Professor Richard BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI, Chairholder of the EP Geremek Chair of European Civilization at the Natolin (Warsaw) campus of the College of Europe, just published a contribution for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on the tragic Charlie Hebdo shooting.
His contribution (in Polish) is available here. A translation into English is here enclosed:
The pitiless murders carried out in Paris by Islamist jihadis on the bold journalists of Charlie Hebdo should bring home the extent to which our basic freedoms, at the heart of European civilization, are under attack from fanatics. Yet these freedoms are often restricted by European countries and institutions, in the name of respecting the feelings of people of other faiths, races, orientations, nationalities or world-views.
Such legislation and court verdicts are intended to counter the spreading of hate, but to give priority to subjectively defined feelings is to move towards a society ruled by fear. Self-censorship already operates – as shown by the sad refusal of most European media to reproduce the cartoons from Charlie Hebdo.
It is time to choose between liberty and the irreconcilable foes of liberty. We should state clearly: nobody has the right not to be offended. The law should not protect us from having our feelings hurt. On our continent even the most offensive expressions, the most politically incorrect, the most obscene, most deserving of criticism and condemnation, should never be crimes in the eyes of the law. Of course calls to kill and beat people – and such are made by some apologists for the murders in Paris – should be subject to the severest penalties, but not mockery of anything held sacred. European countries should rid themselves of laws which have the praiseworthy intention of forbidding the spreading of hatred, but which also limit freedom of expression. We should struggle against hatred in the cultural sphere, and not by recourse to criminal or civil law. A well-mannered person does not want to offend other people. But nobody should be forbidden from offending others. However distasteful some of the cartoons – je suis Charlie.