Charlie Hebdo: cartoon satire is a more potent weapon than hate

Humour is an essential force in the defence of free speech, as the murdered cartoonists’ final cover on Michel Houellebecq defiantly attests

Houellebecq’s Submission will still be published in English

The massacre at Charlie Hebdo was devastatingly effective. The terrorists objected to jokes about their religion, so they killed the jokers. Now nobody is laughing.

Sombre demonstrations do not defeat this assault on free speech. For comedy is killed as stone dead by collective sadness as it is by executing cartoonists.

Continue reading...