Always free, Never irresponsible

“I don’t agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”: Voltaire accompanies me ideally on the morning of January 14, at the news stand near Place Kléber, in Strasbourg, to purchase – after a standing in a long line – the latest edition of “Charlie hebdo”. In the middle of the square are still visible the signs, the personal memories, the pencils, the banners held during the march that was held also here on Sunday January 11. I’m in town for the plenary session of the European Parliament, one of the countless institutional seats where were pronounced heartfelt words of consternation and participation in the pain of France, of the whole world. The news office of the satirical newspaper was the object on January 7 of a despicable, heinous terroristic attack. Over 12 dead, and another long stream of victims, fear and violence. Then the reaction, sober and proud of the French people: “Je suis Charlie”, I, all of us, are Charlie, we’re for the freedom of expression, of thought, of the press. Who could disagree? “Nobody can strip us of our right to laugh” and “pencils will always be beyond barbarous actions.” I agree, and this copy that I hold in my hands, and that I proudly show, reiterates it with determination. The front cover features a cartoon of a crying Muhammad with the caption: “Tout est pardonné”. Who knows whether the 12 dead of the newspaper have forgiven their assassins. Who knows whether the wives, husbands, children, mothers, friends, cowerkers have truly forgiven… It’s the first time that I buy “Charlie”. I never held in my hands not even “Le Canard enchaîné”, nor any other satirical newspapers in Europe, even though I recognize the ancient yet contemporary role of satire, which has often carved for itself a fundamental role in history: goading the powerful, making fun of antidemocratic regimes, pillorying mafia criminals and financial tycoons, leaders maximi and sport champions, people from the show business, bishops, rabbis and Imams. All of them on the same plane, all of them in the irreverent target of a pencil in fact, of a salacious pencil. Sarcasm, harsh criticism, often insolent, more often intelligent, but also boorish, even ruthless. Satire has played, and it continues to play, an essential role of “democratic vigilance”, sometimes filling in the gaps of an information system that is increasingly conformed, more than seldom bent down to the leadership in power. Indeed, freedom of thought is essential and it cannot be renounced, especially when it is questioned and put at risk, or even targeted by blind madmen, blinkered and holding a kalashnikov. It’s a fundamental right that cannot be denied. Indeed, can life be denied? (But it happens, all the time!) Can justice be denied? The right to food? To health? To education? To equal dignity between men and women? No, it cannot.  Moreover, that subtitle, almost in a shadowed corner of the “Charlie hebdo”, prompts reflection: “Journal irresponsable”. Is it possible to be irresponsible today? Can we say, just anything we wish, justifying ourselves with the words “I’ve got nothing to do with it”, “I acquit myself”, “I am free from all sense of limit”, “I have the pure eyes of a child”? And if the front cover of today’s “Charlie hebdo” had featured, instead of Mohammed, a mother affected by Alzheimer’s? Or a disabled child? If it glorified Hitler of Stalin? If it shouted – for mere sense of liberty – “hurray to world hunger”, “no more treatment to cancer patients”, “let’s fire and take away the wages of all blondes”? And if, once again, as it has happened, a given satirical newspaper or a t-shirt worn on television made fun of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Auschwitz or the crucified Christ? There is a doubt. How far can freedom of expression go? If self-censorship is not an option, for obvious reasons, is it then possible that freedom, every freedom, should to some extent not be commensurate to the historical context and the sense of responsibility? To the good of others, other than my own? And – as has been remarked – if some people kill for a cartoon, would we be willing to wage a war for the right to pillory? Fanaticism could hide anywhere. Behind a Kalashnikov for sure. Maybe between the lines of a newspaper article, in the speech of a politician, perhaps behind a cartoon. The limit is impalpable, the watershed is mobile, the boundaries are relative and ephemeral. Even after the martyrs of “Charlie Hebdo.”