We Are Charlie: Free Speech v. Self-Censorship
by Douglas Murray • January 8, 2015

Will we keep on blaming the victims? Perhaps the media assume that it is easier to force good people to keep quiet, or keep their own media offices from being attacked, than to tackle the problem of Islamic extremism head-on. It is easier to blame Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lars Hedegaard, Suzanne Winters, Salman Rushdie or Charlie Hebdo — and even put some of them on trial — than to attack the attackers, who might even attack back!

The press and the media seem to prefer coerced self-censorship: It is your own fault if you get hurt: none of this would be happening to you if you had only kept your mouth shut. It is easier to denigrate the people warning us about a danger than it is to address the danger they are warning us about.

Do you think a country should change its policies because segments of one community will run into newspaper offices and gun people down if you don’t?

If those in positions of influence do not deal with this problem now, we will not like those who deal with it later.

Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor and publisher of Charlie Hebdo was murdered yesterday along with many of his colleagues.  the magazine’s former offices were firebombed in November 2011.

 
Wednesday’s massacre at the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo was not just a barbaric act of jihadist violence. It was also a test for the West and for the freedom of speech in the West. It is a test that we all have been failing.

Those of us who have proposed that all Western — and in particular European — news outlets should multilaterally publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have been greeted in return with a terrified and terrifyingly self-conscious silence. The papers and broadcasters do not want to do it.

Last time they refused to republish the cartoons, from Denmark’s Jyllands Posten, they said it was because the cartoons were from a “right wing” newspaper.  This time they refuse to republish cartoons from a “left-wing” newspaper.   It does not matter what the politics are — it is not about the politics, it is about the cartoons. The sooner the press at least has the guts to admit this, the better.

The world must stop these barbaric terrorists!

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