Every free society makes a bargain when it comes to free speech. The bargain says that we believe that it's so essential to human flourishing that everyone be able to say what they want that we're willing to tolerate speech we despise. Every society draws borders around that right-here in America, which may have the most liberal speech laws in the world, you can still be prosecuted for inciting violence or sued for intentionally spreading harmful lies about someone-but the essence of the bargain is the same.
But free speech also means that everyone else has the right to tell you that what you said was stupid or wrong. As we've had the chance to consider the horrific murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and what they say about free debate, there are some who are willing to criticize the magazine for its particular brand of satire, albeit carefully. No sane person is saying that the magazine's staffers deserved to be killed for their humor, but there are commentators questioning whether the magazine's cartoonists should be held up as heroes of free expression for what they did before the awful attack. Even as millions around the world proclaim "Je suis Charlie," there are people like Arthur Chu offering notes of dissent:
The editors, writers, and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were human beings with families, friends, and loved ones. Their deaths should be mourned for that reason. But no more so than the Sodexo building maintenance man or the two cops who were also killed in the crossfire.
I join with those who call for grief at the deaths of twelve human beings-but I'm not down with mourning the work that Charlie Hebdo was doing or standing up and saying "Je Suis Charlie," like what they did was a holy mission. If anything the work the two cops and the maintenance guy were doing deserves more respect and probably helped a lot more people.
Let's be real about what Charlie Hebdo is. Calling it "journalism" isn't quite right. Even the term "satirical newspaper" puts it on the same level as The Onion, which isn't very fair to The Onion, which strives for at least some degree of cleverness and subtlety, most of the time.
Not being a regular reader of the magazine, I'm only familiar with those parts of Charlie Hebdo's oeuvre that have been circulated this week, but it's clear that they take pleasure in giving offense. I have to agree with Chu when he argues that being an "equal opportunity offender" isn't really much to be proud of; it's a way of saying that the substance of your critique is less important than whether it's spread widely enough around. And when they targeted the sensibilities of devout Muslims, the cartoonists and editors at the magazine took a risk, but of a particular kind. They knew that there would be some number of angry fundamentalists who would want to do them harm. The attack on their offices is something they no doubt anticipated, at least in dark, fearful moments.
They took that physical risk, which certainly required courage, but it wasn't much of an intellectual risk, precisely because they operated within a free society. For instance, the magazine spends a good deal of time mocking religion, but satirical blasphemy has political sting only in an environment where religious authorities hold power and piety is expected of all. France, however, is one of the most secular countries in the world; in this international poll, 63 percent of French respondents said they were either "not a religious person" or "a convinced atheist." Only China, Japan, and the Czech Republic ranked higher in atheism. In France, mocking religion isn't all that bold and shocking, even if they did their best to make the mockery vulgar enough that somebody (they surely hoped) would be offended.
But does saying "Je suis Charlie" necessarily mean that you celebrate the work they did before this week? I don't think it does in the minds of many who are saying it, nor should it. The people holding up those signs are announcing their commitment to an ideal of free speech that has nothing to do with that speech's content. The horror of the murders comes from the fact that the victims were killed because they drew or published cartoons (in addition to those who just happened to get in the killers' way); it would be no more horrible if the cartoons were funnier or more insightful.
I do wonder, however, what the reaction would be if the people who had been murdered worked at a magazine whose essential worldview, and not just its expressions of that worldview, were far more repellent. If someone killed the people who run the white supremacist website Stormfront, we'd all say that it was an unjustified and inexcusable act, that freedom of speech protects even them, and if it didn't then it wouldn't be freedom. But we wouldn't be gathering together in public to hold up "I am Stormfront" signs, no matter how profound our commitment to free speech. Solidarity has its limits.
