Fanatics fear cartoonists: we must NEVER be silenced
Terrorists are terrified of cartoonists. We have the power to make people laugh at them — we prick their lies and pretensions, and reveal how obscene and ridiculous they are. of course they hate us.
in the wake of the appalling massacre in Paris, some wonderful cartoons have been flying around the world.
one pithy visual image can sum up emotions that could never be expressed in words.
one of my first thoughts when i heard the news was to draw a cartoon of Al Qaeda gunmen kneeling down to pray . . . but instead of facing Mecca, they are praying to satan.
i’ve been racking my brains, and i hope that today’s cartoon sums up what we’re all feeling.
We’ve been here before, of course. i was immediately reminded of the days when the IRA was unleashing terror in Britain. those murderers hated cartoons, too.
i did one about the hunger striker Bobby sands, an IRA man who was refusing to eat in prison. i drew all the priests and politicians around his bed, begging him not to starve himself to death — and on the other side of the picture, i had a squaddie with an arm and a leg missing.
the soldier was saying: ‘Nobody seems to worry about the weight i’ve lost.’
From then on i got lots of threats, purporting to be from the IRA, with phone calls saying i was on a death list and warning me to stop laughing at the republicans.
some of these threats felt pretty serious — a friend of mine on another paper was sent a parcel full of little bits of metal.
When he undid it, there was a stark note from the IRA inside: ‘Next time it’ll be a real bomb.’ i didn’t know the guys in Paris personally, but i doubt they believed that Muslim extremists would respond with such violence.
We’ve got the difficult task of pulling these people into the 21st century, when they’re trying to drag us back to the 12th.
of course, it was not only islam that Charlie Hebdo was mocking. it routinely targets Christians, Catholic priests, the Pope . . . everybody was fair game. that’s how it should be.
there’s no censorship at the Mail — i can say what i like, whether i’m inspired by a sense of real anger one day or making a light-hearted joke the next. i don’t censor my thoughts or worry about threats. As far as my own skin is concerned, i am perfectly happy to tackle any subject.
sometimes a sense of humour can be a dangerous thing. You’re always going to offend someone. i did one cartoon about a mix-up in a sperm bank, where a new mum ended up having a monkey for a baby.
of course, this wasn’t meant to be racist in any way, but the response to it was preposterous. An awful lot of people claimed that i was implying the baby was black. obviously i wasn’t — it was a monkey! At first, i couldn’t quite believe their attitudes, but gradually i realised that some people are deliberately looking to be hurt. they seek out insults that are not there.
some things are beyond the bounds of decency for a cartoonist: i wouldn’t dream of doing anything about paedophiles in a humorous style, for instance. i don’t set out to laugh at people’s beliefs. i will mock the Church and vicars, but that doesn’t mean i’m knocking people who are devout Christians — i’m laughing at the abuse of religion, not the faith itself.
there’s a grand tradition of that, of course: look back to the geniuses of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as George Cruikshank, James Gillray and William Hogarth. they were completely outrageous, and very funny.
i’ve never wanted to depict the Prophet myself, but i can see exactly why Charlie Hebdo wanted to publish those cartoons of Mohammed, just to show these terrorists that we won’t be intimidated.
everyone must stand together to defend freedom of speech.