Charlie Hebdo: The French don't have a sense of humour

The hallmark of the bad joke is that it lacks nuance. Hebdo's cartoons were missing nuance because of this refusal to recognise the lop-sided power play extant in France. The pictures of the victims reveal they were male and White. Not surprisingly the humour was racist, cheap, White, and parochial, too, in keeping with this self-congratulatory: 'ooooh we are French. This is France. We do things our way. We hate burqas and we are okay with nudity because one is beautiful and the other, not. And of course in France EVERYthing must be jolie.'

Hebdo's cartoons were unfunny also because they cannot be viewed without the teleology of French hatred for the Arabs. Jokes were recycled in a series of magazine issues in a laissez faire attitude that is oh-so-French, and in wilful ignorance of its dubious governmental policies in colonies where they patronised their subjects like disobedient children. Until today the mass uprisings against French authorities by the so-called socially marginalised is treated as a class war, when it is anything but.

The French treated its war in Algeria in the fifties like a police disturbance when the truth is that half a million French troops were deployed in the North African country. Millions were killed, including some estimates say, as many as 1.5 million rebels counting all violent deaths and deaths due to war-related causes. But this war is mostly unknown, no one talks about it, and they will continue to not talk about it. And in this scenario to cite freedom of speech or #freedomofspeech, and 'globalise' its terror comes across as cowardly and small-minded. The lack of validation of Arab suffering is a grave evasion and to not even recognise the grudge is adding insult to injury.

The war between France and its Arabs is older than ISIS and al-Qaeda. Indeed, The Guardian today reported the shooter at the Hebdo office did not have any confirmed links with terrorist outfits abroad, but was an active combatant belonging to loosely organised extremist bodies within France.

In his 1942 book The Outsider, Albert Camus, extraordinary in every way, also omitted to say that the protagonist, Meursault, may have got an unfair trial because of his Algerian origin. Looking at France today this is not unthinkable. Every kind of xenophobia afflicts the country, not just 'Islamophobia' - a word Camus had never known. So why did the Nobel laureate, so empathetic to the exile's experience, omit this? Maybe such knowledge comes only with the gift of hindsight.

Arab suffering has been overlooked by writers and historians alike; the hurt remains unacknowledged and this is normalised in French society. Self-obsessed France cannot be Arab and French at the same time and this is the true rough edge of its urban life. Why consistently refuse to recognise the displacement of migrants from its Arab and African colonies? What happens when we try and maintain status quo in a country obviously at war with its 'outsiders'?

But before one goes all Noam Chomsky about this matter, there is disappointment coming from within the establishment also. Dior, that hallowed symbol of Frenchness, and now capitalism, which moved its 2015 show to Tokyo. Some say, it wishes not to be associated with the general cultural and economic decadence France happens to find itself in. Even its beloved fashion house Dior is distancing itself from the unholy mess.

In 2008, Rwanda changed the language at its schools from French to English, and applied to join the Commonwealth, the second francophone country to do so after Mozambique. These were moves to realign themselves away from francophone culture - something that upset many in Paris given their obsession with maintaining Frenchness, their influence, in Africa, when they had all but ignored the massacre of the Tutsi by the Hutu.

French anti-semitism is well-known. Stand-up comedian, Dieudonne, a true son of France, has made a livelihood of ridiculing the holocaust. One Jewish-French journalist, Patrick Cohen comes up in his acts often. Here is a sample: "whenever I hear him talk I think...gas chambers. (Shakes head). What a pity."

It takes a special kind of person to laugh at this but the French seem to be rolling in it. And Dieudonne is Black. Odd, you reckon? He also makes jokes about Nigerians, Algerians, Japanese and gay people. One is inclined to believe that Dieudonne is a good businessman who figured that France is a country in which anti-semitism can be sold. Being Black he knew it wasn't enough to be talented. But why would you laugh at the holocaust if you are black? Dieudonne is in a lot of trouble with the French authorities for his controversial acts but his many supporters refute that he is even anti-semitic, insisting that he is only 'provocative', that he is only saying F%^* the system - a truly Jacobin, therefore French, sentiment. And his fans are a strange mix - people opposing tax increases, members of the right-wing National Front party, and even freedom of speech campaigners.

They are refusing Jews the reassurance in keeping with the historic snub they have suffered: to feel like a normal part of French society. But given the deaths at the Hebdo, and Dieudonne's fan-following, it's clear the discontent has reached such a level that the disenchanted parties are past caring who gets hurt. The darkness like Karma follows French politics everywhere. It's hard to imagine that Dieudonne's black fans might vote for a right-wing party, but this is the case in France.

Look at what the French (and the British) did in their colonies in Africa: they drew very straight-looking cartographical lines in the sand - creating boundaries which remain disputed to this day. As an English stand-up put it: You don't know when you've left Ethiopia and entered Eritrea until you hear gunshots fired: a joke which rightly cheapens the oppressor.

Long-suffering enemy of the Islamic state Salman Rushdie who has joined the Je Suis Charlie campaign, starts his new book with an epigraph which is an etching by Goya that gallantly declares: 'the sleep of reason brings forth monsters'. True, but that is a blade that cuts both ways. So, it may be time for France to wake up and have un petit shot of its own cafe, non?