The media is misreporting this. This misogynist man deserves to go to jail.

The scurrilous lies written about Charlie Hebdo

A year after the Charlie Hebdo killings, francophone writer Robert McLiam Wilson deplores the reports in English by the ignorant for the ignorant

Robert McLiam Wilson

Sunday 3 January 2016 00.03 GMT Last modified on Sunday 3 January 2016 10.00 GMT

The anniversary of the 7 January attack on Charlie Hebdo is coming up. Whether you feel that Charlie is a symbol of freedom of expression or a scabrous hate sheet, you are about to be deluged in a giant vat of stuff. Some will be positive, some negative but an oxen-stunning proportion of it will be written by people who do not speak French. The result will be divination and portent, written by people more likely to read tea leaves than Charlie Hebdo. Do I need to point out that this is a touch silly? [...]

A few days ago, I went into the new, secret-location, super-secure offices of Charlie. Being Northern Irish, security was not unfamiliar to me but this was on a different level. It was the villain’s lair in one of the dumber Bond films, hermetically sealed, massively protected. And yet inside was a typical small magazine set-up – not many people, untidy kitchen, debatable dress sense. And a bunch of gentle, humble, funny people that I adore. As always when I see Charlie people en masse, there’s a giant disconnect. I see a troupe of nerdy sweethearts surrounded by concentric rings of titanic security. They look like kittens in a bunker.

I’m tempted to say that this is now the world they live in. But that’s not what is interesting. The point is that this is now the world you live in. [...]

2015 was a black and wounding year for Parisians, the city is still slow and muted with grief. The sky feels lower; even the young seem old and weary. Paris has started to feel like Belfast to me. Which is horribly appropriate.

Because our new reality is the startling power of the micro-minority. There is one portion of the UK population who know this already. The Northern Irish portion. They spent three decades as part of a peaceful, democratic majority entirely dominated by the fissile futility of a few hundred people’s atavism and arrogance. They know that a handful of pitiless citizens can bring a country to a near standstill. They grew up knowing that, they drank it in with their mother’s milk. It’s uncomfortable knowledge and it can make us quite uncomfortable people to be around. You’re not going to get a whole lot of sunny political optimism from that bunch. The nicest of us just don’t tell the truth about it when we’re asked. I know I don’t.

I’m dreading this new 7 January. I’m dreading the confident diagnoses of the English-speaking world. Not that it really matters. You’ve mostly made up your mind about Charlie Hebdo, haven’t you? Which means you’ve made up your mind about me too. Good for you.

Moi, je ne suis pas Charlie. I don’t need to be. I write for them.

Robert McLiam Wilson is an award-winning writer. His novel Eureka Street is published by Secker & Warburg

rebut the lies spread by izzy and bobsal on this and other threads