Charlie Hebdo and the dawn of French McCarthyism

Flickr/creative commons.

In the aftermath of the killings in Paris in January 2015, the French media as well as the government and most politicians delivered an emphatic verdict on those barbaric assassinations: what was at stake, they concurred, was the issue of freedom of speech. In other words, through their actions, the murderers had attempted to silence free speech, a cardinal value in French society.

From the outset, it was clear that the deeply unpopular socialist executive was trying to rally public opinion under the “Je suis Charlie” banner. To some extent, President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls managed to achieve this objective. The “Charlie Effect” – as it was called in the French media – did not last long though. The grand march in Paris on 11 January brought together large segments of the nation: people from various social, religious and ethnic backgrounds took peacefully to the streets of Paris (as well as in many cities across France).