Is this Charlie? Asterix comic highlights French anti-immigrant sentiment

The 87-year-old cartoonist who gave birth to iconic French comic hero Asterix came out of retirement to pen a cartoon in support of Charlie Hebdo, and that drawing went viral across the French-language Web Friday. The single-cell cartoon by Albert Uderzo quite literally illustrates some of the underlying anti-immigrant sentiment in French society  — a feeling expected to rise in response to the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent events in and around Paris this week.

The cartoon character Asterix is a symbol of French nationalism. A Gaulois — a sort of ur-Frenchman — Asterix helps to defend his little village from the occupying Romans, circa 50 BCE. In his latest cartoon, Uderzo has Asterix knock what appears to be a North African out of his babouche — the traditional slippers that for many are a symbol of North African culture. An anachronism, for sure, as Asterix’s time far predates the French colonization of Africa, but, following calls from some in France’s extreme right to expel Muslims altogether, this comic 1st century icon of the “France for the French” movement hits home for a segment of the 21st century French population.

The link between a fictionalized cartoon of a Roman-dominated Gaul to the aftereffects of a French-colonized North Africa might seem weak, but the trail of immigrants who followed the wealth and natural resources that colonialism transferred across the Mediterranean has proven a strong force in contemporary France.