This is a case study in the truthy claptrap that's now standard in American subscription-driven journalism (as well as parochial American projection).

As we'll see, not only is the headline argument unsubstantiated, it's likely the opposite of true. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/europe/france-charlie-hebdo-slogan.html

The framing narrative (always captivatingly personal or tidily anecdotal) is around the person who made the 'Je Suis Charlie' motif go viral in the original anti-cartoon attack, and who now has misgivings about it. He asserts the piece's argument as a vague personal opinion.

Then (because we must entertain the journalistic tropes of fact-finding and scientism, which is why FB must censor that other thing but this is News), an academic sociologist is brought in who re-asserts the opening figure's opinion with another another off-the-cuff opinion.

The two assertions that France is now driven apart by a viral phrase have to be supported by something factual-seeming, lest the manipulation be too obvious: a micro-anecdote about an awkward moment in a Macron speech is plucked and cited. EXPLOSIVE.

A second sociologist is conjured whose work will constitute the only actual empirical facts about the thesis: it *shows the opposite of what's alleged*.

France became more tolerant after the attacks, not less.

If you click through to the studies, you'll note that France has broadly become more tolerant through the years, and in the polls cited, factors like Sarkozy's leadership were cited as the root cause for the attacks as much or more than anything else.

We must shift back to the simple narrative from empirical nuance, preferably with more captivating anecdotes that memorably place the author's opinions in the mouth of a source, transmuting opinion into 'news'.

This they do with the students in the slain teacher's class.

Voila. Via a unifying figure who frames the story, a couple of quotes and the careful avoidance of contrary evidence (hinted at but discarded in passing) we arrive at a clear impression in the reader's mind: French unity around their weird secularism is falling apart. Fin.