‘We blaspheme to challenge power’

Ten years ago today, Islamist gunmen burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, eight of whom were on its editorial staff.

The massacre brought this small French satirical weekly under the global spotlight. At first, the survivors were overwhelmed by the many generous displays of solidarity, as thousands lined the streets of Paris to march for free speech. Millions more around the world adopted the slogan, ‘Je Suis Charlie’.

But then came the backlash. Many in the transatlantic liberal elite expressed sympathy with the slain, but denounced Charlie for offending Muslims. Worse, the paper was smeared by some as a bigoted rag. Where the terrorists took revenge on the newspaper for its supposed ‘blasphemy’, for publishing cartoons of Muhammad, the woke of the West declared it guilty of more modern heresies – racism and ‘Islamophobia’.

Speaking to spiked, as part of a film to mark the anniversary of the attack, Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, set the record straight – and made his case for free speech, universalism and blasphemy. What follows is a transcript of the entire interview. (You can watch the video here.)

spiked: Before we discuss that awful day and its aftermath, I’d like to ask you about the origins and the politics of Charlie Hebdo, because there is a lot of wilful ignorance, especially internationally, about what it really stands for. What were Charlie’s origins and how did you get involved?

Gérard Biard: Charlie Hebdo has a long history. It’s a newspaper that’s over 50 years old, which was founded in the 1960s by François Cavanna and Professor Choron because they wanted to make a newspaper in which they could express their freedom and read things they couldn’t read elsewhere. This has always been in the spirit of Charlie Hebdo: to try to create something, whether through drawings, articles or ideas, that you wouldn’t see anywhere else, including in the tone.

Cavanna defined it as ‘the newspaper of reason against all dogmas’, whether political or religious. It’s a satirical newspaper, but it’s also a political newspaper on the left.

From the very start, we had some key principles and themes: ecology, the fight against animal suffering, the fight against religions – all religions – anti-militarism, women’s rights, and, of course, satire of the political world and of society.

Universalism is another. The idea that if we say there are human rights, they must apply to all of humanity, not just people in a specific country or culture. If you say that female genital mutilation is a monstrosity that should be banned, that surely applies to all of humanity. You cannot say, ‘Ah, yes, but it’s their culture, so we should accept it.’ No, that’s not acceptable. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, yes, but they are savages’. That’s racist. That’s what universalism is against. By the way, the Declaration of Human Rights is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for a reason: these are rights that apply to all of humanity. That’s what we defend.

Because Charlie Hebdo is an atheist newspaper, we also defend secularism, which means the right to criticise and to mock religious dogmas and religious representatives, and having the right to blaspheme. The right to blaspheme is a right that has existed since the French Revolution.

During the French Revolution, we killed the monarchy, we decapitated the king. But the king held his power by divine right. So, in a way, we decapitated God. We expelled God from the realm of civil power, from earthly power. That’s secularism: it’s to say that God is an idea, an idea like any other. It has no more value, nor less either. We can, and we must, subject it to the same treatment as all other ideas. We can mock it, we can say, ‘No, you’re wrong’.

This is not about insulting believers. It’s simply saying, ‘I do not accept the power of God’. This is something that, in my view, is essential for democracy to function. The principle of democracy is that all laws should be debatable, that we should be able to oppose them, that we should be able to go into the streets to say we don’t agree, and we should be able to change them. But then if you apply a law or base a law on the word of God, you can’t do any of that, because God has spoken, end of story. He is right. So, you cannot contest God’s word. A law based on God’s word is not a democratic law.

What are the Iranian people asking for today? They’re not asking for the mullahs to disappear entirely – they’re asking for them to leave power. They want non-religious leaders and civil laws. Secularism is that. And that’s what we defend.

We have also, historically, always fought against the far right. Going back to the history of Charlie Hebdo, the newspaper was published for about 20 years. It ceased publication in 1981 due to financial problems. Then it reappeared in 1992. We re-established it. That’s when I arrived with a new team. One of our first battles was against the far right and the National Front.

These are our struggles: fighting against the far right, against religious totalitarianism and against dogmas. This is the heart of Charlie Hebdo’s fight.

spiked: Charlie first got involved in what is now called the ‘Muhammad cartoons controversy’ in 2006, when it republished cartoons from the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, alongside some of your own. Why was that such an important stand to take?

Biard: The Muhammad caricature affair started in 2005, when Jyllands-Posten launched a cartoon competition for drawings of Muhammad. They did this because an editor, who was working on a book about the history of Muhammad, couldn’t find any illustrators. No one wanted to illustrate his book, no one wanted to draw Muhammad, because two years earlier, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh had been murdered for making a film about Muhammad. So there was this fear.

Jyllands-Posten then decided to launch the contest. It selected 12 drawings and published them. And then… nothing happened.

Three months later, there were four Danish imams who decided to tour the Middle East to show people the Jyllands-Posten drawings. But they didn’t only show those 12 drawings. They also added three other images. Two were drawings that had nothing to do with Jyllands-Posten. They came from a far-right American website, one of which showed Muhammad being sodomised by a dog. The third image wasn’t a cartoon, but a photo. It showed a bearded man with a pig mask. It had actually been taken in France at a village festival, during a pig-squealing contest. It had nothing to do with Muhammad or with Jyllands-Posten.

But the imams still toured the Middle East with these images saying, ‘Look at how they treat us! Look at how they see our prophet! Look!’ The images caused riots. Danish embassies were attacked and burned in several countries. This was what really kicked off the Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Charlie Hebdo wasn’t the first French newspaper to publish the caricatures. The first was France Soir, which published them because of the embassy burnings. France Soir was just doing its job. It informed the public. It said: ‘Here’s what happened, and here’s why: because of these 12 caricatures.’ But, for having published these cartoons, the editor-in-chief of France Soir was fired by the owner of the newspaper, who was an Egyptian businessman.

Philippe Val, our editor-in-chief at the time, and cartoonist Cabu both said:

‘This is unacceptable. We have to support France Soir. We have to say that in France, we have the right to publish cartoons, even cartoons of divine idols. We have a right to blaspheme and there is no crime of blasphemy in France. Above all, we must defend press freedom.’

So we then published the cartoons in an issue of Charlie Hebdo, with a cover drawing by Cabu, with the captions ‘It’s hard to be loved by idiots’ and ‘Muhammad is overwhelmed by extremists’. We made a special issue featuring the Danish cartoons, our own drawings and lots of articles detailing the affair. That gave a bit more publicity to the story.

Philippe Val also asked all the editors of French newspapers, daily and weekly, to publish the cartoons in support. But only two newspapers did: there was L’Express, which published all 12 caricatures, and Libération, which published some of them. All the others stayed silent. This wasn’t about saying, ‘We’re going to blaspheme’. It was simply about defending press freedom, saying, ‘An editor-in-chief was fired for doing his job. This is unacceptable.’ That’s all we wanted to say, but no one did anything about it.

spiked: Was this when the threats against you began? Your offices were firebombed, even before 2015.

Biard: The firebombing came after the Jyllands-Posten affair. It was in 2011, because we had published a special issue where Muhammad was portrayed as the editor-in-chief. We called the issue ‘Sharia Hebdo’. It was responding to the news that an Islamist party, Ennahda, had just come to power in Tunisia.

It’s important to understand one thing: every time we publish a cartoon, whether it’s about politics, religion or society, it’s because something relevant has happened. If we draw Muhammad, it’s not because we just want to draw Muhammad; it’s because Muhammad is in the news. We are a newspaper that comments on current affairs. To be honest, we’re not really interested in Muhammad. It’s not our problem. We’re not interested in God. We don’t give a damn. But unfortunately, God matters a lot to people in the world, and some use God to exercise a toxic, totalitarian power over others. That’s what we’re fighting against.

spiked: Let’s move on to the 2015 attacks. What do you remember about that day? Where were you and how did you find out what had happened?

Biard: I was away in London. I found out through a phone call. I didn’t know what was going on at all. I was receiving constant calls asking: ‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’ And I had no idea. Then I went to the French Embassy. It wasn’t until I got there that I understood what had really happened.

I came back to Paris that same evening, to meet with the survivors. Then we met again the next morning, on 8 January. We decided to immediately publish a new issue, to make what would later be called the ‘Survivors’ Issue’. It showed Muhammad saying, ‘All is forgiven’.

We decided to make that issue right away. First, because we had to prove the two terrorists wrong who had left the newspaper shouting, ‘Charlie Hebdo is dead! We killed Charlie Hebdo!’ No, you didn’t kill Charlie Hebdo, and you didn’t even kill those people you assassinated. Because their work is still in the newspaper. We also published their drawings, we published their articles. We made a newspaper with them, too – in order to say, ‘No, you didn’t win. You didn’t kill us.’ So that’s what happened right after 7 January.

spiked: In the days after the attack, there were huge demonstrations in solidarity, there was the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ movement, thousands upon thousands filled Place de la République in Paris. Was that heartening to see?

Biard: Yes, but it is important to put yourself in the context of the time and in our position back then. We had just been attacked; the editorial team had been attacked. We had lost multiple colleagues, some were in the hospital in critical condition.

And then the attacks continued. There was the Montrouge shooting on 8 January, there was the Hyper Cacher hostage crisis on 9 January.

On top of all that, we had to manage enormous media pressure. Overnight, Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper, which was an actor in the media, then suddenly became an object of media attention: everyone was watching us around the world. There were all these things we had to try to manage as best as we could.

When we found ourselves in that crowd, during the march, it was overwhelming. The streets of Paris were packed with people as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t an empty street around us. Yes, of course, that was reassuring. It really warmed our hearts. But I think it was about more than us.

I think it was responding to a social trauma, too. People were in the streets for several reasons. They were in the streets first of all because the attack itself was such a shock. It was the first time since the Second World War that a newspaper had been attacked in France, in peacetime, and that journalists were killed. It was already traumatising on this level alone.

Then, because of what Charlie Hebdo embodied – and what it still embodies. It represents freedom of expression, secularism, the right to satirise and caricature. These values, which seemed self-evident to millions of French people, were suddenly under attack. They were violently attacked. So they needed to be defended. We had to say we must defend democracy. Democracy is not something that is simply acquired – it needs to be defended every day.

There was also a personal attachment to those who had been killed, like Cabu and Wolinski. These were cartoonists who were part of the lives of millions and millions of people. I discovered Cabu when I was a child. I read his comic-book series, Le Grand Duduche. The generation that followed mine also discovered Cabu as children – on the TV show, Le Club Dorothée. The victims were part of the lives and the memories of millions of people. And suddenly, at a stroke, they were gone, violently. All of that was also being expressed at that moment, on the streets, in ‘Je Suis Charlie’, but also more generally, everywhere in the world.

I noticed later that we received an enormous, enormous number of awards that year. So I went to many places around the world. To Europe, of course, but also elsewhere, to the United States, to Latin America. There was this idea that everything that makes up democracy – that’s to say the freedom to express yourself, this freedom to be who you want to be – was being attacked. And this is something that, again, is universal. It is not something that belongs only to Europe and a few democracies: it is something all the peoples of the world are reaching for. No one wants to live under a dictatorship – except for those who benefit from it. But otherwise, everyone wants to live with a certain freedom. Even if sometimes freedom can be difficult. It is something that must be used constantly.

That’s also what democracy is: learning to make use of your freedoms, and to make use of them in a collective context. It’s not just about individual freedoms: there are also collective freedoms.

There was all of this being attacked and that had to be defended. And then, there was all that happened in 2015. There was the Bataclan attack. There was the attack in Berlin on a Christmas market a year later. This was happening all over the world.

We also had to face the fact that while Islamist terrorism, and Islamism, is of course attacking the Western world, but where it wreaks the most havoc, where it kills the most people, is in Muslim-majority countries themselves. And in these Muslim countries, no one is insulting Muhammad. No one is blaspheming. Over there, Islamist attacks take place in mosques. The people who worship in mosques aren’t insulting Muhammad.

We’ve now become aware that Islamism is a political ideology, a totalitarian ideology. This is what we need to take a stand against. It’s not against believers. We don’t give a shit about the believers. The believers aren’t the problem. Believers can believe what they like. The problem is the use of these beliefs to control society. That’s what religion does. It’s about how worship, belief and faith are used to exercise control over society and individuals. That’s where the danger lies.

spiked: Do you worry that the Islamists are succeeding in controlling society? After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, one of your former writers, Caroline Fourest, appeared on Sky News. When she tried to show the Survivors’ Edition with the cartoon of Muhammad, the camera panned away and the presenter apologised for causing offence. So there is still censorship on these issues. What did you think of other media organisations’ decision not to show the cartoons?

Biard: Frankly, we find it pitiful. They need to understand what blasphemy really is. It is about challenging power, challenging dogmas. It’s not about mocking the believers. I can understand that a believer can be shocked or offended. I’m offended by things every day. When I go out on the street, there are a lot of things that shock me, but I’m not going to insult those who shock me. At most, I will debate with them. I will try to explain to them what I think. But blasphemy is not about intending to shock. It’s about saying: there is power here, and we have the right to contest this power.

When the media and newspapers refuse to exercise this right, that’s a very serious problem. This isn’t just about caricatures of Muhammad. This matters in general for cartoons and for press drawings. For example, when the New York Times, which sets the tone for the media not only in the US but also around the world, which acts as the paper of record, decides overnight to stop publishing certain cartoons, while openly saying: ‘Because it might cause controversy, because it might start arguments, because it might create debate, we are not going to publish them.’ What does this mean? When a newspaper like the New York Times says: ‘We don’t want to create problems, we don’t want debate.’ Well, then you should be doing something else other than journalism, you should be selling peanuts.

It’s renouncing an essential tool of journalistic practice. The press drawing, the caricature, is a means to show an aspect of society, an aspect of current events, or an aspect of a public figure, in a way that you couldn’t otherwise. It will open a window into an issue in a way you cannot with words, or even with a photo or an editorial. We need caricatures and we need the caricaturist’s perspective.

This, too, is something that is universal. Look at what is happening today in Syria. What is the first thing that the Syrians did? They took Assad’s family photos, showing him in his kangaroo undies, and they published them, they altered them, they drew on them. That is what it means to mock those in power.

The first thing we do when we elect a president in a democracy is we mock him. We give him a big nose. Caricatures are indispensable. If journalism deprives itself of caricatures, it deprives itself of the very essence of critical thinking, which is what should define journalism. For newspapers to avoid showing something just in case it causes offence is appalling.

We are, after all, only talking about ideas. If there’s an idea we stop talking about, then that means some citizens’ ideas are more important than the ideas of other citizens. And then what does that mean? We’re no longer a democracy if we accept that.

spiked: Charlie was given a courage award by PEN America – a big free-speech, writers’ organisation – in 2015. But not everyone was happy. Infamously, a group of its members wrote a letter opposing the decision. What was your response to that?

Biard: I’m going to repeat the argument almost word for word that was made by Salman Rushdie. Because it happens that when these writers wrote this letter to dissociate themselves from PEN America, to revoke their solidarity, and to say that Charlie Hebdo is a racist newspaper, first of all Rushdie called them ‘pussies’. Secondly, he pointed out that the overwhelming majority of them had never once opened Charlie Hebdo, for the simple and understandable reason that they were unable to read a single word of French. So you had these writers posturing against something about which they knew literally nothing about. That’s all there is to say about that.

Today, we hear the same thing. Charlie Hebdo is now known, or the name Charlie Hebdo is known, all over the world. But that doesn’t mean that these millions and millions of people have ever opened Charlie Hebdo or have ever bought Charlie Hebdo. It’s a pity, by the way. I’d really like all those who talk about Charlie Hebdo to buy it. I would be delighted, we would all be delighted.

Personally, when I talk about something, I hope I know roughly what I’m talking about. So before talking about Charlie Hebdo, you have to open it first, you have to look at what’s inside, you have to understand what’s inside, to be able to read it in French or have it translated. Then, at that moment, yes, of course, we can discuss it. Otherwise, we can’t discuss it, as we’re not even talking about the same thing.

spiked: What do you make of the people who say, ‘I believe in free speech… but’, or who say, ‘I don’t think Charlie Hebdo should be attacked, but it is a bit provocative’?

Biard: The moment you add a ‘but’, it nullifies what you said earlier. You could say it’s like saying, ‘The people who died in the Manchester Arena attack, for example, it’s terrible… but they shouldn’t have gone to a concert… No, those young people shouldn’t have gone to see Ariana Grande. It’s forbidden. It offends people.’ It’s the same thing.

From the moment we exercise our freedom, we have the right to exercise it fully. We live in a democracy, we cannot in a democracy submit ourselves to the totalitarian laws of other countries. Otherwise, there is no more democracy.

I’m going to give you a very simple example of what I mean. Let’s say we have to always be ‘respectful’. We respect everyone as a matter of principle. We will respect all religions. Then imagine there are millions of religions in the world and millions of deities. It’s certainly possible. After all, in India alone, there are thousands.

Now imagine there is a religion that says, ‘You must not make love on Mondays’, and there’s a second that says, ‘You must not make love on Tuesdays’, and a third for Wednesdays, and so on. By the end of the year, there would be no humanity left. It’s over.

Respecting others doesn’t mean accepting every absurdity. Respecting others means, first of all, engaging in dialogue with them. It means not assuming right away that they’re uncivilised or an imbecile, incapable of laughter or incapable of deep thought. Respecting Muslims or respecting believers begins with recognising that they share the same aspirations as all human beings: the same capacity for reflection, the same capacity to laugh, and therefore the same capacity to debate.

That’s what respecting people means – not treating them like imbeciles or savages, nor using the excuse that they have ‘a different culture’ from ours.

spiked: Why do you think there are sections of the left that are unwilling to take a stand against Islamism?

Biard: I think that from the 1980s onwards, the left – in general in Western countries, though this is very pronounced in France – decided to abandon its core electorate, which was the proletariat, for strategic reasons. The centre-left turned its focus to the middle classes, the intellectual classes and the upper-middle class. The far-left turned towards the Islamists when the Iranian Revolution took place. The mullahs who came to power in Iran overthrew the Shah but, above all, they took on the great American Satan, and so they somehow embodied the new fight against American imperialism.

At this point, Muslims also became the new oppressed of the Earth. And in one sense, why not? It’s right to defend the oppressed. And it turns out that, in Western countries and in France, many Muslims are victims of racism.That’s a fact. So they must be defended when they are victims of racism. But we must also defend those Muslims who are oppressed in their own countries, by their own governments, which are Islamist governments.

Obviously, we must defend Muslims in France, but we must defend them with social rights, with political rights, not religious rights. Religions have never granted anyone rights, of any kind – they have always taken them away. Today, what are the religious leaders up to, for example, in the United States? They’re attacking the right to abortion. Religion always attacks rights. It takes away rights, it never gives them to you. We can’t fight to give more rights to people by fighting alongside religious leaders.

Today, this left has abandoned the very thing that should define the left – which is first and foremost universalism, the fact that all rights are universal and that we should defend all the oppressed. The left is very selective about those it deems to be oppressed. It selects them scrupulously. For me, this left is no longer the left, it’s something else.

After that, there has always been a part of the far left that is fascinated with totalitarianism, or fascinated with violence. This was true in the 1960s, it was true in the 1970s, it has always existed. But it’s not excusable. For me, it’s not being left-wing.

spiked: In 2020, Samuel Paty was beheaded for showing Charlie Hebdo cartoons to his pupils. Do we see recent history repeating itself?

Biard: No, because something else happened with Samuel Paty. It was a murder linked to a chain of circumstances. If you look at the lesson Samuel Paty gave to his students, which has been published, you’ll see he simply relied on the national curriculum. He didn’t go beyond that. He taught his class as he should have.

It turns out that one of his students lied to her father because she had been excluded from school, not by Samuel Paty, but by the head teacher for behavioral reasons. It was about something else entirely. She lied to her father, saying she was excluded because she was a Muslim and because Paty had shown his cartoons. Her father believed her. He made a video, which was shared by a radical Islamist militant, who was the founder of the Sheikh Yacine Committee, which has now been dissolved for inciting terrorism. He was also convicted. These two men were heavily sentenced after the Samuel Paty trial. For good reason.

If you remove these two elements – the father who believed his daughter and made the video, and this radical Islamist militant, who incited and riled up the whole community – Samuel Paty would still be alive today. He would still be teaching his students.

So it’s a different story, but it’s still the same exploitation of religion – exploiting religion for totalitarian, hateful ends.

spiked: Ten years on from the terror attack, how can we stand up for free speech today and honour those who lost their lives?

Biard: The best way to defend a freedom, whatever freedom it might be – freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the freedom to come and go – is by making use of it. It’s to use it, above all, without fear.

It’s normal to be afraid, it’s a human feeling. But fear does not protect us from terrorism. It pushes us to further restrict our own freedom. It prevents us from exercising them, but it does not stop terrorists from acting. Because Islamist terrorism doesn’t need any excuses to kill. There are always a thousand excuses to justify the unjustifiable. It’s a totalitarian ideology that exists only through terror. Its ultimate goal is to rule through fear.

You can be afraid, of course, but you mustn’t let that fear guide you. It’s like an extortion racket or like being blackmailed. If you pay once, you’ll have to keep paying more each time. So there is no point in giving into fear.

Terrorist attacks work like this: if we give in to fear, we will lose more freedoms. We no longer publish what we want to. We reinstate laws to ban blasphemy, as Denmark has just done. But that doesn’t change anything. The terrorism is still there. It still wants to kill. It still wants to kill people who gather to drink, to talk to each other, to make newspapers, to listen to music, even to pray, too. The terrorism doesn’t go away.

So we must fight against it, physically, but we must also fight against it ideologically. And the only way to combat it is by continuing to be who we are, by continuing to exercise our freedoms – and to exercise them with the strongest conviction possible.

Gérard Biard was speaking to Fraser Myers. Watch the video here: