We will continue to tell the truth. We will reject the onslaught and say that talking honestly about Islam, Palestine, Israel, terrorism and the “war on terror” is vital.
My friend George Burchett, currently based in Vietnam and the son of famed journalist Wilfred Burchett, penned the following today and it seems apt for the moment:
Charlie was a good friend from my high school years in Paris, in the early 1970s.
Charlie Hebdo was a child of May 68, France’s youthful rebellion.
It was a good time to be in Paris.
You could see the latest Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Visconti, Tarkovsky, Godard etc.
Sartre was still around.
You could attend public Foucault lectures at the College de France, watch the inscrutable Lacan or the great mythomane André Malraux hold forth on TV.
Where are they all now?
The gunmen who spread Charlie Hebdo with bullets and assassinated four of France’s best and wittiest cartoonists among others have also fired bullets in our collective psyche.
Nothing is fun any more.
This is real.
A binary hyperreality as defined by G W Bush & Co: with us or against us.
What happened yesterday morning in Paris was unthinkable some 40 odd years ago.
Yes, there were Red Brigades, Baader Meinhof, the PLO, the War in Vietnam, the coup in Chile and so on, but there was also hope, solidarity, love, tenderness, humour, poetry.
Going to the Quartier Latin to see Felini’s Satyricon or Easy Rider, one passed the black vans of the CRS, the riot police, parked on the Boulevard Saint Michel and Saint Germain.
You’d spot them inside, playing cards, ready for action at any hint of “trouble”.
The same game of youth versus authority was played in the very same places in medieval Paris, between the king’s constabulary and mischievous students.
It was all part of the great French tradition of youthful rebellion against authority, King & Church or, after the Revolution, the much despised bourgeoisie.
It inspired a rich poetic tradition: Villon, Ronsard, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Appolinaire, Prévert, to name but a few from a very long and bright list.
Charlie Hebdo was part of that wonderful centuries-old tradition of biting satire and irreverence.
Nothing was sacred.
Every now and then Charlie was banned for a particularly outrageous issue.
It used to run a serial called Les Aventures de Mme Pompidou (The Adventures of Madame Pompidou).
Occasionally Mme Pompidou and her husband, Monsieur le Président Georges Pompidou were not amused and all copies of Charlie Hebdo were seized.
But that was an innocent game compared to yesterday’s massacre.
Something has changed in the world.
Too much blood has been spilled since 9/11 and now the entire planet is soaked in it.
The age of Enlightenment and rational thought is making way to medieval faith-based intolerance.
G W Bush declared a Crusade, and enough lunatics have answered his challenge.
We must answer them by saying: JE SUIS CHARLIE.
Charlie lives as long as there is humour, laughter, tenderness, satire, love, poetry, art.
If we give up on that, the forces of darkness win.
And the light goes off.
We can’t let this happen.
WE ARE CHARLIE.
George Burchett
Ha Noi, 8.1.15
"Yesterday’s massacre in Paris at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is shocking and unforgettable. The publication may have been frequently racist against Muslims and a whole host of “enemies” but the right to offend is a key attribute in a democracy. This doesn’t mean we have to applaud editors and writers who trade in racial stereotyping.
As a journalist, such an attack affects me deeply. The only response is standing up for what we believe and stating it strongly and frequently. We will not be silenced. We will write. We will speak out. We will continue to tell the truth. We will reject the onslaught and say that talking honestly about Islam, Palestine, Israel, terrorism and the “war on terror” is vital.
My friend George Burchett, currently based in Vietnam and the son of famed journalist Wilfred Burchett, penned the following today and it seems apt for the moment:
Charlie was a good friend from my high school years in Paris, in the early 1970s.
Charlie Hebdo was a child of May 68, France’s youthful rebellion.
It was a good time to be in Paris.
You could see the latest Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Visconti, Tarkovsky, Godard etc.
Sartre was still around.
You could attend public Foucault lectures at the College de France, watch the inscrutable Lacan or the great mythomane André Malraux hold forth on TV.
Where are they all now?
The gunmen who spread Charlie Hebdo with bullets and assassinated four of France’s best and wittiest cartoonists among others have also fired bullets in our collective psyche.
Nothing is fun any more.
This is real.
A binary hyperreality as defined by G W Bush & Co: with us or against us.
What happened yesterday morning in Paris was unthinkable some 40 odd years ago.
Yes, there were Red Brigades, Baader Meinhof, the PLO, the War in Vietnam, the coup in Chile and so on, but there was also hope, solidarity, love, tenderness, humour, poetry.
Going to the Quartier Latin to see Felini’s Satyricon or Easy Rider, one passed the black vans of the CRS, the riot police, parked on the Boulevard Saint Michel and Saint Germain.
You’d spot them inside, playing cards, ready for action at any hint of “trouble”.
The same game of youth versus authority was played in the very same places in medieval Paris, between the king’s constabulary and mischievous students.
It was all part of the great French tradition of youthful rebellion against authority, King & Church or, after the Revolution, the much despised bourgeoisie.
It inspired a rich poetic tradition: Villon, Ronsard, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Appolinaire, Prévert, to name but a few from a very long and bright list.
Charlie Hebdo was part of that wonderful centuries-old tradition of biting satire and irreverence.
Nothing was sacred.
Every now and then Charlie was banned for a particularly outrageous issue.
It used to run a serial called Les Aventures de Mme Pompidou (The Adventures of Madame Pompidou).
Occasionally Mme Pompidou and her husband, Monsieur le Président Georges Pompidou were not amused and all copies of Charlie Hebdo were seized.
But that was an innocent game compared to yesterday’s massacre.
Something has changed in the world.
Too much blood has been spilled since 9/11 and now the entire planet is soaked in it.
The age of Enlightenment and rational thought is making way to medieval faith-based intolerance.
G W Bush declared a Crusade, and enough lunatics have answered his challenge.
We must answer them by saying: JE SUIS CHARLIE.
Charlie lives as long as there is humour, laughter, tenderness, satire, love, poetry, art.
If we give up on that, the forces of darkness win.
And the light goes off.
We can’t let this happen.
WE ARE CHARLIE.
George Burchett
Ha Noi, 8.1.15
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