It has been almost three weeks since the abhorrent attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the two subsequent days of horror in France’s capital city.
Though it has oft been on my mind, this section of The State News has not put anything in physical print about the topic yet, though that changes today.
It’s because I — and fault me if you would like — haven’t quite had the nerve or ability to even broach the subject. I still don’t completely know what to think, or what to say.
That is because I’ve had a lingering fear. Not fear of terrorism, but fear that an event such as this — the murder of 12 individuals because of political cartoons — could forever change how we write, and what we write.
This attack hit home to me in no way a terror attack ever has. That’s because I am a journalist, and one who — when given the opportunity to write opinion columns — often carries an unapologetically satirical, sarcastic tone in my writing. No previous terror attack I can recall took such a direct effect on how I perceived my future or my profession. But the Charlie Hebdo attacks did.
Because if journalists, comedians, satirists or anyone else have to live in fear of offending people because of the art they choose to display, the snowball effect of censorship could drastically change the media landscape we currently experience.
What if Trey Parker and Matt Stone were too afraid to make any of the wildly offensive, but equally hilarious, episodes of South Park that many of us have enjoyed over the past 18 years because of fear of retribution from those they were targeting in a particular episode?
It would be a different — and less funny — world. And my biggest fear is that, if similar attacks were to happen in the future, someday we all might be a bit too afraid to make a joke that might be perceived as offensive, but one we have every right in the world to make.
But let’s make one thing clear before I go an inch further: this has nothing to do with people of faith. Because to claim that murdering people because of a depiction of their prophet “avenged him,” as one of the assailants allegedly yelled as he fled the Hebdo offices, is not a rational thought.
This has nothing to do with Muslims. This is the result of generations of psychopathic ideology being passed down from one extremist to another. It’s sick. It’s unthinkable. And it’s an assault on something I take very, very seriously — the freedom to print whatever you damn well please.
This has to do with mentally ill individuals who, as I mentioned already, are incapable of rational thought.
Eric Rudolph admittedly bombed Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta because of his radical Christian views against abortion and homosexuality.
As I am certain every good Christian would say — even though I personally wouldn’t describe myself that way — Rudolph was not acting on behalf of Christianity. That would be an absurd assumption. He was acting on a irrational, inexplicable mindset that had nothing to do with what any real religion is actually supposed to represent.
Just like the lunatics earlier this month in Paris.
Radicals are going to act in the name of something they think is doing their religion a justice, when all it really does is further divide the already volatile relationship between the different faiths in this world.
Extremism is not going to end. Innocent people are, unfortunately, going to be targeted in the future because of the ridiculous beliefs of a small sect of individuals. It is going to be something that we have to live with now, tomorrow and until the day we leave this Earth.
Which is why I so strongly commend Charlie Hebdo for what they did in the issue that followed the attacks.
The magazine’s cartoonists were killed by radicals for depicting the Prophet Muhammad. So, how did the publication react? They did it again. They put the prophet on the cover of their next issue. They stood up and said, “You might be able to take our cartoonists, but you will not take away our freedom. We will not be afraid.”
That statement by the Charlie Hebdo staff gives me faith that my fear that the aforementioned “snowball effect of censorship” will not be something that affects the world’s media landscape.
Because we live in a world where we have to stand up and stare the most fearsome people here right back in the eye. And the citizens of France and the staff of Charlie Hebdo did exactly that, and I believe that will have an impact on the future of the world’s media much, much more than some people realize.
The world must continue to print and write what we want, despite the fact that some people will go to unfathomable lengths to stop it. Je suis Charlie. And so are all of us who refuse to waver in our belief that we have the right to be free.
