RUTHFULLY YOURS

“The newspaper is no longer the same, Charlie is now under artistic and editorial suffocation.” — Zineb el Rhazoui, French-Tunisian intellectual and journalist, author of Destroying Islamic Fascism.

“We must continue to portray Muhammad and Charlie; not to do that means there is no more Charlie.” — Patrick Pelloux, another cartoonist who left the magazine.

“If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won.” — Elisabeth Badinter, philosopher, who testified in court for the cartoonists in the documentary, “Je suis Charlie.”

After the Kouachi brothers slaughtered Charlie Hebdo’s journalists, they ran out into the street and cried: “We have avenged Muhammad. We killed Charlie Hebdo.” Two years later, it appears that they won. They succeeded in silencing the last European magazine still ready to defend freedom of expression from Islamism.

Over twenty years, fear has already devoured important pieces of Western culture and journalism. They all disappeared in a ghastly act of self-censorship: the cartoons of a Danish newspaper, a “South Park” episode, paintings in London’s Tate Gallery, a book published by the Yale University Press; Mozart’s Idomeneo, the Dutch film “Submission”, the name and face of the US cartoonist Molly Norris, a book cover by Art Spiegelman and Sherry Jones’s novel, “Jewel of Medina”, to name just a few. Most of them have become ghosts living in hiding, hidden in some country house, or retired to private life, victims of an understandable but tragic self-censorship.

Only the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was missing from this sad, long list. Until now.

Political pollsters and pundits who were confounded by Brexit and by Trump’s win must now face yet another challenge to conventional wisdom: the stunning victory of François Fillon in France’s conservative primaries for the 2017 presidential election. Fillon embodies all that France’s socialist, secular, and moralist elite reviles: He is a Thatcherite, a devout Catholic, and a political realist. The fact that he won the primaries by a two-third majority is but another confirmation of the gap between elitist narratives and popular feelings.

A partially secularized Catholic country with mercantilist traditions and a reverence for the state (État is always spelled with a capital “e”), France has a cultural hostility toward Anglo-Saxon capitalism. As Margaret Thatcher was rescuing the British economy in the 1980s, France elected in 1981 the socialist François Mitterrand who increased taxes, government spending, and state ownership. As Germany’s (socialist) chancellor Gerhard Schröder cut taxes and slashed unemployment benefits in 2003, France made it illegal (in 2002) to work for more than 35 hours a week. When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he promised to catch-up with Germany and with Britain. Sarkozy did increase the retirement age from 62 to 65, but he turned out to be erratic and inconsistent, and the 2008 financial crisis deflated his reformist zeal.

The consequences are for all to see. Unemployment rates are 10.5% in France, 4.8% in Britain, and 4.2% in Germany. France’s GDP growth of 1.3% lies behind Britain and Germany’s 1.9%. While Germany has a budget surplus of 0.6% of GDP, France has a budget deficit of 3.3% of GDP. The French government overtaxes and overspends: government spending is 57.3% of GDP in France, 44.1% in Germany, and 43.8% in Britain.

François Fillon has been warning that France will be bankrupt and doomed if it does not get its acts together. His says he will curb public spending (he has committed to cut 500,000 government/civil service jobs), repeal the 35-hour limit on the working week, and trim a 3,000-page long labor code that discourages employment and repels foreign investors. The French left is up-in-arms against what it calls “ultra-liberalism” (whatever that means), but French voters seem to finally be willing to take their medicine and reverse their country’s decline.

Fillon’s economic platform was decried as too harsh (“ultra-liberal,” bien sûr) by his run-off contender in the conservative primaries, Alain Juppé. As for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, her economic ideology is hardly distinguishable from that of the far left: she reviles globalization and free-trade, wants to pull-out from the Euro, and would enroll the French state to subdue the market. François Fillon’s Thatcherite economics, therefore, makes him an outsider in France’s political landscape.

The Korean peninsula is always dangerous, but the next few months are especially so. An erratic, nuclear-armed North still covets prosperous South Korea, which is enduring a presidential impeachment crisis even as the U.S. is in a political transition. This is a moment for some supportive bipartisan U.S. diplomacy.

Prosecutors have accused a personal confidant of South Korean President Park Geun-hye of shaking down Korea’s giant chaebol conglomerates for $70 million with the help of government officials. The case could lead to much-needed reforms to curb the power of firms that behave more like feudal fiefdoms than modern corporations—an act of democratic hygiene.

But the scandal means that Ms. Park, who has taken a hard line against the North, will be preoccupied with political survival for the 15 months remaining in her term. Her approval rating is down to 4%, and hundreds of thousands are rallying each weekend in Seoul to demand her resignation. Impeachment votes may come soon, and members of her own party have said they’ll support her ouster.

The danger is that this could be a moment when the North’s regime thinks it can take advantage. Dictator Kim Jong Un is unpredictable at the best of times. But he and his military could misinterpret the noise of democratic debate and accountability in the South as a sign of weakness. Perhaps he might use the next round of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises scheduled for February as an excuse for an attack or land grab.

The isolated North may also mistake the U.S. political transition as an opening. In glib campaign moments this year, Donald Trump suggested that South Korea and Japan ought to be able to defend themselves and U.S. forces might come home. The President-elect has since walked that back, and in a postelection phone call with Ms. Park he confirmed that the U.S. will fulfill its treaty obligations to defend the South.

A public statement from the presidential transition, perhaps in league with the Obama Administration, is in order. The U.S. also needs to convey to China that any attempt to exploit the current moment would mean the end of the regime in the North and unification to the Chinese border. Beijing needs to convey that message to its clients in Pyongyang.

Not known for mincing words, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responded to the news of Fidel Castro’s death on Saturday by calling Cuba’s former leader “a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades,” whose legacy is one of “firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

He then extended a hand to the monster’s victims.

“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” he said.

It was a perfect statement, both in content and in tone, sharply contrasting the public expressions of mourning — even adulation — voiced by prominent left-wing and Islamist figures around the world, including in North America.

Take Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “deeply sorrowful” reaction, for instance. Calling Castro “a larger-than-life leader” and a “legendary revolutionary and orator,” Trudeau lauded him for making “significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation,” and said Castro’s supporters and detractors alike “recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people.”

Though the Cuban people are being forced by governmental decree to mourn their oppressor for nine days, it is doubtful that they remember “El Comandante” fondly. After all, their high literacy rates cannot make up for their abject poverty or lack of freedom to read what they choose. If anything, they envy those of their countrymen who escaped to the U.S., where they are flourishing financially and allowed to live their lives as they please.