Translated from Le Monde (link to real article below)
On the day before the coordinated tributes to the victims of Charlie Hebdo, and as the French had already started to assemble throughout France, certain cartoonists and journalists of the weekly satirical expressed their surprised in the face of such a wave of emotion. Of demonstrations of support which can seem strange, towards a magazine which has always cultivated irreverence and the art of not doing the same as its friends.
“They sounded the bells of Notre-Dame for Charlie, I must be dreaming!” exclaimed on Friday Gérard Biard, editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo, to underline the irony of the situation for an anticlerical magazine to be universally celebrated, even in the most famous Parisian cathedral”.
A Magazine which has Suffered Criticism from all Quarters
Several members of the editorial team have received with a little bitterness these marks of solidarity towards a paper which in other days had little support. Among them, the writer/editor Zineb El Rhazoui, who explained to the Monde :
“I would have liked that those who died benefitted from so much support while they were living. And that was not at all the case. ‘Charlie Hebdo’ is a paper which has been criticised by almost everyone. And what has happened, you could have predicted. We received threats all the time and certain of us said that it was almost like we were looking for it…”
Others were bluntly not going to demonstrate, behind the image of Laurent Léger, investigative journalist at Charlie Hebdo:
“I am not going to the demonstration on Sunday but I think I am the only one on the team at ‘Charlie Hebdo’ to have made this choice. I do not like demonstrating in general, I think that ‘Charlie Hebdo’ could be absent from the procession where they would be all sorts of politics and on the subject of which there has been a controversy with the FN. However, I think that the wave of real support is formidable and I hope that there are lots of people at the Sunday demonstration.”
‘Charlie Hebdo’ has always remained apart. Now ‘Charlie Hebdo’ is becoming mainstream. We have become part of the establishment, for a week or two. It’s new. But this is a necessary transition, I am not against it. And I know that in a few weeks, a new story will drive out this one and we will be alone… We have been a bit superseded: it is for nothing more than ‘Charlie’ that people are marching for. That is clear.”
“We vomited on all these people who, suddenly, call themselves our friends”
Cartoonist Luz, survivor of the attack of the 7 January, told magazine ‘the Inrocks’ that he believed for his part that “the huge symbolic weight is all that Charlie has always worked against.” He added:
“It’s incredible that the people support us but it is in a counter-sense (contre-sens) to the drawings of ‘Charlie…. This unanimity is useful to Hollande to reunite the nation. It is useful to Marine Le Pen to demand the death penalty.
People speak of the memory of Charb, Tignous, Cabu, Honoré, Wolinski: they would have reflected this attitude.”
The Dutch cartoonist Willem, real name Bernard Holtrop, spoke the most condemnatory words to Le Point. Reacting to the support of the head of the Netherlands’ extreme right party, Geert Wilders, he exclaimed: “We vomited on all these people who, suddenly, call themselves our friends.”
And on the global support and sympathy for the paper:
“They had never read ‘Charlie Hebdo’. A few years ago, thousands of people descended into the streets of Pakistan to demonstrate against ‘Charlie Hebdo’. They didn’t know what it was.
Now, it’s the opposite, but if people are demonstrating to defend freedom of speech, obviously it’s a great thing.”
Will trade views for shoes 