A day after the attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo Athens and Thessaloniki are to take part in the chain of meetings organized by citizens across Europe with the slogan "Je suis Charlie" ("I'm Charlie") as part of the mourning for the victims announced in France.
The demonstrations will take place at 05:00 pm in Athens (31 Son St.) and 05:30 pm in Thessaloniki (2A Leoforos stratou St.), in front of the branches of the French Institute. Their motto will be that Europeans will always oppose the attacks on freedom of speech, which is one the fundamental European values.
The news about the attack was reported by the Greek media with dramatic headlines, "Grief for the terrorist attack in Paris," "Blood and terror from jihadists in Paris," "Four major French cartoonists, Wolinski, Charb, Cabu, Tignous, killed by the bullets of terrorists".
"They are after European freedoms," states Xenia Kounalaki in today's edition of the daily Kathimerini. Ethnos newspaper presents the portraits of the four killed cartoonists, writing, "They fought lust for power and lack of tolerance with their pens."
The responses continue on the social networks.
"I am shocked. Satire is a reward and, at the same time, the soft underbelly of open society and of every democratic state. Satire is what makes us proud that we live in the West, but also its weakest link, because it hangs on the thin thread of tolerance that, even in the West, is wealth which one has to earn from scratch every time, day after day. If satire disappears, the western way will be lost along with it. The blow will be stricken with surgical precision. They do not want just to scare us. Extremists want us to not even exist, they want us to stop breathing," a leading political communication expert wrote on Facebook.
In response to the anti-Muslim attitudes that have stirred up, another user wrote, "Let us clarify something: We are talking about Nazis, who are Muslims as well. Not about Muslims who are Nazis. Whoever is unable to understand the difference between the two is threatened to become like them."
There were also "ideological" analyses in a purely Greek style, according to which everything is to blame on "the imperialism of the West that, with its interventions in the Middle East, has roused extremism". They were replied to in the following way, "I am reading the easy and "apparent" Greek progressive analysis that inequalities of capitalism marginalize people and Muslims in this case. The other, more "strategic", analysis states that the West is now paying for the intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and for the plundering of the resources of the Middle East. I am sorry but these things were happening before globalization. If something has changed in the world, it is the intensity of communication and the opportunities it provides. 15 years ago jihad could not become a trend among young Muslims in Europe. In today's interconnected world, ideas and trends are turning into a huge force and are spreading with great intensity. Some will say that if the French of Algerian origin were rich the slaughter would not have been organized. If you please. The problem is not financial, but civilizational above all. Only the global village is now bringing it in front of our doors. What is the solution? There isn't one," a prominent journalist wrote on his social network profile.
Another user, however, is optimistic, "Dostoevsky mentions somewhere a great Russian proverb. It states that the worm will die in the apple. At that time, the apple was Russia. I think that today it is the Western civilization and open society."
Tags: SocietyAttackParisSatirical newspaperCharlie HebdoDemonstrationsFreedom of speech
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