The whole "everybody claim to be Charlie for 15 minutes" thing reminds me of Dean Ing's story, "Very Proper Charlies."
In the story, it was the terrorist (every terrorist) who was Charlie. With a cartoon depiction worthy of a Charlie Hebdo cover.
Mock them, deny their identity, pretend that their attacks failed utterly (and humiliatingly).
Still seems like a pretty cool idea.
Instead... well, look just how effective these attacks really are.
The mainstream press seems to have adopted a strict policy of never publishing anything that's in any way offensive to any group whatsoever. Except that, in practice, there's plenty of grossly offensive material expressing bigotry against, e.g., businessmen, Christians, the Tea Party, and many other groups outside the urban Democrat identity group. In short, it's perfectly fine to offend any group that isn't represented among your friends and that won't burn your offices down nor call you a racist.
(Take a moment to ponder the depictions of NRA members in the mainstream press. Now tell me: if the editors who decide to publish these things really believed them, would they be publishing them, when they so carefully censor anything that might possibly be offensive to actual terrorists?)
Meanwhile, as the ruling elite carefully makes excuses for terrorists, an alarming number of loudmouths are proclaiming that all Muslims are at war with us, and that, in order to survive, we must wage ruthless war against all of them.
I don't know about you, but to me the notion of going full Dalek on a significant fraction of humanity, for the offense of not renouncing the faith of their ancestors, is utterly repugnant.
(The crazy isn't limited to comment sections; it's coming to the attention of at least some portions of the public. Yesterday I spotted a Sikh wearing a baseball cap, something I hadn't seen since '02.)
C'mon, guys. We all know people who identify with religions that they don't follow all that fervently. The Christian for whom church is a social club; the Jew who can find fins and scales on a lobster; the Hindu who wears leather; the Linux user who has a Windows VM for running Word. They're... kind of the majority, aren't they?
So how are "Muslims" a monolithic group, all fanatical about every last word of the Koran? Yeah, so maybe the Koran says they have to be, but isn't that one of the easiest aspects to let slide?
As so many have noted these past several years - recently and notably, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi - Islam desperately needs a reformation in order to avoid a vastly destructive clash of cultures.
(Note that, in the absence of "leadership", ordinary Muslims can get along with others just fine. It's those leaders you have to watch out for.)
That reformation becomes all the more difficult if Western Civilization has announced its intention to eradicate Islam. It gives the radicals an external enemy. Well, we're already their external enemy, but proving them right about that seems counterproductive.
No, I don't have a solution to the big problem. But: actual terrorist groups need clobberin'. Incitement to terrorism should be treated as such, and not allowed to hide behind freedom of religion (any religion, and any flavor of terrorism). Distributed threats require distributed defense (when seconds count, the police are only minutes away, but the intended victims are already on the scene). And: ordinary people, of whatever faith (or of none, for that matter), must enjoy equal protection of the laws, and have the confidence to report criminal threats.
This last point is problematic with regard to two groups: ghetto-dwellers and immigrants.
Somehow, our society has come to tolerate the existence of ghettos where police don't go and the rule of law doesn't apply. There are black ghettos, Muslim ghettos, and rich-white-people gated ghettos. (There's even a Swedish ghetto not too far from here, but that's boring.) Within these enclaves, the strong rule as they please, and there's no protection for the weak or merely ordinary. When the ruthless have taken control, much of the population can be coerced into lawless conduct, against the outside world if that be the rulers' whim.
And, immigrants: Surely we've all heard the phrase, "Ve know you haff relatives living in Europe!" Whether it's the Nazis, the Mafia, or ISIS, a vast criminal enterprise with a stronghold where a lot of immigrants to your country have relatives has a lot of leverage, and your government can't do much to protect those relatives in the Old Country.
So, again: I don't have answers. It's a tangled knot of difficult problems, and anyone offering One Big Answer is a crackpot. This web of problems will require a web of partial, imperfect solutions... as does nearly everything in life.
But let's try to leave genocide off the table, shall we?
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