Going by the forests of raised pens, Wednesday’s attack should have set off a gigantic soul-search on the contents, qualifiers, and potential consequences of the principle of free speech. It didn’t. Instead it sent us all scurrying for the relative safety of pre-packaged formulaic responses and performances, also known as the antithesis of freedom.
In what follows I shall limit myself to Malta, for two reasons. First, it’s the context I know and understand best. To sermonise on the global picture would be to risk lapsing into the very same formulas I wish to attack. Second, I see no reason why anyone who wanted the broader picture should read me rather than the scores of pieces out there written by infinitely more competent and eloquent people.
In keeping with the occasion, the imam should properly go first. On Thursday he condemned (categorically, of course) the shooting, and added that Islam was not about bloodshed and violence but rather respect for the sanctity of human life, tolerance and peaceful coexistence among cultures.
I don’t know what took him so long. Thing is, I could have written that press release myself, blindfolded. In the spirit of the free speech the Charlie Hebdo people died for, I would have liked to hear his honest opinion about the right of the press to mock Muhammad and offend Muslims.
Fat chance. I’m sure the imam, a good man by all accounts, was genuinely shocked at what happened. The point is that he has been reduced to thumbing a rosary beads of statements that categorically condemn extremist Muslims and remind us that Islam is really about peace.
That, and not a word more. The Corradino mosque incumbent is one of thousands of the peace-loving variety of imams, a two-dimensional character that the free Western society that holds up pens and candles deems adequately castrated and therefore acceptable. The clockwork predictability of his statements and television appearances says it all really.
Next in line, the Siegfrieds. Barely a few hours after the attacks, Fr Joe Borg wrote an online piece that crawled with words like ‘barbaric’, ‘horrible’, ‘animals’, ‘beasts’ and such. His drift, I think, was that ‘we’ were the real targets of the attack, and that ‘we’ ought to take a stand.
I might have believed him, had I a short memory. But I seem to remember an occasion back in 2004 when Fr Borg took the repeat of my newspaper analysis programme on Campus FM off the air, citing libel as his rubbish reason. I had done the unthinkable and criticised the Nationalist government for having sent dozens of asylum seekers back to their deaths in Eritrea.
It’s one thing to condemn the horrible, barbaric and beastly behaviour of hooded people you don’t know, quite another to condemn the horrible, barbaric and beastly behaviour of the Maltese government. But never mind, Fr Borg’s column on Wednesday fit the ‘Response B to terrorist acts’ formula perfectly – much better than a ‘turn the other cheek’ argument might, for example.
Which brings me to the journalists. I kind of raised an eyebrow when I saw them standing on the Piano steps holding up ‘Je suis Charlie’ placards. There was something about it that didn’t follow. Eventually I settled for a wrong address theory.
I know very few people who believe in, let alone practise, an unqualified freedom of expression
The gathered journalists told us two things. First, that they condemned the attacks and sympathised with the victims and their families. No question about that, I trust most of us did.
Second, that they upheld the same principle of press freedom as the one the Charlie Hebdo team died for. Clearly, that also explained the message on the placards. To be Charlie is to believe that freedom of expression is the cornerstone of a democratic, fair and intellectually-innovative society. Again, most of us do.
Except we don’t, and that includes especially our journalists. I know very few people who believe in, let alone practise, an unqualified freedom of expression. I don’t think any Maltese editor would publish a set of cartoons that mocked Jesus, or that saw humour in paedophilia. No one flinched when Norman Lowell was handed a two-year prison sentence for ‘inciting racial hatred’ (read ‘expressing racist views’).
I’m not pointing fingers here. Nor am I saying that Maltese editors are necessarily wrong. Their reasoning would probably be that the freedom of expression has its limits, and that Jesus, paedophilia and racism step well beyond that red line.
Only that brings us closer to the gunmen’s notion of freedom of expression than it does to that of the Charlie Hebdo team. Where we part company with the gunmen is in the enforcement protocols of that model. For them, these protocols include killing. We simply refuse to publish, or we send people to prison.
Which is why I think that the journalists sent the right message to the wrong address. Rather than with the gunmen’s assault on the freedom of expression, their problem was really with the physics of that assault.
Thing is, most of the journalists who stood on those steps, in fact share very little with the dead men and women. Charlie Hebdo is a famously irreverent and no-holds-barred newspaper that would make the editor of Private Eye, let alone that of a Maltese newspaper, blush.
The people at Charlie Hebdo would look at the average Maltese journalist and see a collaborationist wimp. I’m not saying they’d be right. I’m just saying.
So why, given this gulf, did our journalists stand on those steps with those black placards? Why did they call themselves Charlie?
The answer has everything to do with formulaic thought, which ordains that we should ‘express our solidarity’ in predictable and prepackaged ways. From where I’m standing, that looks like the exact opposite of freedom of expression.
mafalzon@hotmail.com