(image found at http://junkee.com/cartoonists-around-the-world-respond-to-the-attack-on-charlie-hebdo/48284 - drawn by Glen Le Lievre from The Sydney Morning Herald on his twitter account)
I woke up this morning to the news of the attacks in Paris
on the offices of the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo. 12
people shot dead, 11 more seriously injured, by masked men sporting assault
rifles generally reported by the media to be self-proclaimed extremist Islamic
militants or terrorists or gunmen or whatever title best suits their violent actions.
I have
another term for them: fuckwits. And another: dickbags. And another: cockheads.
And another: the crusty skidmarks in the undies of an obese man whose diet
consists only of cranberries, protein powder and deep-fried goat. And another: frothing
insane trumpet cunts.
For what I
felt this morning, after a moment of (what will surely be everlasting) grief
and sadness that such violence can be so senselessly committed, was an intense
anger.
Of course, there is always
present a certain fury after these kind of events: a frustration at the world
and the handful of its idiotic inhabitants incapable of any kind of expression beyond
their own misguided rage, who hide behind religion and their twisted interpretations
like it is some kind of impenetrable mask uttering justification.
But this
morning was slightly different. This was not just a senseless attack to provoke
fear, as most terrorist actions are, but a retaliatory action directed at a
media outlet well-known for savagely satirising various religious institutions,
including, but by no means limited to, extremist Islam. My anger was driven by
a kind of disbelief that anyone, even these raging fuckwits, could be so
callous and fearful that they would strike out at a group of people who merely
had the gall to call them out on their inconsistencies and the farcical nature
of their existence, where they are crouched behind a text and a prophet one
gets the distinct idea they do not understand.
This was in one sense an attack
on freedom-of-the-press, which admittedly can be treacherous terrain, but
perhaps more importantly it was also an attack on the ideas of provocation and
image, and an utterly insane defence of this (and any) extremist group’s notion
of its own infallibility.
In the
crudest possible sense, and with no intention of cheapening the horrific nature
of this incident, it was no more than a group of people incapable of taking a
joke, whose reaction was not to ignore it, nor meet it with neutrality, but
violently punch back as if this would take the humour out of the situation; as
if this would eliminate the gag from memory; as if this would deter more people
poking fun at their expense; as if this would prove they cannot be laughed at
for they are impregnably armoured against laughter.
Terrorism
is by its very nature over-the-top. In some sense it is designed to be more
fearful spectacle than reality. And it relies on the maintenance of this
illusion of being feared or even being fear itself. No one should
be able to laugh or poke fun at fear. Perhaps nervously, never confidently.
They should be too frightened, cowered in a distressed ball, unwilling to
venture out into the world.
But by targeting Charlie Hebdo
as they did, a magazine that even under the duress of numerous threats
continued to publish satirical cartoons and articles about extremist shitheads,
they exposed their own fear. They were violently responding to the fact that,
yes, they are as suspect to being made fun of, belittled and laughed at as any
other person or institution. If their mask of terror and ‘religion,’ which
apparently gives them some kind of divine right to their bloody thuggery, is suddenly
challenged, then the ground upon which they preach their absurdities looks a
hell of a lot less stable; the world a hell of a lot less threatening.
People have less fear for
something they can make fun of.
And this is why I refuse to call
them militants, gunmen, terrorists, or any other name that leans on
connotations of fear and hatred. Language creates the reality we all have to
live within, and to do them the service of pandering to their reality is only to
continue to implicitly position them above mockery: as totems of a gut deep terror.
But if I refer to them in a
language that refuses this fear as anything other than the shiver one gets when
a wanker in a bar has the odd audacity to think anyone really gives a shit
about his opinion and, moreover, identify their essential dickheadness, their
symbolic resonance as agents of fear is, at least partly, torn apart.
They’re not terrorists. They’re trumpet
cunts with a seriously messed up vision of the world, too frightened to admit
that they’re the ones who are perpetually terrified as it dares to change
around them and fail to fit into their myopic perspectives.
It is heartening then to see
various cartoonists’ reaction to this atrocity. They have not gone back into
their shells or suddenly decided these people are beyond satire. No. They have
come out in numbers to prove exactly what this attack was on and what it was afraid
of: the pen.
It is proven that the pen, and
the ideas it will continue to fearlessly espouse, is mightier than any hopeless
notion that fear will still it strokes.
My heartfelt wishes and thoughts are with the victims and their families.
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