Ten years on and is France still ‘Je suis Charlie’?

Today marks ten years since two brothers walked into the office of Charlie Hebdo and shot dead most of the staff. It was punishment for the satirical magazine’s blasphemous treatment of the Prophet, according to the Islamist gunmen.

The murders shocked the West. Millions of French men and women gathered across the country four days later, and in Paris, world leaders stood alongside President François Hollande in a show of solidarity for the freedom of expression. ‘Je suis Charlie’ was on everyone’s lips.

Hollande was recently asked if the spirit of Charlie was still present in France. He conceded that it wasn’t as strong as he would like. ‘To be Charlie is to be free, to conquer fear,’ he said. Curiously, he then went off on a tangent, claiming that journalists’ freedom of expression in France in 2025 is endangered most by the ‘power of money…which doesn’t necessarily have the same conception of freedom of expression’.