angered by “the dictatorial behaviour and corrupt promotion practices” of a certain Philippe Val"


Val being the editor who fired two Charlie employees at different times, both for disagreements r/t portrayal of Israel/Palestine issues.


Racist? Charlie Hebdo was certainly no such thing at the time when I worked there. In any case, the idea that the mag would expose itself to such an accusation would have never occurred to me. There had, of course been some Francocentrism, as well as the editorials of Philippe Val. These latter were subject to a disturbing fixation, which worsened over the years, on the “Arabic-Muslim world”. This was depicted as an ocean of barbarism threatening, at any moment, to submerge the little island of high culture and democratic refinement that was, for him, Israel. But the boss’s obsessions remained confined to his column on page 3, and overflowed only rarely into the heart of the journal which, in those years, it seemed me, throbbed with reasonably well-oxygenated blood.

Scarcely had I walked out, wearied by the dictatorial behaviour and corrupt promotion practices of the employer, than the Twin Towers fell and Caroline Fourest arrived in your editorial team. This double catastrophe set off a process of ideological reformatting which would drive off your former readers and attract new ones - a cleaner readership, more interested in a light-hearted version of the “war on terror” than the soft anarchy of [cartoonist] Gébé. Little by little, the wholesale denunciation of “beards”, veiled women and their imaginary accomplices became a central axis of your journalistic and satirical production.

“Investigations” began to appear which accepted the wildest rumours as fact, like the so-called infiltration of the League of Human Rights (LDH) or European Social Forum (FSE) by a horde of bloodthirsty Salafists[2]. The new impulse underway required the magazine to renounce the unruly attitude which had been its backbone up to then, and to form alliances with the most corrupt figures of the intellectual jet-set, such as Bernard-Henri Lévy or Antoine Sfeir, cosignatories in Charlie Hebdo of a grotesque “Manifesto of the Twelve against the New Islamic Totalitarianism”[3]. Whoever could not see themselves in a worldview which opposed the civilized (Europeans) to obscurantists (Muslims) saw themselves quickly slapped with the label of “useful idiots” or “Islamo-leftists”.


I'd gotten the impression that the original "Charlie" had not so much to do with the post-911 "Charlie," which this former staffer seems to confirm.

accustomed to looking down on the common herd, is the surest way to sabotage one’s own intellectual defences and to allow them to fall over in the least gust of wind." A reminder many DUers need to ponder. We are on a slippery slope which can lead to any and all hate speech being justified by screeching about our inalienable "freedoms." I am old enough to remember when cartoons with disgusting caricatures of people of color were published, and presumably found to be quite humorous and entirely appropriate by the majority of readers. I believe that sufficient numbers of said majority eventually found it so distasteful and vulgar as to force some self-censorship on the publishers. We are better off without that "freedom" of expression.

Unless you have been lurking for a while, you have arrived during interesting times.

times for me personally as well. I've been reduced to real poverty (no longer the 'student' poverty I'd chosen voluntarily) and am struggling to recover in many ways.

I always sided with the wretched of the earth in spirit, but now I'm one of them, and one with them.

thanks for the welcome.

A brain infection is serious stuff....so is poverty.

Glad that you are feeling well enough to post.

I always sided with the wretched of the earth in spirit, but now I'm one of them, and one with them.

than I knew, and getting almost any kind of benefits is a test of endurance and will. a lot of people just give up, or become homeless because they don't have the resources to wait it out.

and once homeless, it's very hard to come back.

About homelessness: a number of years ago, I didn't keep track, I saw a documentary on TV about how much cheaper it was for society to pay a modest rent for a homeless person than to bear the social monetary cost of average homeless person's homelessness. (I hope that is not impossible to follow.) So, homelessness exists in the US because we are a spiteful species (my words). Not only can we afford to do better, but doing better would actually cost us less.

Yadda yadda, a couple of weeks ago, I saw a segment, again on TV, where UTAH actually built housing for the homeless for that very reason, namely, it costs them $12K per person per year, whereas leaving the average homeless person without a home cost them an average of $20K per year. Neither is free, of course, hence a certain segment of our population would just as soon people die. People say that's not intentional, but take away a needy person's fuel subsidy and cut their Social Security and food stamps and only a mentally challenged person doesn't get deaths will result. (Can people even register to vote if they are homeless?)

So, either I am better informed about these matters than the average US Senator or town council member, or people in power would rather see homelessness than save money.

I've been saying for years that, at the very least, we have to provide some clean public showers. For a while, some homeless people were using the rest room in the waiting room at the health center to wash up, but they were leaving too much water around, so the health center put a lock on the door. And some don't have a change of clothes, so laundromats are useless to them. And some of these people are trying to keep kids in school!

Makes me cry, how mean our species can be.

agreed, and with all your examples.

it's all so counterproductive; not good for the homeless themselves but also not good for the country and the civic body.

I don't get it, but it benefits someone, that's for sure.

The ones labeled racist, and then I looked up their context. They were mocking racists. I don't really think this guy's one opinion will change my mind, especially as he seems to mix up race with Islam and follow suit with those that defend religion as a privilege rather than an idea.

I didn't see this French guy offer any specific cartoon, he did mention they made lots of fun of Islam, a terribly bigoted religion, not unexpected, they're leftist anti-theists.

he knows what they are. or is qualified to have an opinion.

I don't think you actually read the article, to tell you the truth, because your comments don't speak to the content. "He did mention they made lots of fun of Islam" = what?

But it's not as convincing as the article that explains the context of the supposedly racist cartoons. Given that many satirists in the US caricature racism in order to lampoon racists, it's not surprising that without context it would be hard to understand.

In the article he mentions how they started targeting Islam more after 9/11.

france, I don't buy the storyline being pushed here about how the French are such a unique people and have such a unique culture, we just can't understand the cartoons. special pleading is what it is.

Charlie isn't funded from readers; it's been funded by unknown outside big donor since 911. That's the most interesting thing about why they started targeting islam 'more' after 911 to me.

The explanations actually made a lot of sense. I think it requires understanding current events going on in France and their political culture at the time of publication to get the context.

of the area and culture.

But everyone claims that, don't they?

"I know more than you because I understand French culture"

It's what you're claiming as well.

Regardless, I don't buy the explanations presented. Neither did the FRENCH guy, who presumably knows more than either of us, and also WORKED THERE TEN YEARS.

You dismissed his essay completely and indeed, there was no evidence you even read it.

One guy that worked there ten years says nothing to me about whether the cartoons were racist, analysis of those cartoons does, this guy just engages in conjecture.

So it's been 15 years, so yeah, conjecture. It shows some of the supposedly offenaive toons without explaining the context.

And they guy engages in pretty poor reasoning with regards to Islamophobia, his article reminded me of Donahue's article about how Hebdo is despicable because it made fun of religions. It wasn't a nuanced view, but this idea that criticizing Islam is somehow always racist because in France it is a minority religion.

It ignores religious privilege, which is part of why Islamophobia is even a word. The word makes no sense, it gives the same victim status to an idea that was reserved for homosexual identity, and it's an explicitly homophobic religion to boot. The hypocrisy is pretty thick here.

He doesn't seem to get that Islam just doesn't exist in the context of France, but is a powerdul and oppressive force in a lot of the world, he seems to want them to only think in terms of local politics.

i didn't realize that 'victim status' was 'reserved for homosexual identity'

you couldn't have read the article and kept saying the things you are

yeah, the hypocrisy is pretty thick alright

Homophobia makes sense, Islamophobia is a copy of three same meaning, but makes no sense. It would be like saying white supremacist phobia. Islam is an idea, not an inherent sexual preference. Muslimphobe a would make more sense, but even then it's not a good analogy, religion is a choice.

It's the privilege of religion that would allow a bigoted belief system to subvert social justice language of a minority group it explicitly discriminates against to use for itself. This guy is a joke like Donahue, and reminds me of the Christians in the right crying persecution every time their beliefs are criticized.

to islam-, only to homo-?

Phobia just means "irrational fear". What does that have to do with whether people chose their religion or their sexual orientation? It's not about the feared person, it's about the fearful person. The "phobic" person or culture are the fearful; the other culture or person is the feared.

Saying 'well, you can change your religion and then I won't fear you" = the discourse of the phobic.

Whether someone has an irrational fear of an idea is a lot more subjective than of an inherent sexual preference. I'm sure the right would describe us as Conservaphobia.

A lot of what is described as Islamophobia is really racial bigotry and xenophobia.

Conflating Islam with race makes no sense, or with sexual preference, because it's an idea, and Muslim is simply the label of those that ascribe to it.

While it's possible to have an irrational fear of anything, Islamophobia doesn't really describe what is going on, homophobia does, xenophobia does.

Islam is a very bigoted religion, even racist assholes have legitimate fears of it. Most of the irrational fears have nothing to do with Islam.

to apply the label phobia to ideas.

However, by definition, a phobia is an irrational fear. It's no more or less senseless to have an irrational fear of an idea, like communism, for example, than it is to have an irrational fear of the bogey man.

Even using the word "phobia" less technically, you have not explained why fear of an idea is any more or less senseless than any other fear. It's not as though people don't act on ideas.

Is a lot more subjective than objects or things.

Conservatives no doubt think we have an irrational fear of conservatism.

It becomes an opinion and not a term associated with a mental illness.

It's a misnomer. And then the term is used to label legitimate criticisms as irrational because a person disagrees with them.

Thanks -rec

Please note: You don't punch people. You don't murder people.