Now that the furor over the Charlie Hebdo massacre has abated we can appreciate some of the comedy involved. Like people arguing with great umbrage that the satire of the cartoons is very French & not racist & xenophobic as they appear to the rest of the world. Are the French really that backward politically? Imbecility is not a flattering defense. It’s the kind of political defense you expect from Brigitte Bardot or Gerard Depardieu & that should give pause.

We can also cut the crap on that free speech stuff. The demand for free speech is something you direct at governments, not three dead gunmen. Reportedly, France is cracking down on people who make smart cracks & arrested a kid who did a satiric post about CH on FB, accusing him of defending terrorism. Is that French sarcasm too?

What’s not comical is that attacks on Muslim businesses & mosques in France have increased (60 since the CH event); that an Islamophobic march in Germany attracted 20,000 thugs; & that the Belgian police had a shootout against what they called an Islamist terrorist cell. They took them all out by claiming they were conspiring to commit acts of terror. Since when do you summarily execute people on an allegation? Why didn’t they arrest them, interrogate them, prosecute them instead of killing them all? What about that free speech thing?

This Islamophobic stuff is going to crescendo & the only way to respond to it is to build the antiwar movement & Palestinian solidarity (which both involve Islamophobia). You can’t talk people out of this rubbish. You have to answer it with power–which if it doesn’t persuade does silence the haters & intimidate the thugs.