Je Suis Charlie

In answer to why we have put the posters in our window with Je suis Charlie.

We must stand firm in defense of free speech.  It is one thing to not sell or read or ally ourselves with what we see as destructive imagery or language, it is another to say nothing when there is a fundamental attack on free speech. Book Culture is in the publishing business and as such we are obligated, without equivocation,  to support that right.
We are not defending "Charlie Hebdo"  or any idea or publication no matter how offensive or acceptable to us. We are defenders of the right to free speech.
Standing for the rights of only ourselves, our views of what is acceptable, proper, meritorious or warranting the right to publication, is not standing for the right at all. We are committed enough to stand up for the right to free speech for others. This is the commitment we must make if we are to uphold free speech as a right.

It is perfectly right and just that somewhere at the far edges of decency where Charlie Hebdo and super right wing literature exists we find ourselves deeply offended. We can see the devastating effect that inciting anger can have in Rwanda or Bosnia or Nazi Germany for example and we can make sense of the idea that some of this stuff ought to be censored.

But it is only in those places where censorship has won that day that we see the awful results of living in a place where the fundamental rights are not guaranteed to all. Every genocide in history has come in a land without the right to free speech.

We stand with Charlie Hebdo now because free speech has been attacked, and those attackers are asking for our complicity.

 

Je suis Charlie, means we believe in democracy, human rights, the right to dialogue and the power of ideas and writing over violence and coercion. Je suis Charlie, means that we will not review the content of our book shops to ensure we are not offending someone. Je suis Charlie, means that as coworkers in the business of publishing and  books we support, above the ideas themselves, the right of those ideas to be published. Je suis Charlie means that we're booksellers and it's a badge of honor. I say- where it well.

In 1988 Salmon Rushdie had published Satanic Verses in England and was almost immediately condemned and threatened with death because in an Ayatollah's view it was blasphemy. Penguin in New York almost withdrew the publication and when it was eventually published the major chains and many smaller bookselling outlets didn't offer to sell the book because they were afraid. Many indie booksellers including the founders of your shops,  did sell it. Because we were one of the few outlets that did, we put a mountain of 500 copies in the front of the store and sold 800 copies in a weekend because people didn't want to be threatened and have their rights infringed upon. Another of the stores that did in Berkeley, Cody's, was bombed. The question of offensiveness in the book was without question.