❛ i can feel this heart inside me and i conclude it exists. i can touch this world and i also conclude that it exists. all my knowledge ends at this point. the rest is hypothesis ❜

chirart:

“Je Suis Charlie” is an awful hashtag and an awful movement.

The shooting of Charlie Hebdo is a tragedy and should not have happened.

Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons are disgusting and worthy of every bit of criticism imaginable.

These two issues are separate, but “Je Suis Charlie” is conflating them into a disgusting rallying cry for “free speech.” The “Je Suis Charlie” movement is forcing everyone who wants to condemn the shooting by rallying themselves next to a magazine known for bigoted messages, regardless if the people you’re roping in are the targets of those same messages.

I’m from an Algerian family. I grew up in Paris. This has given me and my family very unpleasant memories. My first thought on hearing about the shootings was “I’m glad I’m not living there anymore, because if I was I wouldn’t be leaving my house.“ I just sat around and waited for the next day for the inevitable list of mosques and attacks on the north-african and middle-eastern population to filter in, and I wasn’t even surprised at how long the lists ended up being. It was so predictable.

And yet all “Je Suis Charlie” cares about is their right to laugh at the people it effects.

Condemn the shooting, the magazine, and the movement. It’s possible to do all the above. None of these things are heroic, from where I’m standing. Largely because my existence — and other people like me — are a target of all three.