PARIS – In the hours following the 2015 Islamist terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a slogan appeared to mourn the dead and defend free speech, spreading like magic in France and around the world through its unifying force.
– I’m Charlie.
The images of the slogan “I am Charlie” – in white and light gray letters on a black background – inspired millions who marched in France and were joined by world leaders from Western and Muslim nations. Hollywood A-listers, such as George Clooney, proclaimed “I’m Charlie.” So did Maggie on “The Simpsons.” All standing together like Charlie against terrorists who believed that the magazine insulted Islam with the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
But the once unifying slogan has become one of division in France – framing complicated debates in everyday conversations and popular culture, on social media and even as part of school curricula.
“I’m Charlie” gave birth to “I’m not Charlie”, giving rise to a question that requires the choice of camps: are you or are you not Charlie? The answer puts people on both sides of France’s major lines of error, including freedom of expression, secularism, race, national identity and, of course, Islam.
The metamorphosis of the slogan exposes the polarization of political discourse in France, deepened even more by the beheading of a high school teacher and two other recent Islamist attacks that followed the republishing of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo in September. But as it gained a life of its own, the slogan itself helped to sharpen France’s divisions.
“I would like this slogan to cease to exist, because in the form it takes today, it deepens the division,” said Joachim Roncin, the graphic designer who created the slogan, which he saw as a “blanket of security:” Je suis Charlie – we are together. “
Today, someone who is Charlie is likely to be white and a supporter of the publication of the cartoons. At the extreme, the person can support a strict secularism that is sometimes a cover for anti-Islam. Someone other than Charlie is often non-white and opposes the publication of cartoons. The person could go so far as to justify Islamist terrorism or ban any criticism of religion.
Once a slogan that transcended political cleavage, “Je Suis Charlie” was now largely embraced by the right and created splits on the left.
Gérôme Truc, a sociologist at the National Center for Scientific Research, said the slogan was constantly armed as part of “a political struggle that seeks to generate divisions, to distinguish those who are with us and those who are against us.”
The slogan put “oil on fire” in France, Mr Trick said, referring to issues he said the country had failed to address in the past five years, such as Islam, freedom of expression and the place of religion in life. public. .
Its explosive potential was revealed during a recent interview that President Emmanuel Macron gave to a youth-oriented online news site, Brut. A reader with an Arabic name, Karim, asked him: “I am French, I love my country. But I’m not Charlie. Am I allowed to be? “
Mr Macron replied that Karim was, but added: “I think we need to get rid of the slogan.”
On Wednesday, a Paris court found 14 people guilty of assisting in the 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters and a Jewish supermarket. However, even though the verdict brought legal closure, the effects of the cartoons on French society continue to be felt.
When Charlie Hebdo first published the cartoons in 2006, then-Conservative President Jacques Chirac denounced their publication, calling for “tolerance and respect for all beliefs.” In 2015, the government led by President François Hollande, a socialist, responded to a series of attacks that year, including one at the Bataclan concert hall, with a strong message of national unity.
This fall, following three recent attacks, Mr Macron has categorically defended the republishing of cartoons as a “right to blasphemy”. This position led to protests in Muslim nations, was met with criticism or silence in the West, and left France isolated.
Vincent Tiberj, a sociologist at the University of Sciences Po Bordeaux, said that French public opinion was shaped less by the nature of the attacks than by the political discourse and actions that followed.
After the 2015 attacks – which killed about 150 people, compared with four of the three attacks this fall – the government’s focus on national unity has led to an increase in tolerance of Muslims, Mr Tiberj’s research showed. But he said the political backlash after the recent attacks, with a language that seemed to confuse the religion of Islam with Islamist extremism, risked fueling divisions.
Those cracks widened in the arc of a changing “Je suis Charlie.”
Mr. Roncin, 44, the graphic designer, created the slogan within an hour and a half of the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo. He was not a reader of the magazine, but when he was older, there were regular children around his house. His father, a child of the May 1968 social revolution, liked the magazine’s anti-establishment spirit, he said.
Feeling that the attack “took away part of my childhood, part of what formed me”, Mr. Roncin loaded the slogan on Twitter to its 400 followers. About seven minutes later, the first hashtag #JeSuisCharlie was created, according to a study on Twitter hashtags.
Within hours, it bounced around the globe, and Mr. Roncin was inundated with requests for an interview from the news media. That evening, tens of thousands gathered in the Place de la République in Paris, many holding placards with the slogan they printed on their home computers.
But even in the first hour after his Tweet, Mr. Roncin noticed some critical messages on social media. A hashtag #JeNeSuisPasCharlie has appeared, the first sign of a politicization that would eventually turn his creation into a “slogan of the right,” he said.
He wasn’t the only one who was worried.
Christophe Naudin, 45, survived the 2015 terrorist attack on the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 were killed, hiding for more than two hours in a warehouse.
Mr. Naudin, who grew up in a politically conscious family, remembers that his grandmother passionately defended author Salman Rushdie, who was threatened with death after insulting many Muslims in his novel satanic “. Mr Naudin said he subscribed to Charlie Hebdo in 2006 to show support for the magazine’s decision that year to publish Muhammad’s cartoons.
However, he said that he canceled his subscription last year, after he became more and more uncomfortable with the editorial tone of the magazine. The magazine sometimes produced content he considered Islamophobic, said Mr. Naudin, who teaches history at a high school and recently published a book, “The Diary of a Bataclan Survivor.”
A cover illustration of the August 2017 terrorist attack in Barcelona and an editorial by the magazine’s editor, Laurent Sourisseau, appeared to combine Islam with Islam, Mr Naudin said.
The magazine did not respond to several interview requests. In response to allegations of racism, Mr Sourisseau told a French newspaper that part of the left had been caught up in strict ideological concepts and censored. “We have to say things even if they are unpleasant,” he said.
The slogan “Charlie” pushes the French in two extremes, said Mr. Naudin, adding: “Unfortunately, we have reached a point of no return where the nuanced speech is no longer audible.”
The slogan even reached the classroom.
In early October, Samuel Paty, a high school teacher near Paris, organized a free speech class around what he called “The Dilemma: To Be or Not to Be Charlie.” A few days after presenting two caricatures of Muhammad from Charlie Hebdo, he was killed by an Islamist extremist.
Being Charlie meant supporting press freedom, publishing cartoons, and the right to blasphemy, according to handwritten notes taken by two students who attended the course and provided copies to The New York Times. Not being Charlie meant believing that the magazine disrespected religion, published blasphemous cartoons, provoked Islamists, and risked attacks.
The students debated, they remembered, then they were asked to agree on a proposed solution.
At the bottom of the course notes, their proposal read, “Refrain from publishing this type of caricature.”