A drawing — not, as has been claimed, by Banksy but by French artist Lucille Clerc.
Yesterday’s attack on the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo has been, as expected, very well covered in the press so I won’t go into the details here. Once again, though, the subject of freedom of expression has made its way to the forefront of daily life. Should it be like this in 2015?
That organisations such as English PEN (whom I support both morally and financially) need to exist in the modern age is, frankly, upsetting. That writers and artists are being thrown into jail, tortured and even killed for simply expressing their views is truly abhorrent. We are all people.
We must be careful with our response. To simply declare the perpetrators as extremist nutters whose opinions are not worth a jot would be tantamount to the same gagging order they are trying to impose on us. Both sides must be heard and neither must be declared right or wrong. That is the only way people will ever live in peace. As soon as right and wrong come into the equation, there’s always a victim; a resentment built out of division.
Radical extremists have the same right to express their opinions of us as we do of them and that right must be respected both ways. As soon as either side tries to denounce the opinions of the other with violence, their argument is lost. The old maxim that the pen is mightier than the sword has never been truer. If your opinion differs to others, explain that opinion rationally and sensibly. The pen gives you the power to do that. Everyone has that power and no-one has the right to take it away. The moment we deny freedom of expression to our enemies, we become our enemies.
I may come across as slightly wishy-washy to many, but thousands of years of history has proven that violence never works. If it did, we wouldn’t still be fighting. But do I think there’s ever any justification for violence and the sort of action we saw in Paris yesterday? No. Those actions were entirely unjustified however you look at it and however impartial you try to be. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan divided the world and continues to do so. It is true to say that the groups of radical extremists and the supposedly ‘free’ national governments who cause as much, if not more carnage in return, should both be considered terrorists. Both committed terrible atrocities which can never be forgiven and neither party can be considered morally superior to the other. Both are pond life.
But yesterday’s events are much clearer because this was not an attack from one side on another. It was inherently counter-productive on all sides. It was an attack on our freedom to express our opinions. This was an attack on everyone. It was an attack on the human race.