People seem to have made the same mistake that Stephen Colbert viewers did, when people freaked out "oh my God! He said 'Ching-Chong Ding-Dong'! Obviously he's bigoted against Chinese people!"
I won't link to the million diaries screaming at the dead people, while France is still mourning. But I think that even if they were completely racist, it would not be appropriate to do that.
It seems, though, that people aren't aware even of the fact that Charlie Hebdo is a leftist paper, and not a right-wing one. They were constituted specifically to go AGAINST the right wing, as their editorial mission. Charb, in this interview, approvingly notes that "Charlie Hebdo is the child of May ’68, of the spirit of freedom and insolence… " referring to the leftist student revolts of the hippie era in France then. Hardly something any right-wing raver would invoke. Nor would they say "myself, I am communist," as he says here. Plainly, then, he came from a communist and 60s counterculture tradition, which included atheism and a rejection of establishment power.
He goes on:
Forty years ago, it was considered obligatory to jeer, run down, even crap on religion. Anyone who set about to criticize the way the world was going could not fail to question the great power of the biggest clerical organizations. But according to some people, in truth more and more people, these days you’ve got to shut your mouth.
Charlie still devotes many of its cover illustrations to Papists. But the Muslim religion, imposed like a flag on innumerable people across the planet, as far away as Indonesia, must somehow be spared. Why the hell? What is the relationship, unless it’s just ideological, between the fact of being Arab, for example, and belonging to Islam?
We refuse to run away from our responsibilities. Even if it’s not as easy as it was in 1970, we’ll continue to laugh at the priests, the rabbis and the imams – whether that pleases people or not.
So it was plainly a left-wing "f--- the establishment" tradition he came from, to begin with; furthermore, although he certainly seems to loathe established religion, he quite explicitly says here that he doesn't consider this racist against Arabs, because it is from the same impulse--
--not against the people, but against the religious ESTABLISHMENTS he feels are keeping them down--
by which he skewers the Papacy that rules the religious lives of so many of his own fellow French people. Yet when he skewered the Papacy also, he hardly meant that as an indictment of French people. He is aiming, as he sees it, to LIBERATE the French people from what he sees as their religious yoke.
He also plainly means to ask why it's necessarily anti-Arab to be anti-Muslim. This is an especially fair question when you consider the tens of millions of Arab Christians, Druze, and other non-Muslims.
As to the cartoons their murderers deemed offensive, the French court of appeals that pronounced Charlie Hebdo's innocence when they were sued by several French Muslim organizations noted that their cartoons were clearly aimed at a "fraction, and not the Muslim community as a whole," just the fraction of "integristes" (fundamentalists), which seems plain, given their editorial stance, which French people--if consulted--may tell you is pro-immigrant, not anti-immigrant.
Here, French posters kindly inform another blogger of that very fact, because he asks. They go on to explain that another picture, where a black French official is depicted as a monkey, far from being a horrid reflection of Charlie Hebdo's own supposed racism, is an ANTI-racist statement, which would be made obvious to French people (though, understandably, less so to Americans) by the fact that the National Front made such statements within days before that cartoon was drawn, and the cartoon contains a National Front symbol, to make it clear that they mean to mock those racist sentiments the National Front just expressed.
You may object that this animus against religion is intrinsically offensive, but he makes very clear, again, that it is the religious ESTABLISHMENT, not the poor individual Muslim from the banlieues, against whom his ire is directed.
Also, although I don't share this animus, he is quite right in asking: wherefore is this one religion to be spared?
I know that objections have been raised that "it's punching down," that is, it's satire directed against the downtrodden. However, again, he targets always either the religious establishments, or the fundamentalists ("integristes"). Well I have no hatred for Islam, but fundamentalists? Those people, who had attempted his murder, and finally DID murder him, DESERVE satire. They NEED to be satirized. By all means, satirize any other group too--atheists, communists, anybody--but satirize those.
Also, the "punching down" rule is nonsense. It's completely unworkable. You'd exempt 1 and .5 BILLION Muslims from any satire? OK--no satire for them. Also the BILLION Indian and BILLION Chinese people, because colonial empires once colonized or used military force to subjugate them? OK then--no satire for those two billion either. No satirizing any groups among the poor, now! Terrible. Nor women. OK... well in that case, you can see that you've outlawed satire for 90% of the world's population, before you're done. Nope, no mocking them, ever. We must all pose in pious, pained, respectful obeisance to the "no punching down" rule.
And what do we propose, if satirists have several "up" attributes, and several "down" ones? What if they're a bisexual Muslim, but a rich man? Are we really going to chart each such attribute and keep track of which groups it's okay for this person to satirize, and which are off-limits? Please.
It doesn't work.
Better to allow someone to satirize, and if you think an important point is being missed or distorted--that's why YOU were given a voice.
But plainly, nobody (and sorry not to dignify some of the diaries with links, but some of the more spittle-flecked ones are just embarrassing) who dismisses those "racists" of Charlie Hebdo is the slightest bit aware of where they are actually attempting to say.
If you read a blog about Stephen Colbert's "Ching-Chong Ding-Dong" piece, without digging enough to realize that he was making a satirical point--
especially, for God's sake, when you ARE aware that he is explicitly a satirist by profession--
and that it was an ANTI-racist point (he was saying "if it's okay to say 'Washington R--skins' as the name of your team, then it must be okay to say this racist Chinese-mocking phrase"), then that's just embarrassing.
We are supposed to be either educated and well-read here at DKos, or at least willing to humbly ask and learn from our brothers and sisters across the pond in Europe, before we judge them.
I may have all of this wrong; I have taken in as much information from French sources on the Internet that I can, but please, my French friends: if I've gotten anything about Charlie Hebdo wrong, do let me know. I don't want to make the same mistake that I'm chiding others for, but I have to admit that that's certainly possible too.
But fellows: one thing that's for certain is that France is hurting now. Remember how they comforted us with kind words and assistance after 9/11. We should not be repaying that by being ugly Americans, due to our ignorance and unwillingness to ask and learn before we pronounce. I think that the posters concluding that Charlie Hebdo are racist are quite wrong (though they are anti-organized religion). But even if they weren't: this is a funeral. This is a time of mourning for the French people.
Vive la France, et vive la liberte francaise. Je vous aime.