Je Suis C...oncerned

The "Je suis Charlie" thing must have surely run its course. The issue has been debated, written about, conspiracised and generally chewed to a pulp over past days. There's little more that can be said on the events themselves. I feel a little uneasy (to say the least) about what could spring from them. Millions marching in Paris at the weekend?

There have been reports and commentary about a growing right-wing, fascist-like element in European politics for a while now, long before the Charlie Hebdo killings were international front-page news. I don't know which way Hebdo leaned politically. Those in the know claim it was well to the left. If this were so, though, wouldn't their satire have been more conducive to encouraging rank and file French people to support their Muslim neighbours and workmates? I cannot possibly see how the obscene caricatures of the Muslim religious figure head would help in that regard.

I don't for a moment think Hebdo was an outright fascist outfit, akin to Germany's Der Sturmer in the 1930s, whose anti-Semitic cartoons must have aided acceptance of mass deaths in Germany, and were preceded by the dehumanising of whole groups through caricature. What we've seen recently indicates that Charlie Hebdo has at least been lending a (possibly inadvertent) hand to the growing right's National Front party in France, led by Marine le Pen.

Bearing in mind how the world is now so easily connected, second by second, via internet's social media, it doesn't take much imagination to see how European countries, whose large immigrant Muslim populations are causing some native born individuals and groups to worry about losing their national identity in the future, might jump on the "Je suis Charlie" bandwagon. Their intent could be to infiltrate and use it, not to uphold free speech, but for their own political ends - to de-humanise, mock and pillory immigrant groups, deter further immigration, and in turn foster growth of what would become a fascist following. Things are not the same as events in the 1930s, fears and reasons for them are different. There was no fear of Jewish terrorism then. The "pieces" are different, but the "game" is related. I think the astrology is related also, as it happens - a time of Uranus-Pluto square aspects, the earlier one waning, current one waxing.

Whatever else most of the "Je Suis Charlie" mob with their constant, and no doubt well-meaning, emphasis on free speech want to see, one hopes fervently that they do not inadvertently become caught up in achieving the opposite, slipping into a new version of the Europe of 1937-1945, with Muslims as targets instead of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others. A side effect of this would be to see free speech hurtling rapidly down the drain.

Slippery slopes are not always obvious - early on.