A month following the terrorist attacks in Paris we have got diverse material, enough to draw up a summary of how those tragic events reverberated in Bulgaria, and how media and the political class made use of them.

In the first hours following the massacre in the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, Bulgaria acted more or less the same like the rest of the globe echoing the slogan Je suis Charlie.Journalists, politicians and social networks were unanimously indignant with the cynical commentary of a journalist who exclaimed in a Facebook post, “The French were asking for this with their excessive tolerance!”

As time went by however, many commentators and audience have been losing their Charlie quality especially after they learned more about Charlie Hebdo‘s mockery of key Christian figures apart from its mockery of Islam. Public opinion broke down into liberals and conservatives depending on whether and how much freedom of speech should be limited. At the end of the day, the conservatives agreed that Charlie was asking for the tragedy, and had got it.

Later on, media saw an increasing number of speakers with ultranationalist and populist rhetoric instigating fears from Syrian migrants, the potential bearers of Islamic fundamentalism. While politically responsible western policy-makers accentuated efforts to avoid the amalgam of Islam and terrorism, in Bulgaria a party leader was explicit that the party of the local Turkish minority, DPS, was “as dangerous as the Kouachi brothers in France”, and that Roma Gypsies were potential terrorists as they would easily switch from one religion to another.

Over the past two weeks, brainworkers and university professors have become more vocal media-wise. Their appearances have highlighted the “civilizationist” position that Europe had fallen victim to multiculturalism and excessive liberalism in treating differences and that it should return to its Christian roots and civilizationist mission especially as it faces the retrograde and dangerous Islam.

At the end of the day, the right and left did not display great differences, and it is justifiable to raise the question why – despite open acceptance of European and Atlantic values – the Bulgarian society is still away from the political culture of advanced democracies?

English Daniela Konstantinova