theintercept | The apparently criminal viewpoint he posted on Facebook
declared: “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie
Coulibaly.” Investigators concluded that this was intended to mock the
“Je Suis Charlie” slogan and express support for the perpetrator of the
Paris supermarket killings (whose last name was “Coulibaly”). Expressing
that opinion is evidently a crime in the Republic of Liberté, which
prides itself on a line of 20th Century intellectuals – from Sartre and
Genet to Foucault and Derrida – whose hallmark was leaving no orthodoxy
or convention unmolested, no matter how sacred.
Since that glorious “free speech” march, France has reportedly opened 54 criminal cases for “condoning terrorism.” AP reported this morning that “France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.”
As pernicious as this arrest and related “crackdown” on some speech
obviously is, it provides a critical value: namely, it underscores the
utter scam that was this week’s celebration of free speech in the west.
The day before the Charlie Hebdo attack, I coincidentally documented the
multiple cases in the west – including in the U.S. – where Muslims have
been prosecuted and even imprisoned for their political speech.
Vanishingly few of this week’s bold free expression mavens have ever
uttered a peep of protest about any of those cases – either before the
Charlie Hebdo attack or since. That’s because “free speech,” in the
hands of many westerners, actually means: it is vital that the ideas I like be protected, and the right to offend groups I dislike be cherished; anything else is fair game.
