This talk is drawn from a forthcoming book After Charlie Hebdo, that analyses the aftermath of the attacks in Paris in January 2015 as ‘Charlie Hebdo’, a transnational political and communicative event. It will focus on the ways in which the attacks were understood as an attack on free speech, and free speech, in turn, was framed as a defining European value. This framing was intensively contested in the storm of reaction and comment that took shape in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, positioning ‘Charlie Hebdo’ as a mediating object for a knot of political tensions, competing imaginaries and interpretative conflicts that have been taking shape in European public spheres for decades. While the insistence on the frame of free speech was met with charges of political hypocrisy, this talk takes a different approach, mapping out how the aftermath of the attacks produced divergent and often very different debates and conflicts over the question of freedom of speech. Understanding these divergences, the talk will suggest, is central to understanding why conflicts over freedom of speech are so prevalent in an era marked by communicative abundance.