Je suis Charlie: Five years onCharlie Hebdo, Freedom or Death
The pencil against the Kalashnikov, the schoolboy humor against the holy war … At first glance, yes, the battle is lost. The more so as a constant cowardice dressed in silliness makes entire sections of society fall into the trap of the fight against “Islamophobia.” Saint Matthew said that “It is the violent who win.” Our enemies choose the targets, not the other way around. That’s why we must not give up. History bears witness to this: it is when it is sure of its strength, of its rights, that the free country prevails over the “violent.”
Editor’s note: This is a translation of Le Figaro editorial from yesterday, Wednesday 2 September 2020
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In Le Lambeau [the “shred” or “flap,” referring to the many pieces of skin taken from his legs and used to cover injuries on his face and neck], Philippe Lançon, who was seriously injured in the murderous attack by the Kouachi brothers on the premises of Charlie Hebdo, goes, still recovering from his injuries, to a cocktail party where he meets Michel Houellebecq [Houellebecq is a leading French novelist, essayist, and poet who, in the last twenty years, has become a trenchant critic of what he considers to be the weakness and ineffectiveness of the way French political and cultural institutions, owing to political correctness, have dealt with the growing problem of Islamist radicalism and violence in France] (on 7 January 2015, the day of the attack, the journalist had an appointment with the novelist to discuss Houellebecq’s novel Soumission [Submission]). The two men have a short conversation. Quoting Saint Matthew, Houellebecq ends by whispering: “Ce sont les violents qui l’emportent” (It is the violent who win).
The pencil against the Kalashnikov, the schoolboy humor against the holy war … At first glance, yes, the battle is lost. The more so as a constant cowardice dressed in silliness makes entire sections of society fall into the trap of the fight against “Islamophobia.”
The attacks on Charlie and the Hyper Cacher were, after Merah’s heinous crimes, the emblematic massacres of a guerrilla war against France [in March 2012, Mohammed Merah killed seven people in Tolouse in south France: on 11 March he killed a French soldiers on vacation; on 15 March he killed two more soldiers; and on 19 March he killed a rabbi and three Jewish children in a Jewish religious school]. The France of Father Hamel [Father Jacque Hamel was killed on his church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, by two young Muslim men], Colonel Beltrame [on 24 March 2018, Colonel Arnaud Beltrame volunteered to be exchanged for a hostage taken by an Islamist terrorist in a supermarket in the small town of Trèbes in south France. The terrorist then killed him], the strollers of Nice on 14 July blindly crushed [on 14 July 2016, an Islamist terrorist drove a rented truck through a crown watching Bastille Day fireworks on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice; 86 people were killed and 458 injured], kids killed on café terraces, young girls with their throats cut in Marseille, police officers murdered in the heart of the Paris police headquarters …
That the trial which opens [Wednesday, 2 September 2020] is only part of the struggle. That the judges pass the law without trembling is the least. Our intelligence services, constantly on the alert, lead the struggle for security; but the stake is also political, cultural: it is a struggle for civilization.
From a state of emergency to a bill against separatism, the government promises to be ruthless. At the moment, they don’t even enforce existing laws. They display their weaknesses as virtues, while political Islam, hand in hand with cultural leftism, advances under the mask of human rights and the fight against discrimination. For the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo; the policewoman of Montrouge [Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a 27-year old policewoman, was killed by an Islamist terrorist in the Paris neighborhood of Montroge on 8 January 2015, a day after the Charlie Hebdo attack]; and the French Jews of the Porte de Vincennes [where the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket was located, in which 5 people were killed on 7 January 2015] “freedom or death” was not a platform slogan, it was a tragic reality.
[The policewoman death] obligates us. Should we run away? Our enemies choose the targets, not the other way around. That’s why we must not give up. History bears witness to this: “c’est quand il est sûr de sa force, de son droit, que le pays libre l’emporte sur les ‘violents’” (it is when it is sure of its strength, of its rights, that the free country prevails over the “violent”).
