“If everyone had published the cartoons, the attack would never have happened. »
Judgment falls like a blade. When questioned ten years after the tragedy of Charlie Hebdo which left 12 dead and 11 injured at the end of the morning of January 7, 2015, this is what spontaneously comes to Philippe Val’s mind. The man who was its director for 17 years is also the one who, in 2006, with the support of all the employees of the newspaper, decided to publish the 12 caricatures of Mohammed from the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. Eighteen years, a long trial and an attack later, he still lives under police protection. That day, in a café on the left bank, he came discreetly by bike after giving leave to his guards.
“These people are only strong because of our cowardice,” he said. “If everyone had published the caricatures, which was then envisaged, the attack would never have taken place. We were really alone. Even our friends who encouraged us in private refused to do so in public. This is the lesson of [l’attentat contre] Charlie : cowardice never produces anything good. There was a wave of attacks behind it which affected France and Europe. We are victims of our fear, and each attack is more frightening. We have to face the facts: it worked, Charlie ! »
This autodidact, a former singer who left school at 17, does not hesitate to call the story into court. In Eichmann in Jerusalemhe recalls, Hannah Arendt toured the countries which delivered Jews to Germany. “Unlike the Netherlands and even France, Bulgaria and Denmark had a different attitude. And what did the Nazis do? Nothing ! I think that this whole radical movement within Islam is only puffing out our chests because we are lying down. It would be about getting up. »
The fear that paralyzes
Ten years later, the results are hardly rosy. Secularism is increasingly contested in French schools, and anti-Semitism is exploding throughout Europe. For Philippe Val, we have not learned much from this attack against freedom of the press and freedom of thought. Intellectuals, academics, teachers and politicians cannot grasp this subject, he says. There is no significant awareness. For what ?
” Because Charlieit’s very scary. Fear is an unpleasant feeling to admit. So, we don’t say “I’m afraid”, we say that “it’s not good to stigmatize Muslims”. We dress up our fear with moral, anti-racist and caring arguments. We come out like that, shrouded in light, with a fear that we simply don’t dare admit. I think it is a form of racism to think that Muslims feel stigmatized when we start to criticize Islamist radicalism and try to find solutions to eradicate it. This is making fun of Muslims! »
In France, the consequences of this fear are felt more and more every day, says Val, particularly among teachers. Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard lost their lives there. School principals are threatened and teachers slapped by students who refuse to remove their veils at school. As for the others, 56% say they have already censored themselves to avoid incidents on questions of religion.
“Ten years later Charlie, we can’t let teachers be afraid! How does a civilization die? She dies because transmission does not take place. A liberal society is more complicated than an authoritarian society. You need educated people and complex institutions. So a culture and a transmission. The basis of the European spirit is transmission. However, how can we transmit and have the vocation to teach in a society where teachers are being slaughtered and where the authority of knowledge is contested on questions as fundamental as the theory of evolution and the Shoah? »
Kill the laughter
Ultimately, it’s perhaps not so surprising that ideologues chose to attack people whose job it was to make people laugh, says Val. In his latest book, simply titled Laughhe tries to trace the thread of this aversion that laughter has always inspired in them.
“The more radical the ideology, whether political or religious, the more it excludes laughter. We can clearly see how the mullahs have no sense of humor. We can clearly see the seriousness of the ideologues who exclude all forms of laughter. When ideas get really important and serious, they become ridiculous. So anything that can make them look ridiculous is considered a deadly attack. »
It’s a newspaper that deliberately laughs with death. I think it’s the ultimate taboo. We must be able to go that far, to this scandal, because it is scandalous to laugh with death.
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Because laughter, says Philippe Val, has always been in the DNA of our civilization. Impossible to imagine Socrates without Aristophanes and Louis XIV without Molière. “Tragic laughter is one of the cogs of European thought. Why are civilizations mortal? asked Valéry. Because at a certain moment they adopt a perfect form, which becomes classicism. And this classicism becomes a rigidity which no longer allows us to adapt to reality. However, tragic laughter always calls into question the classic form. It is an explosion of baroque which allows civilization to adapt, to retell reality in all its scandalous aspects. Without this virtue, ideas become morbid and even dangerous. Whereas with lightness and a skepticism capable of laughing at itself, we are saved. »
Does this mean that we could laugh at everything, even death? To this question, Philippe Val answers that “we can laugh with everything, and even with death”. “Obviously, we don’t laugh at death, but we laugh with it.”
The ancestor of the current magazine, Hara-Kiriprovided us with a fine example of this during the death of General de Gaulle in 1970. Shortly after a tragedy that occurred at a provincial ball, he headlined: “Tragic ball in Colombey — a death! » It was immediately banned. Later, when one of his favorite cartoonists, Reiser, died, we saw him on the front page of Charlie a walking coffin under the title: “Reiser is better, he went to the cemetery on foot. »
The former director who lost his lifelong friend, the designer Cabu, in the attack, says he took time to understand what made Charlie a unique case in the press. “It’s a newspaper that deliberately laughs with death. I think it’s the ultimate taboo. We must be able to go that far, to this scandal, because it is scandalous to laugh with death. Rabelais laughed with death. Villon too. »
The best tribute to the deaths of “Charlie” is to defend what makes our joy of living, our moments of happiness possible and not let anyone touch that.
The laughter of complacency
During his younger years, Philippe Val roamed the cabarets of the left bank singing “on s’en branle”. It was there that he later met Léo Ferré, Georges Brassens and Félix Leclerc, all of whose songs he knows and whom he even welcomed to Paris for a final tour. “He invited me to Île d’Orléans, but he died before then. »
Today a columnist on Europe 1, he is far from rejoicing at the explosion in the number of comedians on stage and on television, an expression of a “whiny puritanism which has extinguished the joyful flames of anti-racist, feminist and homosexual fights. », he writes.
“They don’t make you laugh, they make you applaud. This laughter is a form of acquiescence, while laughter is surprise. We suddenly find ourselves laughing at something we shouldn’t. And we realize that it feels good, because it brings out something that morality was hiding. It’s liberating. It has nothing to do with knowing laughter. Clan laughter is toxic, it locks you into complacency. »
Ten years after the death of the artisans of Charlie Hebdowhat remains of their memory? “They taught us a lesson. I worked alongside them for years. They taught me not to whine, to be joyful, to experience our freedoms, to defend them, to put them to the test of daily life. Not to experience yourself as a victim, as is the fashion today, even when you are the victim of something. The best tribute to the dead Charlieit is to defend what makes possible our joy of living, our moments of happiness and to not let anyone touch that. »
