Almost nine years ago, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi entered the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The brothers of Algerian origin accused the weekly of making fun of the Prophet of Islam. As a result, they killed 12 people. In recent days in Slovenia, we have witnessed a political attack on a caricaturist from the newspaper Delo, who depicted three high-ranking female politicians as naked “Atlases” who are carrying the whole world on their shoulders. Are the attacks really so different, at least in spirit?
The Paris shooting did not just happen “out of the blue”. Even before the massacre of journalists, there was outrage. Eight years before the fatal event, the media had been persecuted by Islamist organisations on the grounds of hate speech for satirical depictions of the Prophet of Islam. The said organisations lost the case. Physical violence followed.
This was followed by a bomb attack in 2011, and then the website was hacked by cybercriminals. The bombing came just a day after the creators of the weekly announced that the editor-in-chief of the upcoming issue would be the Prophet of Islam himself. When asked by the media for a comment, the actual editor of the weekly, Stephane Charbonnier, replied that Islam could not be excluded from freedom of speech. “If we can make fun of everything in France, if we can talk about anything in France except Islam or the consequences of Islamism, that is annoying,” he said. A similar comment was made by the then-French Prime Minister François Fillon, who said that the bombing was an unjustified attack on the freedom of the press.
A shooting massacre followed, leaving 12 people dead and 11 wounded. Stephan Charbonnier was also among the dead, and he had tried to obtain a licence to carry a weapon before the attack. The authorities never responded to his application.
A caricaturist is being attacked by the very top of politics
Almost nine years later, a consultation of Slovenian diplomats took place in Slovenia. It was clearly held in the spirit of feminist foreign policy. This was announced by Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Tanja Fajon, at the beginning of her term of office, and the photographs from the event also clearly demonstrate that. In one of them, the Speaker of the National Assembly Urška Klakočar Zupančič, the President of the Republic Nataša Pirc Musar, and the aforementioned Foreign Minister are all smiling wide. All three are also avowed feminists. Shortly after the consultation, the newspaper Delo published a caricature by Kočevar, which depicted the nation’s high representatives as a kind of female Atlases, who, according to Greek mythology, support the world with their hands. The message of the satirical drawing thus actually acts as a compliment, but it also shows them naked, with their breasts peeking out from their clothes, revealing them as ordinary people, as women, and it is in this dichotomy that the charm and humour of this caricature, and of caricatures in general, is to be found.
The women in question then attacked the cartoonist. His work, they said, is “chauvinistic”, as the President of the country would say, and Fajon wrote: “There is too much of this, way too much of this. It is quite sad and shameful. I have no words.”
In the name of religion and feminism?
The harshness and the number of responses to the caricature constitute a direct attack on the caricaturist and the media outlet in question. The three politicians and their fellow travellers, like the two Algerian-born Paris terrorists, believe that it is possible to exclude from freedom of speech topics that should not be joked about in society. The Kouachi brothers and their associates believed that it was forbidden to make jokes about their religion, and Fajon and Pirc Musar believe that it is forbidden to make jokes about them or the feminism they try to represent.
While the attack on the daring Parisian cartoonists came from the fringes of French society, in Slovenia, the attack on freedom of expression comes from the very top of politics. The terrorists had firearms at their disposal, the trio of Slovenian women politicians have the power of authority at their disposal. Although none of them has access to the repressive apparatus according to the letter of the law, they actually have it through informal channels. In a country where political will often trumps the rule of law (as we saw in the RTV case in the Constitutional Court), such attacks are not encouraging in the least.
Who or what should not be criticised?
The desire to make the satire at the expense of politicians and their political doctrines taboo also serves the function of consolidating power. The people and ideas that we must not criticise are, in this case, the people and ideas that govern us. When the caricaturist trivialises feminism, he also trivialises the ideological essence for which they have staked their name. As a consequence, he also trivialises them. People who present themselves as the avant-garde of the Slovenian people cannot afford such trivialisations.
On the other hand, criticism of political opponents is more than welcome. In the past, Minister Tanja Fajon had no problem sharing a caricature by the same artist, which depicted her political opponents in a similarly humorous way – she even commented on it, writing that the caricature was a great depiction of the right’s attitude towards the rule of law in the European Union. “They seem to be forgetting that the European Union is not a club of businessmen but a union of values,” she wrote at the time. So, back then, she was not bothered by the caricature, as it did not undermine her own legitimacy.
The annoying authorities
In conclusion, it is worth paraphrasing the words of the murdered editor of Charlie Hebdo. If we can make fun of everything in Slovenia, if we can talk about anything in Slovenia except feminism or the consequences of feminism, that is annoying. And indeed, on the sunny side of the Alps, we are allowed to make fun of (almost) everything. However, much to the chagrin of the current authorities, the jokes that are allowed are, by the very nature of things, boring. The feminist fatwa that senior female politicians have issued over the caricature acts as a call for new ones to be made.
Žiga Korsika
