Je ne suis pas Charlie. Je pense a lui

by jonaxhepa

My response to the events this week were entirely reflexive and solipsistic, and I usually get low or melancholic, in my depression, when I am faced with news of the modern world. Or maybe fatalistic or manically soporific, however I have a pretty good idea of where of my prejudices lie – namely with the staunch atheist, secular humanist, I-don’tactuallycareifyou’reoffendedlearntolaughatyourself crowd. Which means that, the uncharacteristic and, I would hope, altruistic panoptic sadness that enclosed me on Wednesday gave way to a salivating indignation on Thursday that we who are not festooned in fatwas can afford ourselves within the space of a day. For this only would I like to express a kind of shame at not being able to fully support the victims in a dignified way, rather allowing myself to post on social media – the same refuge of the coward masses, including myself, of a certain liberal kind who flagellate themselves and others, and use flowery language to raise the flag for one oppressed people (we have the privilege to pick and choose whom we champion in these modern times, without needing to consult the champions in the matter), yet hide behind their bullshit when it is en vogue to champion the oppressors – or rather, no, we have to be seen to do so.

My unusually pained sadness stemmed from the fact that, despite above prejudices, which allow me to filter my news and social media feed, some of the first responses to the events popping from my screen seemed to preemptively castigate any backlash towards the community that the violent perpetrators might have represented to those blindly stupid members of our society who look for such castigations as a means of provocation. Rather than an unequivocal solidarity with the victims of absolutist decimation First and Foremost -which, granted, most of the social media community I follow did adhere to – in an age of Enlightenment. Where, I would argue a fact of mourning – primarily because of the whole oh no these guys are dead thing, but in parallel because the parameters of free speech shrunk very quickly again –seemed to take on a subjective quantum leap.

How is it not apparent that any misguided representation of the killers as representatives of their community is as syllogistically faulty as hooligans of whatever faith adopting this misrepresentation as a reason to take violent action – it is very apparent. We just must be seen to point out the distinction in as condescending and liberally progressive way as possible. By all means take more than twenty-four hours of the news cycle to carefully choose what your convictions are going to be for the next twenty four hours. Which is when my sadness gave way to indignation (again, I thought I was above modern day media making me either mad, or sad, or glad) when the fight to prove we in the liberal pages knew the distinction very well indeed, and were very vocal to point it out, gladly if you must know, when our self-flagellation took the same amount of play-time as the news that a bunch of people fucking died because they had the talent to ridicule well.

So I’d very much like to be seen to present a very banal, undignified tribute to the dead of yesterday, whom I’d never heard of before (while I have this rare chance of confessional sadness, may I just say “How fucking dare you?” to those comments I’d read from people who wrote “Well, if this had *God forbid* ((ugh)) happened to (a rather salubrious British tabloid newspaper) nobody would be up in arms about it now”…How fucking dare you be so flippant about your *God forbid* comrades at a time like this?)))) it consists of nothing other than a sort of meagre thank you – these guys really know how to sell papers.