Ten years after the attacks of January 2015, are the French still Charlie?

In the special edition of Charlie Hebdo of this January 7, ten years to the day after the terrorist attack against the editorial staff of the satirical newspaper which marked the start of a wave of attacks – Montrouge, l'Hyper Cacher, then, later, on November 13 – , readers will find an Ifop survey for the Jean Jaurès Foundation on the French relationship with freedom of expression, satire and press cartoons. From this survey, one figure particularly stands out: 76% of respondents believe that « freedom of expression is a fundamental right, freedom of caricature is part of it ». That is 18 points more than in 2012, when the same question was asked in a TNS Sofres survey for QED.

« This shows that ultimately, contrary to what we would tend to think – we, members of the editorial staff of Charlie, understood -, press cartoons, caricatures, freedom of expression are much more important…