Heart on Fire, Brain on Ice - thinking about the Charlie Hebdo massacre

I want to get up a couple of brief pieces which start to contextualise the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday, and the murder of its journalists and cartoonists - a process sorely needed given the media frenzy and the enormous paramilitary manhunt underway in France.  What is needed, now, in understanding and responding to what has happened, is that combination, to which Lenin so brilliantly referred, of 'the heart on fire and the brain on ice' - passion and thought, sympathy and analysis.

So here is Richard Seymour, taken from Jacobin but originally published yesterday at Lenin's Tomb:

On Charlie Hebdo

 

And here is Jeremy Harding at the London Review of Books: some of the comments on this blogpost are worth reading, too:

 

Heroic Obstinacy

 

Patrick Cockburn, taken from Counterpunch:

 

From Syria to Paris


Here is a good piece from an Australian blogsite:

The Problem With #JeSuisCharlie

And Diana Johnstone's excellent piece, also from Counterpunch:


What to Say When You Have Nothing to Say?


Conor