The terrorist shootings in Paris have brought a new round of attention to issues of immigration, political polarization, religious discrimination and threats to global security. Scholars at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies are following the developments and talking about the attacks.

Cécile Alduy, is an associate professor of French literature writing a book on France’s far-right National Front political party and is an affiliated faculty member of FSI’s Europe Center. She is in Paris, where she wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazeera America and spoke with KQED’s Forum. 

David Laitin is a professor of political science and also an affiliated faculty member of The Europe Center as well as FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His co-authored book, Why Muslim Integration Fails: An Inquiry in Christian-Heritage Societies, examines Muslim disadvantages and discrimination in Europe.

Christophe Crombez is a consulting professor at TEC specializing in European Union politics. And Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC, is an expert on political terrorism.

How are Parisians reacting to the tragedy?

Alduy: The mood here is of grief, disgust, anger, and fear. We were all in a state of shock: a sense of disbelief and horror, as if we had entered a surreal time-space where what we hear from the news happening in far away places—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria—had been suddenly catapulted here, on our streets, in our everyday. The shock has given way to mourning. Lots of crying, swallowed tears and heavy hearts. But there’s also revolt and determination to not let that get to us and to not let it succeed in reviving internal wounds.

I was surprised by the spontaneous quiet demonstrations and collective mourning happening all over France: that people would go out rather than hide in spite of the fact that two heavy armed gunmen were on the loose. It was such a naturally humane, human, compassionate response. It was a real consolation to witness this getting together, this flame of humanity and solidarity braving the fear and silencing the silencers.  

What can we say about the brothers who allegedly carried out the attack?

Crenshaw: Apparently they are French citizens of Algerian immigrant origin, who had moved into the orbit of French jihadist networks some years ago. They were both known to French and American authorities, just as the 7/7 London bombers were known to the British police.  One had spent time in a French prison for his association with a jihadist network that sent young men to fight in Iraq, and the other is said to have recently trained in Yemen.  In that case, he would almost certainly have come into contact with operatives of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (known as AQAP).  AQAP is an extremely dangerous organization in Yemen and abroad.  The U.S. has regarded it as a number one threat for some time – this is the group that sent the infamous Christmas or underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009.  Its chief ideologue, the American Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in an American drone strike in 2012. The fact that the terrorists were two brothers also brings to mind the case of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston Marathon bombing.  

What are the cultural and societal implications of the shooting?

Alduy: The event highlights a menace that had been rampant, and duly acknowledged by the French government: that of French-born radicalized Muslims going to Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq to be trained as jihadist and then coming back to conduct terrorist attacks on French soil (this was already the case for Mohammed Merah, but he was not part of an Al-Qaeda cell and acted all alone, as did the man who attacked the Jewish Museum in Bruxells). The cultural and societal implication is that we are now talking of being a country at war, with al-Qaida recruiting among us our potential enemies. In other words, France has to come to terms with the fact that its own values, its own political system, and its own people have been shot execution style in the name of the jihad by our own children.

Explain the extent to which Muslims are disenfranchised and discriminated against in France.

Laitin: Our book documents that Muslims, just for being Muslims, face rather significant discrimination in the French labor market. We sent out CVs to employers, comparing two identically qualified applicants, one named Khadija Diouf and the other Marie Diouf. Both were from Senegalese backgrounds but were French citizens and well educated. Marie received a significantly larger number of “call backs.” From a survey, we know that controlling for race, for gender, and for education, Muslims from one of the two Senegalese language communities we study have much lower household income than matched Christians. We connect this finding to that of the discrimination in the labor market. In our book, we search for the reasons that sustain discrimination against Muslims in France. Here we find that the rooted French population prefers not to have Muslims in their midst, and not to have a lot of Muslims in their midst. Tokens are O.K.

Meanwhile, Muslims exhibit norms concerning gender and concerning public displays of religious devotion that are threatening to the norms of the rooted French. We therefore see a joint responsibility of both the French and the immigrant Muslim communities in sustaining what we call a “discriminatory equilibrium”.

Can these shootings be attributed to those inherent tensions?

Laitin: There is no evidence that this discriminatory equilibrium is in any way responsible for the horrendous criminal behavior exhibited in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. There is a viral cult that is attractive to a small minority of young Muslims inducing them to behavior that is inhuman. The sources of this cult are manifold, but it would be outrageous to attribute it to the difficulties that Muslims face in fully integrating into France.

How will the shootings affect the standing of right-leaning political parties that have been gaining traction?

Crombez: I think the shootings in Paris will provide a further boost to the electoral prospects of France's extreme-right, anti-immigrant party, the National Front. Opinion polls in recent months already showed that it could emerge as France's largest political party at the departmental elections in March – as far as vote share is concerned – and that the Front's candidate for the Presidency in 2017 is likely to make it into, but lose, the second round run-off with the candidate of the moderate right, as was the case in 2002. The shootings will only have improved the Front's chances. Even if the election results are consistent with the polls taken prior to the shootings, and the Front doesn't do even better than the polls predicted, the dramatic results are likely to be attributed to the shootings.

And the long-term political fallout?

Crombez: The effects will reverberate throughout Europe. But as time passes and the shootings become but a distant memory, the effects will disappear. I would draw a parallel here with what happened after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan in 2011. In the following months Green parties did very well in elections in Europe at various levels, but after a year or so that effect seems to have dissipated. I would expect this to be the case with the shootings also, except if there are more such incidents to follow.

Appeared in Stanford Report, August 29, 2014

A worrying spike in anti-Semitism in Europe is a stark reminder that prejudice against Jewish people is still a reality there today, say Stanford scholars. Anti-capitalism has been a particular source of anti-Semitism, according to Professor Russell Berman.

European leaders need to speak out more strongly against the escalation of anti-Semitism, a Stanford professor says.

"They should be willing to enforce the law," said Russell Berman, a Stanford professor of German studies and of comparative literature who is affiliated with the Europe Center on campus.

In recent weeks, slogans invoking anti-Semitism have been heard during European protests against the Palestinian deaths in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In France and Germany, synagogues and Jewish community centers have been firebombed. In Britain, a rabbi was attacked near a Jewish boarding school.

"Protesters who storm synagogues should be arrested and prosecuted. Too often police have shown a blind eye when political protests have transformed into anti-Semitic mob actions," said Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

He said that European societies in the long run have to find a way to grapple with their failed immigration policies and achieve more effective integration, he said. This includes more efficiently integrating immigrants into the cultural expectations of their new societies.

"Post–World War II Europe had as a core value a rejection of the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. Europeans have to develop a pedagogy that can pass that value on to the new members of their communities," said Berman.

Roots of hatred

The recent eruption of anti-Semitism in Europe has multiple causes, according to Berman. The continent's lagging economy, the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries and the ongoing Israeli and Palestinian conflict are large factors.

And as last year's European parliament elections revealed, right-wing extremism has grown across Europe, he said.

"The far right is historically a home of anti-Semitism wrapped in nationalism and xenophobia. Some of this development can be attributed to the ongoing economic crisis, but some is certainly also a reaction against what is sometimes called the 'democracy deficit' in the European Union," Berman said.

Some Europeans believe their national political life has been subordinated to a "transnational bureaucracy" in the form of the European Union, Berman said. He added that this breeds resentment, and one expression of that is anti-Semitism, which is coinciding with traditional European nationalism.

Berman added, "Clearly this does not apply to all Muslims in Europe, but it has become an unmistakable feature in those population cohorts susceptible to radicalization as a response to a sense of social marginalization."

In Europe, immigrant populations are often clustered in de facto segregated neighborhoods, forming a parallel society, Berman said.

"While policies of multiculturalism have in the United States often contributed to productive integration, in Europe they have worked differently and undermined social cohesion. In that context, anti-Semitism has festered," he said.

Ongoing conflicts in the Middle East have also fanned the flames of European anti-Semitism, Berman said. Meanwhile, protests did not arise in Europe when Muslims and Christians were massacred in recent months in Syria and Iraq.

"A year ago, one could still make an at least conceptual distinction between anti-Zionism [criticism of Israel] and anti-Semitism [hatred of Jews]," he said.

The events in the past months in the streets of Europe have erased that distinction, Berman said.

"The politics of criticizing Israel have been fully taken over by anti-Semites, whether from the traditional European far right, the extremist left or parts of the immigrant communities," he said.

Anti-capitalism, economic downturns

When the European economy soured, leaving many young people unemployed at a time of surging globalism – all against a "residual" communist backdrop that still exists in parts of Europe – anti-Semitism was the result, according to Berman.

"That inherent anxiety and free-floating animosity in Europe turns into hostility to minorities," he said. "It can generate both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudices, but anti-capitalism is today, as it has been historically, a particular source of anti-Semitism."

Berman calls this left-wing anti-Semitism – the targeting Jews as the symbols of capitalism – which he says has a long history. "A socialist leader of the 19th century once called anti-Semitism 'the anti-capitalism of fools,' and that's part of what we still see today," Berman said.

Opportunity, education, the future

Amir Eshel, a professor of German studies and of comparative literature and affiliated faculty member of The Europe Center, said Europe needs to do a better job of integrating Muslim immigrants into their new societies. In particular, he said, more economic opportunities must be given to people from disenfranchised communities.

"Nothing is as important as giving people opportunities to make their lives better," said Eshel, the Edward Clark Crossett Professor in Humanistic Studies. He is also an affiliated faculty member at the Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Eshel points to important roles for the media and educational systems to play in clamping down on anti-Semitism. There are programs in place – International Holocaust Remembrance Day, for example – to remind people about the evil inflicted on Jews in Europe more than 60 years ago.

"What has changed is that young people are less biographically connected to these crimes of the past," said Eshel.

"When this happens, as the Holocaust drifts further in time, a certain sensibility arises that one should not be bound by the lessons of the past," he said.

Anti-Semitism in Europe, he said, is the worst he's seen or known about since the end of World War II. He's especially worried about the large numbers of Muslims from Britain and France who have joined the jihadist movements in places like Syria and Iraq.

"It's not going to be easy to track them if they return," Eshel noted, "and it'll be a challenge for many years in Europe."

Fear among Jews

History Professor Norman Naimark said that some French Jews are leaving the country because of ongoing anti-Semitic violence.

"Germany has also experienced an ongoing problem on both the extreme left and right, but there the authorities and the Jewish community seem to have the situation under control," added Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in Eastern European Studies.

Naimark, the director of the Stanford Global Studies Division and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, described European anti-Semitism as following an oscillating curve up and down, especially in times of Middle East crises.

"England seems particularly susceptible to these kinds of oscillations," he said.