Paris, January 2015: the terrorist attacks and the reactions

Abstract

The aim of my presentation is first to examine precisely the killings. Who are the killers? Which are their motivations? Why the killers did it? What about their backgrounds, their ideologies, their beliefs? Secondly it is necessary to observe the evolution of the vocabulary used in the public space by journalists, politicians, ordinary people... and the reactions (police, government, media, panic, false alarms... but also stigmatization of Muslims in general and more than a hundred anonymous attacks against mosques and other places related to Muslim people, like shops...) Third, how can we analyze the reactions of ordinary people on one side and of prominent political leaders on the other? What were the different meanings of the mass demonstrations just after the attacks in France? In Paris? Was the question of freedom of expression really the main question? Which are all the other questions hidden behind the unanimous "Je suis Charlie"? What are the different and contradictory meanings of this sentence? We will try to go beyond much of confusions and hypocrisy. For such a precise analysis it is necessary to go deeper in some important details, very often forgotten, about the magazine Charlie Hebdo, about all the victims, about the murders, about the weapons, about French society and its contradictions, about the different kind of reactions...