Whatever Became of ‘Je Suis Charlie?’

The world has forgotten how to stand in solidarity against terrorism.

Yesterday marked the 10 anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. For those who’ve forgotten, and for the increasing number too young to have a genuinely active memory, the events were as follows. Charlie Hebdo was a famously outrageous — and outraging — French satirical magazine. One might compare it to Babylon Bee, but such a comparison only works for a Babylon Bee pumped up with steroids. Indeed, the best comparison for today’s The American Spectator readers might be a “roid rage” version of the Bee. Therein lay its almost indefinable appeal, its “je ne sais quoi,” a bull in china shop commitment to destroying all manner of everyday political and cultural pieties. Its values weren’t mine 10 years ago, nor are they mine today, but their breathtaking — and often hysterical — contempt never failed to provoke at least a rueful chuckle, sometimes a belly laugh, usually followed by a kind of guilt — did I really find that funny? Many didn’t, not least those of a radical Islamist persuasion, ready to be offended when Charlie Hebdo satirized the prophet Mohammed. On the morning of Jan. 7, 2015, two such critics armed themselves and charged into the magazine's offices with AK-47s — so much for the vaunted European gun control measures — and expressed their editorial concerns by massacring 10 magazine staffers, as well as a guard, a maintenance worker, and a sadly unfortunate visitor. Leaving the premises, they encountered a police officer, himself a Muslim of North African descent, and murdered him as he lay wounded on the street. Two days later, the two attackers were run to ground and, after a day-long siege, killed by members of GIGN, the premier French counterterrorism unit. Two days after that, more than 40 world leaders and millions of ordinary Frenchmen gathered in Paris and across France to show their solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo victims. These included Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin...