NI Charlie Hebdo writer defends magazine over racism accusation
Belfast-born novelist says French satirical publication’s latest controversy ‘tedious’
A NORTHERN Ireland writer for satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has defended the French publication against accusations of racism over its cartoon cover depicting the Queen kneeling on Meghan Markle’s neck.
Robert Mcliam Wilson, an award-winning novelist from Belfast’s New Lodge who now lives in Paris, said the reaction to the image, which was condemned by some anti-racism groups, was disheartening.
During a podcast hosted by comedian and writer Andrew Doyle for online media outlet Spiked’s Culture War series, the author said: “My spirits just dipped, as in: here we go again.”
“It’s tedious. It’s definitely tedious.”
The magazine’s cover image invoked the killing of African American George Floyd, who died last May after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by an officer who placed his knee on his neck.
The cover was accompanied by the tagline: “Why Meghan left Buckingham Palace... Because ‘I couldn’t breathe.’”.
Halima Begum, CEO of a UK anti-racism think-tank called The Runnymede Trust, called the image “wrong on every level” in a tweet.
Doyle, who has links to Northern Ireland, put to Mcliam Wilson that in the current climate, people cannot distinguish between anti-racism satire and actual depictions of racism in relation to Charlie Hebdo.
“Because it’s normally people who don’t read the magazine, who aren’t French, so we end up in this weird cycle where people who have misinterpreted anti-racist satire as racist, because they’ve taken it on face value,” explained the podcast host.
Asked if he gets tired of the reaction, Mcliam Wilson replied:
“It’s not that I get tired of it, I get kind of depressed sometimes.”
If Charlie Hebdo is a ‘racist’ magazine, he argued, then “it’s a very bad racist magazine’, citing the publication’s work with a prominent anti-racism group in
France. “Charlie has always been an anti-racism campaigner,” said Mcliam Wilson.
“[The magazine] is almost tediously anti-racist, and there’s not a lot of comedy in anti-racism. It’s nonsensical.
“They are extremely vulgar, extremely rude, but they are not racist.”
He then pointed out that Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted by two Islamist extremists in 2015 after the magazine published cartoons of Islamic Prophet Muhammad in an attack that killed 12 people, satirises many subjects from the extreme right to the Catholic Church.
The cover image cartoon came after Meghan and her husband Harry made a series of damning accusations against the royal family in an interview with Oprah Winfrey — including that the skin tone of the couple’s child, Archie, was discussed as a potential issue before he was born.
‘The magazine is almost tediously anti-racist... they are extremely vulgar, but they are not racist’