People were murdered and that is horrid. Charlie Hebdo is a horrid racist magazine. I mourn the murder of anyone. I will never celebrate the deeds of Charlie Hebdo.
White western (read: EU & US islamophobes) are only too happy to lionize this racist publication as some sort of bastion of a free press. Charlie Hebdo is basically Rush Limbaugh pretending to be The Onion. It is not a satire attacking the abusers of power. It is the petulant racist mouthpiece of centuries of colonial wealth theft, genocide and conceit - attacking the abused. Charlie Hebdo openly mocked, derided and insulted blacks, Africans, Muslims, Algerians. It gives voice to French xenophobes and racists, mocking and dehumanizing people living in the lands that the French once stole by occupation.
Journalists and satirists railing against the abuse of power are imprisoned, “disappeared”, murdered, threatened and tortured every day. Mourn them. Name them. Hashtag them.
If you want to “be” someone, complete with a hashtag and everything - then “be” silent no more to christian fundamentalism or christian misogyny, or trans person intolerance and violence, or white police state oppression, or white banking that uses debt as a tool of oppression, or the slaughter of villages by companies in your 401k so that their execs can make their quarterly bonuses and your IRA can grow by a fraction of a percent.
#be an instrument of dismantling racism, sexism, genocide and oppression. if you can. and if you cannot, and all you can muster is to clutch your pearls about how the poor white menz are hated by those brown people, then #jesuisthefuckoutofmyface.
(posted at sexgenderbody tumblr)