France is marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 132 people and injured more than 400. Islamist gunmen stormed into the Bataclan concert hall and opened fire on 1,500 people during a night of coordinated attacks in which explosives were also detonated at the Stade de France. They were the “worst assaults” in France’s postwar history, said The New York Times, and “inflicted lasting damage on the nation”.
What did the commentators say?
The slaughter “forever changed the country and its politics”, said Politico, “tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favour of the latter”. A “slew of laws” were subsequently passed, including increasing the state’s “surveillance powers” and its “ability to impose restrictive measures” on its population.
Then president François Hollande called the attacks an “act of war” and declared a nationwide state of emergency. But that “legal framework” gave the government “the power to ban protests and deter other forms of activism”, said France 24.
Today, there will be “grief, poignancy and dignity” across France, said Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator. But there is also “delusion” among the “political elite”, because France "is not united; it is divided”. “Arguably,” said Andrew Hussey on UnHerd, “France has yet to fully reckon with the ideology that underpinned” the attacks.
This nation could have descended into hate, said French daily l’Opinion, but it has “held firm”, “clinging” to the slogan “you will not have my hatred”. A “litany” of subsequent attacks failed to trigger a witch-hunt against Arabs, just as the 13 November jihadists failed to “unite the Muslim community around them”.
What next?
Although Islamist terror remains a threat in the West, “much has changed” since 2015, said the BBC. The “disappearance” of Islamic State as a “major force” in Syria and Iraq means that the “wherewithal to conceive, plan and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished”. | 
