Vive Caroline Fourest


Oh jeez – something I didn’t know – Caroline Fourest is a senior editor of Charlie Hebdo. NBC News talked to her.

A senior editor at Charlie Hebdo says she’s living a nightmare that she could never have prepared for despite years of threats against the magazine.

Caroline Fourest, who has contributed to the satirical magazine for years, told NBC News that she and the staff are working through their shock after the attack, and will show the world they will not be silenced.

Fourest told NBC News that the editorial staff had been debating cartoons to demonstrate the scope of racism against Muslims in France. That made the attack, an apparent act of revenge for insulting Islam, even harder to believe.

It makes the accusations of racism from ignorant Americans hard to believe, too.

Fourest said that the survivors are “of course” in shock but determined to put out the next issue, scheduled for Wednesday, and to show the world that they are not afraid. Continuing to publish will send the message that while “you can kill our friends, you cannot kill freedom of speech,” she said.

She defended the magazine’s caricatures, saying that they took aim without favoring any religion, and she asked other media to print the very cartoons for which Cherif and Said Kouachi sought revenge.

While Fourest said she has nothing to say to the killers, she appeared to take solace in how their plans backfired. A unity rally on Sunday became the largest demonstration in modern French history, and “Je Suis Charlie” has become a rallying cry around the world.

“They try to kill Charlie Hebdo, they make Charlie Hebdo the most famous newspaper in the world,” she said. “How stupid they are.”

The Streisand effect will have to be re-named the Charlie effect.

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