Charlie Hebdo editor: Cartoons only 'shock those who will want to be shocked'
Charlie Hebdo Editor in Chief Stéphane Charbonnier, who was killed Wednesday in a terror attack on the magazine's office in Paris, defended the publication's cartoons in a 2012 interview with The New Yorker by saying the images will only "shock those who will want to be shocked."
In another 2012 interview, this one with Le Monde, Charbonnier expounded further on the subject.
"I don't feel as though I'm killing someone with a pen," he said. "I'm not putting lives at risk. When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it."
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Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.