The motivations of the Charlie Hebdo killers matter

It is not enough to write them off as lunatics

(Image credit: (REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes))

The Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris has led to anguished debates about terrorism, immigration, Islam, and the future of secularism. Ezra Klein, however, has the weirdest angle I've seen, arguing that it is wrong to investigate the motives of the attackers, since doing so would implicitly legitimize their crime:

[T]his isn't about Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, any more than a rape is about what the victim is wearing, or a murder is about where the victim was walking... Allowing extremists to set the limits of conversation validates and entrenches the extremists' premises...These murders can't be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn't be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn't need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong. This is a tragedy. It is a crime. It is not a statement, or a controversy. [Vox]

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.