Tragedy in Paris
Since I’m more involved in free speech than the average man-on-the-street, I should note that I was deeply saddened to wake up this morning to learn that nine people, publishers of a satirical magazine in Paris, had been murdered. It’s a dark day for the civilized world.
The magazine involved is not currently a champion in terms of sales, but it is sort of a cultural landmark. My dad has all of the issues from about 1970 to 1990, I don’t really understand why but maybe it’s kind of a comedic release where anything can be discussed and/or made fun of (sexuality, daily life, religion, etc). Also, the illustrators were well known.
France is also pretty big on the separation of church and state (1905- I even did my high school thesis on it) and so you are not allowed to wear a prominent cross or veil in public places, schools. This has created tensions in the past 10 years with the muslim community especially. Islam is quickly rising to #1 religion in France due to immigration and declining christianity.
Like many western European countries it has been extremely difficult to assimilate immigrants from North Africa (mostly muslims) because of:
-previous colonial relationship or war (e.g. Algeria in the 50s)
-France changes slowly and lack of change is blamed on immigrants by the far right (remember Le Pen 2001)
– economic austerity
– etc
Also many events have created tension like cars burning, foreign terrorists attacks, the hardliner stance of Sarkozy (2007-2012), muslims being labelled “un-assimilable”, fearmongering by politicians, other immigrants in general like those from Romania, celebrities saying controversial things. There have even been some antisemitic controversies as a result of all of this because some are saying that there is a double standard – north african immigrants can be made fun of at will but not jews – sparking further challenges in France’s cultural identity.
Not saying that everybody thinks immigrants are bad news, that would be ridiculous, but they do have a completely different cultural identity and that’s always hard to manage for a small country with deep-seeded historical values.
I’m bringing up all this because I am saddened by the deaths and afraid, Craig. This random act of violence WILL be used by the far right and fuel the fire of hatred and that is not good news at all.
Sadly, I’m sure you’re 100% correct here. It’s rather like what happened in the U.S. after 9/11, where our right wing had the common American conflating Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. As soon as that happened, we were in Iraq within a matter of weeks.