The mainstream media and politicians lauded the January 12, 2015 “I am Charlie” rally in Paris as a pro-free speech, pro-unity, and “anti- terrorism” mass action. But the killers of the 17 victims attacked on January 7, were quickly identified and killed and appear to have been engaged in a solo effort and therefore, hardly a threat to free speech in France. They surely don’t threaten it anywhere near as severely as the French government itself, which has laws that permit arrests and imprisonment for political speech insulting Israel and questioning the Holocaust, and for giving verbal support to “terrorism” (i.e., what the French state identifies as terrorism; see below).
There were reportedly some 70 arrests for unapproved speech in France during the first weeks after the Charlie Hebdo killings. Unsurprisingly, none of the arrests were reported to have been for verbal attacks on Muslim individuals or religious symbols, although attacks on Muslims increased after January 7. (Without irony the New York Times featured a news article “French Rein In Speech Backing Acts of Terror,” January 16, 2015). France has also outlawed the wearing of the Burqa, used by a small proportion of Muslim women, a highly selective curb on a traditional cultural practice and freedom of dress of a minority group that suffers discrimination in other ways.
Ideology Trumps All
David Carr, a media analyst for the New York Times, wrote that “Parisians clamored to buy the newest issue of Charlie Hebdo, signaling their support of free speech” (“To Buy, and Speak, Freely,” NYT, January 15, 2015). But how does Carr know that it was not in support of a journal now more widely known to be hostile to Muslims? Or part of a familiar process of mass identification with U.S. and opposition to them? Or just curiosity and a response to lots of free publicity? He doesn’t know, but ideology trumps all. So the claim that this rally, organized by the French government, was about free speech and unity is phony, with the French state applying a familiar double standard and the appeal coming as it does in defense and memorialization of a group most famous for harsh and provocative derogation of Muslim religious principles and symbols, that is, attacking a weak group in society.
Of course, free speech hypocrisy runs deep in the imperialist and colonial-settler states. The United States has regularly and deliberately bombed and killed journalists in states under attack, including Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among others, and Al- Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj was given the Guantanamo treatment for six years, eventually being released without ever being charged.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks may have been rushed into the criminal and threat class when they released a video showing U.S. helicopter pilots laughingly gunning down two Reuters journalists in Iraq. Likewise Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have been important contributors to free speech in the United States, which helped make them targets of the free- speech-loving U.S. political class.
Representatives of Saudi Arabia and Israel were also among the 40 Free World leaders at the January 12 rally, helping make crystal clear its real non-support of an uncontaminated rule of free speech. (Seventeen journalists were reportedly killed by Israeli forces in Operation Protective Edge during the summer of 2014, a number of them in vehicles and/or with signs indicating their journalist role. But they were mainly Palestinians, not worthy victims such as the Paris 17.)
Selective Devotion to Free Speech
U.S. and other Free World leaders also showed their devotion to free speech in their public statements and trips to Saudi Arabia in late January to honor the passing of Saudi dictator Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and the coming into power of the new dictator, King Salman bin Abdulaziz. British Prime Minister David Cameron was “deeply saddened” by the death of a man “commited to peace,” and he had British flags run at half mast in honor of this death. John Kerry, Joseph Biden, and John McCain all cited Abdullah’s peace-loving qualities and President Obama visited Saudi Arabia to pay his respects to this great man. Glenn Greenwald makes the telling comparison between the White House’s treatment of the death of Hugo Chavez and Abdullah. Regarding Chavez, the White House statement on his death said nothing about Chavez and his family, but merely reaffirmed “support for the Venezuelan people” (March 5, 2013). With Abdullah, Obama offered “deep respect that expresses my personal condolence and sympathies of the American people to the family of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and to the people of Saudi Arabia” (January 22, 2015).
Greenwald points out two differences between Chavez and Abdullah: one is that Chavez was elected and brought significant benefits to his people, whereas Abdullah was an unelected dictator serving a tiny local elite and a powerful external constituency. The other, closely related, difference is that Chavez was on the U.S. enemies hit list, whereas Abdullah was a long-standing U.S. friend, client, and servant. As Tarik Bouafia puts it, “Abdullah, like his predecessors, submitted to the United States, systematically violated human rights, financed fanatical groups of jihadists, and was the perfect puppet” (“A tyrant dies, the West weeps,” InvestigAction, January 26, 2015). This perfection in puppetry surely deserves Free World honor.
As regards the claim that the rally was based on hostility to terrorism, here again the selectivity is extraordinary and fits very comfortably into the standard Western focus on retail rather than state terrorism. But even within categories, the selectivity is impressive. It has been pointed out that in the same time frame as the 17 Charlie Hebdo killings there were an estimated 2,000 terror victims of Boko Haram in Nigeria, that somehow failed to elicit any Western marches or serious attention. The new Egyptian dictatorship has killed large numbers of protesters, but nobody in the West has launched a “Je suis the Muslim Brotherhood” campaign. Moreover, Western state terrorism, in its direct or sponsored assaults on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Syria has victimized numbers running well beyond a million.
France itself has been an aggressive military participant in recent Western interventions in Muslim countries, in Afghanistan, Chad, Central African Republic, Djibouti, Ivory Coast, Libya, and Mali, among others. The Paris killings are surely a case of blowback, but you will have to search hard to find Western media suggesting that this is the case. In fact, an early “news” article in the NYT tells us that “the assault [Charlie Hebdo] crystallized the culture clash between religious extremism and the West’s devotion to free expression” (Dan Bilefsky and Maia de la Baume, “Terrorists Strike Paris Newspaper; 12 People Killed,” NYT, January 8, 2015). This we may call a “makes-one-gasp” news clarification line. The January 12 front page of the NYT reads “In Paris, Huge Show of Solidarity Against Terrorism.” As with Carr’s reading the French mind in accord with his own political prejudices, so the Times editors also know what went on in French minds. Furthermore, terrorism is an ambiguous and politicized word. Shouldn’t it properly include state terrorism, such as is carried out on a massive scale by France, the United States, and their allies? If the French marchers were supporting French and U.S. foreign policy against their many Muslim targets, as I suspect many were, wasn’t this a pro-state-terrorism rally?
The December 2014 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the CIA’s torture program publicized the fact that this serious form of terrorist violence was for many years heavily practiced by the U.S. government, directly and via a widespread network of torture rendition centers.
There is even open acknowledgement that substantial numbers who were seized and tortured were held “in error” (Scott Shane, “Amid Details on Torture, Data on 26 Held in Error,” NYT, December 13, 2014). This is big-time terrorism that is very much dominated by state terrorists, along with drone assassinations that are frequently accompanied by “second tap” bombing to mop up any rescuers. It is one of the marvels of the U.S. and world propaganda system that there can be an anti-terrorism rally focused on 17 retail terrorism victims, with 40 government representatives including Netanyahu and other major state terrorist representatives, joining the march, that is taken seriously. The U.S., French, and other participating governments are pledged to “fight terrorism” more aggressively. What this means is more state terrorism abroad (and further ultra-terrorism in the form of outright aggression) and Islamophobia and repression at home, with more blowback that will justify a renewed cycle of violence. As William Hazlitt once asked, “O reason, when will thy long minority expire?” Which in our age we might amend to “O hypocrisy when will thy long majority expire?”
Edward S. Herman is an economist, writer, and media analyst.