You're completely wrong there, Meech. Gotta say. And that's quite an impressive straw man if I've ever seen one.
For example I'll quote some Frenchman, who has a better knowledge of current affairs than myself, on these particular cartoons:
"Don't touch our (welfare) allocations!"
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This cover is mixing two unrelated elements which made the news at about the same time:
- Boko Haram victims likely to end up sex slaves in Nigeria
- Decrease of French welfare allocations
In France, as in probably every country who has welfare allocations, some people criticize this system because some people might try to game it (e.g., "welfare queens" idea). Note that if we didn't had it there would probably be much more people complaining because the ones who really need it would end up in extreme poverty.
Charlie Hebdo is known for being left-wing attached and very controversial, and I think they wanted to parody people who criticize "welfare queens" by taking this point-of-view to the absurd, to show that immigrant women in France are more likely to be victims of patriarchy than evil manipulative profiteers.
And of course if we only stay on the first-degree approach, it's a terrible racist and absurd cover.
As Adrien points out in his answer, it was neither the first nor the last time Charlie Hebdo used this kind of "satirical news mixing", and had no "preferred target".
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And here's another about a seemingly very racist cartoon:
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John Courouble
31 upvotes by Marc Bodnick, Peter de Vroede, Quora User, (more)
Thanks to everyone who has contributed - really important to get the truth out there to English-speaking audiences. There's one significant cartoon in the context of attitudes to Africans which I don't think anyone has addressed, so forgive me if I chip in.
In November 2013 a cartoon in Charlie Hebdo depicted the Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who is black (not literally African, specifically she was born in French Guiana), as a monkey. This has been a very popular image to share on Twitter as evidence that Charlie is a racist publication.
The first clue that all is not what it seems is that the cartoon was drawn by Charb - the editor himself. He was a Communist, and his girlfriend's parents were North African. A funny kind of racist. Next you have to note that the text next to that cartoon says "Rassemblement Bleu Raciste". This is a play on "Rassemblement Bleu Marine", the slogan of Marine Le Pen's national front, and the tricolor flame next to it is the party logo.
So, what you then need to know is that the cartoon was published after a National Front politician Facebooked a photoshop of the woman in the cartoon as a monkey, and then said on French TV that she should be "in a tree swinging from the branches rather than in government".
French Far-Right Politician Compares Justice Minister To Monkey
The cartoon is literally saying the National Front are racists. I'm genuinely not sure whether propagating the imagery is or isn't a useful way of mocking the FN, but turning an antifascist cartoon into evidence of racism based on no understanding at all takes some real pathology.
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I mean, had you even hear of Charlie Hebdo before this crisis? I hadn't. But I found it hard to believe that everyone supporting Charlie were ignorant to supporting a bunch of racist xenophobics and were simply blinded by martyrdom or whatever.
And, to me anyway, these don't sound like the ramblings of apologists. They sound like the opinions of French people who understand their culture, and this newspaper, better than any of us on OWF.