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A tawdry, nasty magazine that existed to poke people in the
eyes with adolescent ridicule, it clung to existence. Now it’s sold 5 million
copies of its latest issue (it usually sells 30,000-60,000 copies), thanks to
the solidarity of the French public in the wake of the attack. It’s even
selling copies in other countries in other languages. Another 2 million copies
on the way. (Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of Americans turning out
into the street in the wake of an attack on some little U.S. publication? Well,
if you have a very wild imagination, I guess you could.) Plus donations of
money are pouring in. So to make a completely cold calculus, in a way this is
by far the best thing that ever happened to Charlie
Hebdo.
Loser: Charlie Hebdo
Obviously. Ten staff members shot dead, including the chief
editor.
Winner: Islamofascism
Islamofascism both generally, and specifically the Yemeni
branch, which claims responsibility for the attack. This inflates their image
and attraction to potential jihadists, acting as a recruitment magnet and
inspirational example to martyr-wannabes.
Loser: Islamofascism
Of course this provokes a violent military reaction against them,
and a repressive police reaction. It also galvanizes Western public opinion in
support of the “war on terrorism” and its attendant military campaigns and
increased domestic repression.
Winner: Secret police agencies
They get more power of course, and more money. (Already
France has announced plans to spend an additional $425 million euros over the
next several years for “counterterrorism” and police equipment. There will be
more police, more secret police, more prosecutors, more judges, more jailers.
Loser:
NOT the French secret police, although they SHOULD have egg
on their faces for allowing the attack to occur. These two losers were known
terrorists. The excuse has been planted in the media that “it takes 20 police
to surveil one person around the clock.” Oh, make that 30 police, they also said. This is nonsense, of course. It may take
a large number to physically follow
someone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with different teams so the
target doesn’t spot the tails, but this is hardly necessary to keep someone
under very close watch. In the U.S., mere dissidents have hidden microphones
and tiny cameras planted in their homes. All their mail is read, all their
email and phone messages are surreptitiously seized and stored and monitored. I’m
sure the French have the same technology. The French could have had an informer
befriend these guys. (Which they may have- it’s very possible that the French
secret police deliberately allowd the attack on Charlie Hebdo, precisely to get a big increase in their budget and
power. Charlie Hebdo, after all, was
a thorn in the side of the French establishment anyway, so it hardly would have
bothered them if a bunch of the staff there were killed.)
And the French police reap sympathy over the murders of
three police (two in the Charlie Hebdo
attack, and a policewoman murdered by the third terrorist who attacked the
Jewish Kosher market, killing four hostages before being killed by the police). (The French government is showing its belated concern for its defenders by announcing plans to buy all the cops bullet-resistant vests.)
Winner: Breast-beating politicians
They climbed on their soapboxes en masse, scores of them
standing shoulder to shoulder “in solidarity with France” against terror and
for free speech. Including ones that are fountains of terror, like Saudi
Arabia, and that tolerate NO free speech, like, well, Saudi Arabia. (Saudi
Arabia just sentenced a blogger to 10 years in prison and a thousand lashes, to
be administered before a mob of gawkers
in a sado-masochistic spectacle. His crime was criticizing the regime. His
lawyer got 15 years for daring to defend him. I mean “insulting the judiciary.”)
Winner: Claptrap ideology
We were told incessantly by the various propaganda systems
of Western nations that this was all about “free speech,” a “value” allegedly
held near and dear by Western power structures. (The reality is quite
different, of course, as countless thousands of examples make clear). But no
matter. The occasion of the attack on Charlie
Hebdo provided a golden opportunity to administer another booster shot of
this mendacious propaganda to the publics immersed in Western propaganda
systems.
Loser: Actual free speech
In the days following the attacks, France arrested 54 people
for various speech “crimes,” such as saying favorable things about the
terrorists. There will be more of that. In recent years the U.S. has already sentenced two people to prison terms of 17 and 12 years, respectively, for speech crimes.
Winner: Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy of the rankest sort, actually. People who wage war
on journalists, like Obama, Netanyahu, and numerous other “world leaders”
(country bosses) got to pose as stalwart Defender Knights of Free Speech.
(Israel has a decades-long policy of closing down Palestinian media outlets and
imprisoning and murdering Palestinian journalists, as they just did again in
their third assault in six years on the Gaza concentration camp.)
Loser: Honesty and moral clarity
And finally, it’s worth repeating…
Winner: “World Leaders” (country bosses) who beat their
chests in faux righteous moral
indignation and got to pose as guardians of free speech (when in fact virtually
all of them are enemies of free speech and oppressors of dissidents).
Losers: The people ruled by these venal political cynics. We
who are all subject to ever-increasing repression in the name of “fighting
terrorism” and, with no irony intended, “defending our values.”
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