After terrorists’ bullets tore through the staff of France’s satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo magazine 10 years ago, the people of France spoke with one voice: “Je suis Charlie.”
In the days since an assassin silenced the voice of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the words “I am Charlie” have echoed too across the United States. Both fell victims to political violence. And in death, their reputations for kindling outrage, whether publishing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad or stoking viral arguments on college campuses – made defending freedom of speech a national priority.
“They were killed by the same bullet,” Nicolas Conquer, spokesperson for the American Republican Party in France told CNN.
“You can’t be Charlie yesterday and not be Charlie Kirk today,” he added.
But Gérard Biard, editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo magazine today, sees an “enormous confusion” on this point among Americans.
“Charlie Kirk was an influencer and above all a political personality,” he told CNN, “We do satire and cartoons.”
Both killings turned the victims – the staff of Charlie Hebdo and Charlie Kirk – into “martyrs for freedom of speech,” Anna Arzoumanov, an expert on freedom of expression from Paris’ Sorbonne University told CNN.
Founder and executive director of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk speaks at the opening of the Turning Point Action conference on July 15, 2023 in West Palm Beach, Florida. – Joe Raedle/Getty Images
In 2015, writers, politicians and above all cartoonists flocked to portray Charlie Hebdo’s artists as guardians of democracy – their pens mightier than any sword.
Charlie Kirk too has won praise for his commitment to the battle of ideas.
But the free speech his eulogists avow now bears little similarity to what Charlie Hebdo stands for in France.
“On one hand it’s the freedom to blaspheme to serve the debate of general interest,” said Arzoumanov, referencing most Muslims’ belief that depicting Islam’s prophet is blasphemy.
But the freedom of speech of Charlie Kirk, she said, is “the freedom to hold masculinist discourses against abortion” or against minority communities. The free speech his camp championed can even border on discourses that would be forbidden as hate speech in many European countries, she added.
Charlie Hebdo ridiculed racism, the far right and religious fundamentalism, Arzoumanov said. By contrast, Kirk and his supporters often disparaged racial and religious minorities and the LGBTQ+ community, and promoted populist right-wing views.
These two “Charlies” were radically opposed, Arzoumanov said.
Signpost for division
Thousands upon thousands of people tramped through Paris in 2015, grieving the 11 journalists and one police officer killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo and promising to safeguard its mission.
They huddled over candles lain at the bronze feet of Marianne, the spirit of the French Revolution and the republic it gave birth to. In death, Charlie Hebdo, which had long courted controversy, became an unexpected figurehead of unity against terror and for the freedom of expression.
“In France, there was the idea that we just don’t kill people for drawings or writings,” Thomas Hochmann, professor of public law at Paris Nanterre University told CNN. Whereas in the US, “it seems that what dominates among those who say ‘I am Charlie’ is more agreement with the substance of (Kirk’s arguments).”
Whereas “Je suis Charlie” signaled solidarity, “I am Charlie” is a signpost for division, he added.
The difference in response from the two countries’ leaders was also telling.
Let there be “no conflation” between the terrorists and Islam, France’s then-President Francois Hollande hammered home in the wake of the 2015 attacks.
A woman poses with her copy of the French satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ in front of the ‘Rue Nicolas Appert’ on January 14, 2015 in Paris, France. – Marc Piasecki/French Select/Getty Images
US President Donald Trump wasn’t afraid to paint his enemies as guilty for Kirk’s murder.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in a video statement posted to social media in the hours following Kirk’s killing on September 10.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now,” he continued.
For Charlie Hebdo’s Biard, Kirk’s killing is inseparable from the gun violence that haunts American society and its politics. The legal tradition of each country no doubt also played its part. In France, he sees the threat of prosecution for hate as a guard rail for public debate. In the US’ absolute attachment to freedom of speech, he sees no such limit.
Attendees hold up Turning Point USA signs at the memorial service for political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium on September 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona. – Eric Thayer/Getty Images
Times have changed
In the 10 years that separate the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the shooting of Charlie Kirk, thinking around free speech has evolved.
In 2015, the idea of a French universalism around key Republican values wasn’t controversial, Arzoumanov said, and there was largely a consensus around freedom of speech.
Today, Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemy would be more contested by a France more wary of Islamophobia, Arzoumanov said.
It’s a question that troubles French Republican Party official Conquer, “If today Charlie Hebdo fell under the bullets of Islamist terrorists, would there by the same unanimous support et especially from the Left and Far-Left camps?”
Polling conducted by IFOP and the Jean Jaures Foundation last year in France, suggests 76% of French people view freedom of expression as a fundamental right, against 58% in 2012.
The polling indicates that just over 30% of those aged under 35 consider it unacceptable to say and caricature whatever one likes under the guise of freedom of expression, compared to just over 20% of those aged 35 and older.
For those coming of age post-Me Too, Black Lives Matter, even the war in Gaza, the right to offend, especially against minorities, is perhaps less cherished.
People visit a makeshift memorial for Charlie Kirk outside Turning Point USA headquarters on September 20 in Phoenix, Arizona. – John Locher/AP
Trump has loomed large over much of the last decade’s intense
political and social upheaval, and his influence can be seen in moves within corporate America to shut down voices considered unflattering to Kirk and his conservative views.
ABC’s decision to temporarily pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off air, a move for which Trump claimed credit, was the starkest example. The president’s threats to silence journalists and other commentators with whose views he disagrees suggest it may not be the last.
In France, some have set their compasses to Trump’s lodestar. Hochman has charted moves by French far-right media outlets like the far-right sympathetic CNews, part of the portfolio of
oligarch Vincent Bolloré, to seize on Kirk’s death to cloak France’s far-right in a cloak of victimhood, besieged by repressive limits on free speech.
Members of public the light candles in tribute near the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 10, 2015 in Paris, France. – Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
With the temporary silencing of Kimmel, some saw attacks on free speech as having come full circle.
Late night comedy is quintessentially American. The cutting, purposely offensive lampooning of French comic strips is typically French. They’re distant cousins of sorts.
“Dumb and nasty” is how the minds behind Hebdo sloganed their own magazine. Outrage was their fuel, piercing ridicule their objective. Kimmel, like his counterparts behind other late-night desks, has rarely held back from roasting the rich and powerful.
“What is important is that we get to live in a country which allows us to have a show like this,” Kimmel said as he returned to the airwaves Tuesday night.
For the director of Charlie Hebdo, known by his pen name “Riss,” who survived the horrific attack of 2015, there’s a message that is even more important.
“We don’t shoot people who don’t have the same opinion as us,” he told CNN.
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