France’s 9/11?

New York, Sept. 11, 2001 — Paris, Jan. 7, 2015: Everything differs about the two events: the death toll, the methods used, the nationality of the terrorists, except for the essential, which is the symbolic nature of the targets and the universal nature of the targeted cities.

The comparison between New York in 2001 and Paris in 2015 is a bold one, but is it a legitimate one — if you go beyond emotion? On an objective plane, everything seems to separate these two tragedies: the number of victims, first of all — almost 3,000 on one side and 17 on the other — then the weapons used — hijacked airplanes on one side, weapons of war on the other — and finally the nationality of the terrorists — foreigners, in the case of the United States, men born in France with French ID papers in the French case. If we want to make a comparative analysis, wouldn’t we be better off looking for analogies with London in 2005 — British citizenship of the terrorists — or Bombay in 2008 — the type of weapon used and the individualized and cold-blooded murder of the victims?

Everything, then, seems different between Sept. 11, 2001 and Jan. 7, 2015, everything except for the essential — that is to say, the highly symbolic nature of the targets and the universal character of the two cities attacked. Paris, just like New York, doesn’t just belong to its inhabitants or to its country. They are both universal capitals that belong to whole world. The two towers in Manhattan were yesterday’s symbol of triumphant capitalism; the Charlie Hebdo newspaper is the symbol of freedom of the press and freedom of expression — sometimes excessively. A drawing published on the Internet expresses the analogy between the two situations better than words ever could: two pencils rising into the sky like two towers, symbol of resistance and resilience in the face of fanatical attacks. Indeed, in both cases, it’s about an attack on our values, and in reality, an “attack against civilization.”

“We are all Americans” was Le Monde’s headline the day after Sept. 11. “Je suis Charlie,” proclaim today many citizens of the world in sign of solidarity with the murdered journalists. In a highly symbolic gesture, President Barack Obama paid an in-person visit to the French embassy in Washington to sign a book of condolences, ending his gesture with a resounding “Vive la France!” And yesterday in Paris, it was the entire world that was symbolically united against terrorism.

In the days following the attacks against New York and Washington, America gave the world a lesson in unity, courage and dignity, even if it later committed the error of throwing itself into costly and not very convincing military endeavors in Afghanistan, and then, Iraq. In particular, in the wake of Sept. 11, there were no significant attacks against the Muslim population in the United States.

France, just like America, needs to display unity, dignity and responsibility, and not just in the short term, under the influence of emotion. Refusing conflation, as even Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Front, did last week, is a good sign — even if it was then diminished by a series of small political maneuvers coming from all sides, but we must not bury our heads in the sand. All the ingredients exist in France for a dangerous downward spiral. A large Muslim community, problems with integration, a Jewish community traumatized by yet another murderous attack targeting it specifically, very powerful populist parties, a contested power, scars from a colonial past that are still present, and even more, an unemployment rate for young people that is particularly significant. To defeat terrorism and its deliberate will to divide French people and set them against each other, citizens of the Muslim faith, like everyone else — the moderates of the extremists — France will need a sense of responsibility and determination from all its citizens, especially as we may be on the eve of a series of attacks planned against the European countries as a whole, Paris having been just a highly symbolic starting place before other targets, like Berlin or Rome.

In their confusing mix of professionalism and amateurism, those responsible for the attack on Charlie Hebdo, against police officers and Jews of France, are perhaps in fact the harbingers of a new form of terrorism. It’s no longer the hyperterrorism of Sept. 11 in New York, which has thankfully stayed an instance that is singular in its monstrosity and hasn’t happened again. It’s something else, a mix between nihilistic terrorists whose only goal is to destroy, and more political terrorists who are driven by a plan, even if it, too, is perfectly irrational. In this confusion of genres, it fits to add a competitive race to radicalism between several historic channels, in the vein of al-Qaida, and more recent incarnations, in the vein of Daech. Each wants to live at the other’s expense, and we have become the hunting ground in their morbid exploits. The more terrorists seem to know us and understand us — it’s not surprising, they are our rudderless children, and the choice of Charlie Hebdo as a symbolic target is the proof, just like the kosher supermarket — the more it is essential for us to understand them as well and to anticipate and get ahead of their evolution.

Over time, as always, terrorism can only lose — our culture of life will beat its culture of death — but it can still do us a lot of harm, especially if we divide ourselves. If we stay united, the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the police officers and the Jewish supermarket can constitute, for the France of today, for the Europe of tomorrow, an advantageous warning, a call to collective solidarity against the menace that must not kindle fear in us, but rather, determination.