Deconstructing the Founding Myths of France's Greatness
by René Naba
Global Research, May 13, 2007
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This article is intended to struggle against the ideas carried by the
French Right and newly elected President Sarkozy's views and discourse.
It is an insight into French history and collective imagination, that
sheds a crude light on many aspects of this history and the way French
people see themselves and their country. More widely, it is a strong
attempt at questioning all national and historical myths in which
identities often entrench themselves.
The scene took place in June 1998, only eight years ago ? not such a
long time - one month before a great motley communion : the first
French victory at the Soccer World Cup, won by its multi-ethnic team.
At the end of a press conference, the then prospective successor of Mr
Jean-Marie Le Pen as head of the National Front [1], Mr Bruno
Gollnisch, exhibited his attaché-case and unveiled the secret code that
would unlock it, as if it had been a war trophy.
By definition, a secret code should remain concealed. One usually
treasures it as a sacred relic. Obviously, Mr Gollnisch does not : the
secret can be widely disclosed, especially if the disclosure is
intended to stigmatize or to gain a cheap and easy success. One?s
intellectual satisfactions reveal how well one is educated.
Striving for effect, he declaims his magic combination in front of his
audience, spelling out slowly each of the three digits, one after
another, finally coming to a liberating climax : 7-3-2. 732, he did not
spoil his effect. 732, the very year the Frank kingdom?s ruler Charles
Martel defeated the Arab troops of Abd-al-Rahman, near the present-day
town of Poitiers.
This battle was fought some 1266 years before Gollnisch?s press
conference. 1266 years chewing it over, which presumably points out
clearly the neophyte?s zeal. For 1266 years he has been chewing it
over, this « third generation Frenchman » ? this is how any grandchild
of immigrants may be designated in France, and Gollnisch?s grandparents
immigrated from Germany.
As I have been a wartime correspondent in the foreign theaters of
French operations, Gollnisch?s indecent display and the passiveness of
the journalists witnessing his vain and pointless performance triggered
a kind of impulse that drove me to embark upon a fascinating diving
deep into the abysses of the French conscience. Here I wish to disclose
my findings, which fit the topic of this seminar perfectly ? « From one
shore to the opposite : writing history, decolonizing memories » ? and,
to tell the truth, I am not particularly seeking to spark any polemic
by doing so.
Such an approach does not pertain to demagogy or any form of populism,
which ? let us be honest ? is the classic unfair-play accusation
opposed to such demonstrations. It is aimed at contributing the
semantic and psychological clarification of the post-colonial
discussion, by detecting and spelling out the unsaids of the national
conscience, in the course of a journey through the twists and turns of
the French collective imagination.
Neither populism, nor demagogy, nor even denigration. Rather, the
method of content analysis applied to observations which may well be
terse, but in no way summary nor simplistic. To sum up, this is a kind
of electroshock therapy, which reveals a people?s presuppositions, a
nation?s psychological springs and strings, and its leaders?
intellectual substratum.
Let us embark upon this journey, in the course of which we will
deconstruct the founding myths of France?s greatness. Many thanks to
Bruno Gollnisch, our unwilling and unknowing tour operator.
1/ The French panache, or the myth of greatness
My point is far more significant than it may appear a priori. It is
the very explanation of an undeniable reality : France?s last great
military victory happened 200 years ago. Yes, two centuries exactly. It
was the battle of Austerlitz (1805) [2]. Certainly, there was a series
of successes : first the battles of Valmy (1792) [3] and of Arcole
(1796) [4], then Austerlitz. In short, the French panache. And then ?
Nothing more... what a panache ! Then came Waterloo (1815) [5], an
English victory, Sedan (1870) [6], a German victory, and the Fachoda
incident (1898) [7], which definitely deprived France of any access to
the sources of the Nile in Sudan. To sum up : almost a century of
repeated military routs, which ? I admit ? were compensated for by the
colonial conquests, especially in Algeria. Thus, one may believe that
colonial expeditions can usefully make up for national disasters, and,
within the present-day discussion, that immigrants are an indispensable
diversion keeping the attention away from internal difficulties.
A hundred years after Waterloo, unlucky times apparently came to an
end with Verdun (1916) [8] and Rethondes 1st (November 11th, 1918, when
the armistice was signed by the Allies and Germany). But, actually, the
French did not overcome alone. They could not claim the exclusive
benefit of this victory. They had to share it, not only with their
British and American allies, but also with newcomers onto the
international scene : the « basanés » [9]. 550,449 soldiers from France?
s overseas took part in the French war effort, among whom 173,000
Algerians ? i.e twenty percent of the numbers, and ten percent of the
Algerian population. No less than 78,116 ultramarine soldiers died for
France, as many people as are now living in the towns of Vitrolles and
Orange in southern France, the political fiefs of the contemporary
French Extreme Right.
Such a connection may be considered sacrilegious, but, here again, it
matches the facts. On this account, Verdun is an Arab and African
victory as well as a French one. Certainly, the cannon fodder was
denied almost any worth as compared to the virtue of the High Command?s
strategists, but once again, the truth is quite the opposite. After
Verdun, many had believed naively that France was bound again to be
victorious. Well, no. The year 1940 and Rethondes 2nd (on June 21st,
1940, when France capitulated in Montoire) proved they had guessed
wrong. In 1944, the battle of Monte Cassino [10], the greatest French
victory in WWII, cleared France?s honour, but was actually a collective
achievement, which cost the lives of 100,000 Allied soldiers - and of
60,000 Germans. Out of 6,300 soldiers who died in the French ranks,
4,000 came from Maghreb, i.e, two out of three. Thus, Monte Cassino is
an Allied victory as well as a French, Arab and African one.
The pattern is identical as regards military achievements in the naval
field : the last French feat of arms ? very controversial - dates back
to 1799 in Abukir [11]. Then came Trafalgar (1805) [12], Toulon (1942)
[13], the missing propeller of the aircraft carrier « Charles de Gaulle
» during the war in Afghanistan (2001) ? the first war of the 21st
century ? and finally, in 2005, the erratic travel of the aircraft
carrier « Clémenceau », the former gem of the French warfleet. De
Gaulle and Clémenceau, surely two prominent figures of French history,
deserved a more substantial tribute.
Victorious when fighting side by side with its colonies? natives,
France fell defeated again when turning its weapons against them. The
French forces were annihilated in Dien Bien Phu (1954) against Vietnam
? the first time a Third-World country ever defeated a western one ? as
well as in Algeria (1954-1962).
2/ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity : the republican triptych as the
founding myth of French exceptionalism
a) Liberty
Colonization is the very negation of liberty, and anyway far from
embodying the definition that can be found in the most recent edition
(2007) of the popular French dictionary « Le Petit Robert » : «
developing and exploiting the country brought under colonial
administration » [14].
Freedom and colonization are proper antonyms, for colonization is the
very exploitation of a country : it entails the despoliation of its
riches and the enslavement of its population for the sole profit of the
Metropole, which actually only considers the colony as a captive
market, a raw materials warehouse, an outlet for its surplus population
and workforce, and the device for adjusting the unemployment and
inflation rates in the western societies.
Colonization is the gravedigger of the republican ideal, of the
founding principles of the French Revolution : Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity. It does not matter that prominent French figures like Leon
Blum (the moral conscience of French socialism) ever praised the
benefits of colonization, and presented it as a moral duty to grant
primitive peoples an access to civilization. [15]
Within the present-day discussion, Leon Blum?s rhetoric can be
compared with philosopher André Glucksmann?s, the new conscience of the
new French Left, the one who, in 2003, advocated the American invasion
of Iraq, arguing it was not an American attempt to grasp full control
of Iraqi oilfields, but a genuine western contribution to the
establishment of democracy in Arab land. « The White Man?s burden »,
conceptualized by the British author Rudyard Kipling [16], grants a
comfortable alibi, and was the recurring slogan the western world
parroted to justify each and every predatory undertaking.
b) Equality
The so-called « French exception » is a peculiarity. France was first
in turning terror into an institution and governing model thanks to
Maximilien de Robespierre during the French Revolution (1794), and in
1955 went further into enlightenment, inventing air piracy by hijacking
the plane that was carrying the historic chiefs of the Algerian
independence movement (Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohamad Khider, Mohamad Boudiaf
and Krim Belkacem) ? an action which gave Third-World?s activists ideas
for their own struggles towards independence.
France is a recidivist as regards peculiarity, which is a significant
feature of French exceptionalism. Indeed, this Jacobinic, egalitarian
and levelling country was also the sole mindless country ever to
engrave « the theory of the inequality of races » into law, giving
official and legal legitimity to what we may call « judiciary gobino-
darwinism » [17]. France did so to foster and advocate segregation, not
equality.
The « Homeland of Human Rights » and of modern legal compilations (the
civil code and the penal code) is also homeland to the codification of
discrimination and abomination. It is the country of the « Code Noir »
(the Black Code) legislating slavery under monarchy, of the « Code de l?
indigénat » (the Native code) in colonized Algeria under the Republic.
The « ethnological exhibitions » put the latter into practice, with
their « human zoos » [18] intended to engrave in the Third-World?s
peoples? collective imagination their inferiority as « coloured peoples
» and, symetrically, the superiority of the so-called white race, as if
white was not a colour. But it is ages since this « white » is not
immaculate anymore.
A single figure is enough to show how vain this principle of equality
is. In the last government of the Chirac?s era, led since 2005 by Prime
Minister Dominique de Villepin, three ministers have been in charge of
putting the equality principle into effect, via its derivations :
social cohesion (Mr Jean-Louis Borloo), equal treatment for women and
men (Mrs Catherine Vautrin), and promotion of the equal opportunities
principle for citizens both of French and immigrant origins (Mr Azouz
Begag).
And yet, equality is one of the principles on which the French
Republic is grounded, and it has been considered a common good for two
centuries. How come nobody ever thought about putting it into practice
before ? It seems that secularism, which is such a unique principle in
the world, has only been erected to hide the recurrent chauvinism of
the French society. The consolation prizes occasionally awarded not to
the most deserving but to the most obedient people do not soften this
discriminatory policy, but on the contrary they underline how much it
contradicts France?s universalist message. They threaten it with
serious backlashes.
c) Fraternity... not with anybody : the « bougnoule », a tale of
absolute ingratitude and absolute stigmatization
The battlefields of World Wars witnessed fraternization, but
fraternity never. No other country in the world has ever been indebted
so much to dark-skinned peoples for its freedom, and yet no other
country in the world has ever crushed his colonized allies so
compulsively, to whom it owes its survival as a great nation. By way of
fraternity, only stigmatization, discrimination and repression galore.
Twice in a single century, an utmostly rare phenomenon occurred :
these soldiers of vanguard ? vanguard of death and victory ? were
enrolled in conflicts to which they were completely foreign, quite in
the etymological meaning, in « white men?s quarrels », before being
thrown back into the darkness of inferiority, into their subordinate
condition, in what can be considered a cathartic process. No sooner had
they carried out their military duties than they encountered strong
repression, maybe as a reward for their contribution to France?s war
effort. Such repression was too recurrent to be a coincidence : it
happened in Sétif (Algeria) in 1945, cruelly the very day the Allies
won WWII, then in the camp of Thiaroye (Senegal) in 1946 [19], and in
Madagascar in 1947 [20].
It must be noticed, as regards the British Empire, that the
ultramarine contribution to its war effort involved WASP (White Anglo-
Saxon Protestant) people from Anglo-Saxon countries (Canada, Australia,
New Zealand) and dark-skinned people from other countries (India,
Pakistan, etc.) in similar numbers. India and Pakistan became
independent in the immediate aftermath of WWII, in 1948, contrary to
French colonies (Algeria, Indochina), where France embarked on ruinous
colonial wars that were to last for ten years.
The insult « bougnoule » stems from a slangy ante mortem supplication,
« Aboul Gnoul », meaning « get me the alcohol », the potion that
spurred soldiers to attack. Sadly led astray, this ultimate claim, a
prelude to sacrifice, was to become the very mark of absolute
stigmatization towards those who paradoxically put their lives at risk
twice, hugely contributing to defeating the oppressors of their own.
In French literature, the ordeal of their depersonalization and their
struggle for restoring their identity and dignity are hardly mentioned
tersely : « ? bougnoule ?, a masculine noun that was first used in
1890, means ? black ? in Wolof (the Senegalese dialect). Initially
employed in Senegal by some whites to refer colloquially to the black
natives, this noun came to be used among Europeans of North-Africa to
designate the North-Africans insultingly. Synonymous with ? bicot ? and
? raton ? [21] » [22]. Subject to a progressive shift in meaning, the
word « bougnoule » came to encompass France as a whole ? well beyond
North-Africa alone - including all « melanoderm people », either Arab-
Berber or Black-African, finally casting anchor in the abysses of the
French conscience as the indelible mark of an absolute disdain, while,
derived from its synonymous « raton » in a parallel evolution, the word
« ratonnade » became widely used to designate a method of police
repression against « facies offenders » [23].
Thus, « bougnoule » came to throw indiscriminately into the same
infamy each and every wog (« métèque » in French) of the Empire, the
rank and file of the Republic, promoted to casual defenders of the
homeland, of which they were yet the actual and essential defenders. A
homeland which has always claimed to be unique among the chorus of
nations, and indeed distinguished itself, often brightly, sometimes
hideously. A homeland which is still carrying, like millstones from the
past, the Vichy regime, Algeria, the policies of collaboration,
underhand denunciation, deportation and torture ? the shameful pages of
its history. A homeland which has been trying for decades to expurgate
its own past and whose moral magisterium has been seriously faltering
for a while, for those dark pages have not been acknowledged soon
enough...
A posthumous revenge for the « bougnoule », in a way.
d) France and the republican triptych : an ethnocentric outlook upon
the exogenous phenomenon
My point hereafter may seem peremptory or partial, but actually
matches the historical reality : the clannish division [24] of the
French society was born in the minds of the host country?s authorities
and citizens well before it first settled in the immigrants? minds.
Now let us shift from the colonial pattern to the French society ; in
France, the immigrant has long been considered a native ? thus he was
paradoxically a native in the eyes of the etymologically real natives
[25]. He was considered a mere servant from the lower level of
workforce, who had a duty of gratitude towards the host country, for
his expatriation granted him livelihood.
Of humble extraction, appointed to subaltern and disdained laborious
tasks, confined to underprivileged suburbs, the immigrant was both
defined as and destined for remaining in the margins of the society,
and never becoming a genuine part of it. Thus he had no right to be
mentioned, nor to express his wishes, let alone to speak his mind and
opinions.
The immigrant has been all the more hushed up as he became the
scapegoated culprit for each and every French diplomatic and economic
failure in the 1950s ? 1970s. The bitter defeat in Dien Bien Phu (1954,
in Indochina), the war in Algeria, the Franco-British expedition
reaching for the Suez Canal (1956) with the intention to weaken
President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the godfather of Arab nationalism, the
clash of Bizerte (1961) [26] and the decolonization of Africa,
the third Israeli-Arab war (June 1967), the first oil crisis (1973),
are a few of many events that resulted in diabolizing the immigrant,
especially if « Muslim-Arab », in the eyes of the French.
In those times, the Arab became the figure of « absolute evil », as a
kind of counterbalance, not only in the collective imagination but also
in the field of intellectual production. The common language had a
bragging and contemptuous expression for this : « let us have the
bougnoule work until his burnoose sweats » [27].
Through this optical trick, France was lured into believing in its
revenge over its setbacks in Algeria, and through active philosemitism,
into believing in its own redemption. That way, France only replaced
judeophobia by arabophia, a wrong by another wrong, and acted as if
ignoring that injustice cannot fight nor undo injustice.
A symptom of such a state of facts, the « Harki » [28], the very one
who should typify the good Arab or the good immigrant in the French
mental patterns, for he fought on the French side, that is the good
side, was dissimulated and secluded in the arid nooks of France, in a
symbolic process intended to repress this « garbage of colonialism »
into the depths of the national conscience, and finally to erase it
completely.
Within the national scope, the French clenching - and self-entrenching
into - their identity actually dates back to the first waves of
immigration from the Muslim-Arab ensemble ? mainly from Maghreb ? and
more precisely to WWI. With 1.4 million dead and 900,000 wounded,
France suffered an 11-percent loss of its working population, not to
mention economic damage : 4.2 million hectares devastated, 295,000
houses crushed to ruins, 500,000 others damaged, 4,800 kilometers of
railways and 58,000 kilometers of roads to repair, 22,900 factories to
rebuild, and 330 million cubic meters of trenches to fill in.
The first immigrant workers, Kabylians, came to France in small groups
in 1904, but WWI boosted the phenomenon, for the country had to resort
en masse to « colonial workers », and then also to the reinforcements
of the « colonial soldiers » back from the battlefield, who were not
listed in the same category.
The remote native gave way to the neighboring immigrant. First an
exotic curiosity exhibited in human zoos to glorify France?s colonial
enterprise, the « melanoderm » progressively became permanent data in
the French human landscape, perceived as a constraint ? a perception
fostered by the immigrants? and metropolitans? differing ways of life,
and by the host country encountering economic fluctuations and
political uncertainties.
Quite paradoxically, during the interwar period (1918-1938), France
promoted the setting up of a « Xenophobic Republic » [29], the matrix
of Vichy?s ideology and of the idea of « national preference », while
its need for workforce was glaring. Although they were hugely
contributing to rebuild the country out of its ruins, the immigrant
workers were subject to suspicion, watched and trailed in a big «
central file ».
So as to get a residence permit, they had to pay a tax that sometimes
amounted to half their monthly wages ? an extra profit for the French
state. Moreover, they were regarded as a triple peril : an economic
peril for the French workers? jobs, a security peril for the state, and
a sanitary peril for the French population, insofar as foreigners
(especially Asians, Black-Africans and Maghrebis) were alleged to
spread germs and diseases.
Up to almost 200,000 « colonial workers » were to be imported from
Maghreb, and whole Africa, by true slave-trading corporations, like the
« Société générale de l?immigration » (SGI, i.e « General Company of
Immigration »), so as to make up for French workers who had been
mobilized and sent to war, mainly from the construction and textile
industries. Among all immigrant workers, who first had come mainly from
Italy and Poland, the Maghrebis were particularly watched over by the
authorities.
On March 31st, 1925, they set up a « Bureau of surveillance and
protection of North-African natives, responsible for suppressing crimes
and offences » [30]. This special office, exclusively dedicated to
watching over the Maghrebis, was the blueprint for the « Bureau of
Jewish Affairs » (« Bureau des Affaires Juives ») set up in 1940 by
Vichy?s government, so as to put French nationals belonging to the «
Jewish race » or the « Jewish denomination » under surveillance during
WWII.
The very name of this Bureau is eloquent as regards the French
government?s opinion and intentions towards the « North-African natives
». The trend went on growing during WWII and the Trente Glorieuses
(1945-1975), for the following colonial wars mobilized more cannon
fodder, while at the same time the reconstruction of Europe urged for
even more cheap and abundant workforce. This was to result in an
immigration wave as important as the previous one.
So exquisitely refined was the recruitment, that it was done according
to criteria of affinities, so much that it resulted in true « migratory
couples », most notably Renault and the Kabylian workforce,
Charbonnages de France [31] and workers from South-Morocco, as well as
Volkswagen and Turkish immigrants in Germany.
As if priced like cattle on a livestock market, the colonial workers
were even subject to quotation, according to their nationality and «
race » [32], which subtly distinguished people depending on their
origins, especially as regards Algerians, among whom the Kabylians
benefited a more positive prejudice than the other categories
constitutive of the Algerian population. A Kabylian invariably got a 5
(on a 20-point scale), an Arab a 4, and an Indochinese a 3. Having
witnessed such a bitter humiliation while staying in Paris, Hô Chi Minh
got his revenge thirty years later, by inflicting on his country?s
former colonizer one of the most humiliating military defeats ever
encountered by a western power, at Dien bien Phu in 1954.
Though silent, the wounds of history never heal.
France readily passes itself off as revolutionary, but actually proves
deeply conservative. The country of the republican triptych has at
length threatened freedom through colonization, adopted an ethnocentric
outlook, and weakened the society through its socio-cultural and
demographical structuring.
3/ The myth of the French « Arab policy »
The conformist director and editorialist of the self-allegedly
anarchist weekly Charlie-Hebdo, Mr Philippe Val, imputes Vichy?s anti-
Jewish policy of collaboration to « France?s Arab policy ». This modern-
time memorialist, who considers himself a present-day rival of the
Cardinal de Retz [33], thinks such a dubious and anachronistic
connection can dissimulate how recurring antisemitism has been in the
French society in the course of the last centuries.
Short of crediting Arabs with an astonishing clearsightfulness verging
on ultimate machiavelism, bribing the French General Staff so as to
lure them into having a French officer of Jewish faith (Captain Alfred
Dreyfus) convicted with high treason and condemned, or ? why not ! ?
corrupting and rotting France?s political and military leaders so as to
savour the collapse of 1940, one has to admit and state that
antisemitism existed in France long before the Muslim-Arab immigration
began.
The most important flood of Arabs and Muslims to France occurred
during WWII, purposed to contribute to the war effort against the Nazi
yoke and to defending a country the inhabitants of which could not, did
not want to, or did not know how to defend it - it was not purposed to
« steal the bread from the French? mouths ». That is to say it occurred
almost fifty years after the Dreyfus Affair, but right after the
capitulation in Montoire.
And, for all I know, the « Bureau of Jewish Affairs » was designed
after the blueprint of the « Bureau of surveillance and protection of
North-African natives », created in 1925 without the least protest on
the part of the French, maybe at that time too absorbed in
contemplating their own superiority glorified by the « human zoos ».
Philippe Val?s thesis does not stand a moderatly serious analysis. But
who would ever claim that Philippe Val is an analyst ? What is more,
that he is serious ? Nevertheless, his thesis pertains to doctoring
history, to an underhandly anti-Arab revisionist approach.
A policy may only be assessed in the long run. Put to the test of
facts, France?s Arab policy ? a sacred dogma if there ever was one ? at
times proves a vast mystification, a mere selling point of the French
militaro-industrial complex. Let us judge from history, our most
reliable witness. The Arabs massively contributed to the French war
effort in 1914-1918, within the reconquest of Alsace and Lorraine. They
got nothing in return, except France expressing its gratitude twenty
years later in a quite particular manner... by handing the Syrian
district of Alexandrette [34] over to Turkey (in 1939), a WWI enemy.
In the immediate aftermath of WWII, France ? definitely a recidivist ?
crushed the first separatist demonstration of Algerians, in Sétif, on
the very day of the Allied victory (May 9th, 1945). In retrospect, this
repression was to be considered an aberration, doubtlessly unique in
the world history, which still has some impact nowadays.
Ten years later, in 1956, together with Israel and the UK, France
embarked on a « punitive raid » against President Nasser, guilty of
having attempted to get back Egypt?s sovereignty over its sole
important national asset, the Suez Canal. What a curious team such an
alliance was, gathering the survivors of the Nazi genocide (who were
many among the Israelis) and France, one of their former butchers,
which had been an anteroom of the extermination camps under Vichy !
A curious team, but for what struggle ? Against whom ? Against Arabs,
precisely those who had been widely appealed to during WWII in order to
defeat the Nazi regime ? i.e the occupier of France and the butcher of
European Jews, among whom survivors widely immigrated in the new
founded Israel right after the war.
Unless it is another subtle form of the French exception, one would
have dreamt of a more appropriate expression of gratitude.
Very concretely, France?s Arab policy after the Six Days war (June
1967) historically consisted in restoring the national sovereignty in
the decision centers of French political power, by loosing the
relationships between the French and Israeli intelligence services, for
they were until then close and interlinked to the point it had become
detrimental to the French national interests.
Some of you probably remember that, at the time, the chief of the
Israeli military purchase commission had an office at his disposal, not
in the Israeli embassy but in the very French Ministry of the Army
[35], which was directly adjacent to the office of the Minister?s Chief
of Staff. Such a proximity, verging on promiscuity, was unprecedented,
even in the French colonies.
Some of you may also still have in mind the joint implication of the
French and Israeli intelligence services in the daytime abduction in
1965 of Mehdi Ben Barka, the charismatic chief of the Moroccan
opposition, right in the middle of Paris, or the five patrol boats the
Israelis stole in Cherbourg in 1969, a theft that remains so far the
most concrete expression of the French intelligence?s benevolent
passivity ? if not connivence ? when confronted to such Israeli bold
coups de main.
Bringing an end to an 11-year severance of diplomatic relationships
due to the Suez expedition, and after two decades of military
tribulations in Indochina and Algeria, its overtures towards the Arab
countries in 1967 earned France a renewed prestige, the capture of oil
markets - especially in Iraq, the UK?s former private domain robbed by
France in what was the major breakthrough of the French post-1950s
diplomacy initiated by President De Gaulle ?, as well as tremendous
military contracts amounting several hundreds million dollars,
particularly with Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia.
A flagrant expression of the inequal treatment of French and Arabs was
seen upon the first oil crisis in 1973. At that time, France was
officially the Arab world?s closest partner, officially excepted from
the boycott depriving the western countries of cheap oil, the main
beneficiary of the oil boom and of the contracts with oil monarchies.
This notwithstanding, the French clung on their xenophobia, on a
behaviour guided by a psychorigid nostalgia for greatness.
Everyone still has in mind the humorous shafts of that time, when the
French revelled in compensating their country?s lack of natural
resources with an alleged intellectual superiority, displaying their
pride for « not having oil but ideas ». One may decipher this turn of
phrase as follows : « no gas, but the quintessence of spirit » - such
humour was underlied by the reigning Arabophobia at a time when the
Muslim-Arabs were pilloried for having dared make the French freeze
stiff with their damned energy crisis. While the oil prices had
outrageously favored the western economies for years, their rise was
perceived as a crime of lèse-majesté, although it was actually a mere
adjustment.
The contradiction between the French diplomacy?s well-disposed
attitude towards pan-Arab ambitions and the French public?s narrow
clinging to its identity already resulted at the time in the highly
problematic incoherence ? yet to be removed ? of France?s policy as
regards the Muslim-Arab fact.
French universalism has practiced a « minorities policy » towards the
Muslim-Arab world, in full contradiction with its funding principles.
It has institutionalized and manipulated the denominational and
clannish [21] structuring, utilizing the Maronites (in the Levant) and
the Kabylians (in the West) as a tool for rechristianizing the southern
shore of the Mediterranean, prohibiting the Algerians from speaking
their national language in their own homeland, inflicting on this
country a more severe wound than the devastation brought by 130 years
of colonization : damage of the spirit ? i.e acculturation -, the
effects of which endure nowadays, and largely explain the recurrent
crises affecting the relationships between France and Algeria.
All this is also part of this French « Arab policy ».
4/ France, love it or leave it ? the myth of the French excellence
This slogan has not even the merit of being original. It was first
coined by Ronald Reagan, Rambo-style President of the United States in
the eighties (1980-1988), who intended his turn of phrase to thwart the
criticisms that rose against the American adventurism in the post-
Vietnam war period (1975-1980). This slogan was borrowed for vote-
catching purposes by Philippe De Villiers, the leader of the French
traditionalist Right, and then taken up by... Nicolas Sarkozy, this «
second generation Frenchman» as the hallowed French expression has it
to designate citizens whose parents were immigrants from the Third-
World.
Cloning America is no sign of originality.
France?s « basanés » are well and truly here, durably settled in the
French political and social landscape, they, who have never been
solemnly praised for their « positive role », which is at best
incidentally mentionned when not plainly impugned or denied.
They, who live in France, their chosen ? not host ? country.
They, who are determined to advocate and defend the high opinion of
itself that France wants to spread worldwide, determined to struggle
against all those who weaken the economy through their hazardous
administration, all those whose controversial connivance brings
politics into disrepute, all those who pollute France?s image by dint
of fictitious jobs and fictitious responsibility, of secret commissions
and « frais de bouche » [36], of insider tradings and abuses of public
property. [37]
Against all those Misters of Taïwan?s frigates and Clearstream, of the
Crédit Lyonnais and the Compagnie Générale des Eaux, of Elf-Aquitaine
and EADS, of Executive Life and Pechiney American-Can, of the markets
of the Ile-de-France region, of the HLM [38] of Paris, of the MNEF and
Urba-Gracco.
Against all those who depreciate their Justice system by dint of
Outreau Affairs [39], of illegal phone tappings, of « waste sorting »
to select the « good » immigrants and the friend countries, of «
shameful charter flights » [40].
Against all those who depreciate their nationals by dint of «
bougnoule » and « ratonnades », « racaille » and « Kärcher » [41].
Against this « grassroots France » [42] who rules the country, this
France of mean manoeuvres and scabrous schemes, of « lawless zones »
[43] and favours, of appointments by connections and tied
accomodations.
Against this France who refuses even a slight raise of the legal
minimum salary (« SMIC »), who « crystallizes » [44] the pensions of
the « basanés » among the French army?s veterans, while raising the
well-to-do ministers? wages by 70 percent and feeding failed managers
with stock-options and golden parachutes (like Vinci?s and Carrefour?s
former CEOs).
Against this France who recycles the corrupt into the honourable,
promoting to a seat in the French Council of State, as a reward for
having helpfully diverted the judiciary?s attention, such Minister of
Justice who will go down in history as the most famous helicopters
[what does ?helicopters? mean here?] embezzler of all international
judicial annals.
In a word, against this contemptive and irresponsible attitude ? the
unique « theory of the scapegoated minion à la française » [45] ?
which exonerates the one in charge from every kind of responsibility,
through some anti-democratic privilege grounded in a proto-fascist
ideology pertaining to a facet of French culture.
And against the growing proximity between politics and crime, a
symptom of present-day France?s state, particularly well illustrated by
Chirac?s presidency, whose 12-year long double term (1995-2000) has
been recurrently stained by politico-financial scandals dealing with
unlawful money, without the French head of state being nonetheless
discredited. Indeed, the paragon of the « social fracture », of a «
modest state » and of a « century of ethics » was re-elected in 2002,
despite the authoritarian and mercenary drifts of his reign.
We are precisely talking about Jacques Chirac, and not his predecessor
François Mitterrand : according to Jean Montaldo, a disillusioned
former supporter of Chirac and an expert in matters of political
robbery, « from Mitterrand to Chirac, we drifted from the amateurish
stage to the industrial one » as regards corruption. [46]
It is no vote-catching or partisan attempt saying that we need to
denounce vigorously present-day drifts and abuses, so as to prevent any
painful reminiscence in the future, for today?s history is tomorrow?s
memory.
« The French Republic?s police record » shows the following edifying
figure : between 1990 and 2000, 900 (yes, nine hundred) elected
officials have been indicted on charges of financial criminality or
offences against properties or individuals, which includes sexual
crimes. There is no reason to think the present decade will not rank as
high in the charts.
Though - and thus -, « zero tolerance » towards white-collar
criminality should be a categorical imperative for the republican
order, in accordance with the principle of the exemplarity of state.
France?s capitulation to Germany in Sedan in 1870 gave birth to the
French Third Republic. The capitulation to Hitler in Montoire [47] in
1940 gave birth to the Fourth Republic (1946), the defeats in Dien bien
Phu (1954) and in Algeria (1955) gave birth to the Fifth Republic
(1958), and to the corresponding series of great institutions. Sedan
led to the creation of « Sciences Po » (the Institute for Political
Studies in Paris), and Montoire to the foundation of the ENA (Ecole
Nationale d?Administration, i.e the National School of Administration)
in 1945. The country of Grandes Ecoles and competitive exams ? the
breeding-ground for elites, scholars and pencil pushers [48] - does not
stand looking back over its own past. It only conceives of looking into
its future. Neither retrospection, nor introspection, only prospects
forecasting. Running blindly forward - a « fuite en avant » ?
The debate over the contribution of « dark-skinned peoples » to
liberating the French soil and to their host country?s influence does
in no way pertain to any guilt-provoking hypermnesia, but to social
prophylaxis against colonial damage, the concealment of which could
partly explain the recurrent drifts of France : and if the royal
impunity enjoyed by the politico-administrative class involved in
financial scandals at the end of the 20th century had something to do
with the amnesia over the « bureaucratic crimes » in 1940-1944 ? And
the collapse of today?s « ENArchy » with the rout of the bureaucratic
elite in 1940 ? Are these mere speculative hypotheses ?
This drift was sanctioned upon the first French national vote of the
21st century. The presidential election of 2002, which opposed a «
super-fascist » and a « super-liar », as the hallowed expression of
that time had it, was « one of the hugest democratic blunders in France?
s modern history », according to the Indo-British writer Salman
Rushdie. A stunning eye-opener for both the French and the whole world,
it shed a crude light on the moral decay of a readily moralizing
country. It also discredited its deliberately obsequious and arrogant
elite, who ? although it monopolized the power since the end of WWII ?
proved incapable of carrying on the post-industrial, post-colonial, and
psychological transformations of the society ? respectively within the
scopes of the economy, of the sociological structuring, and of the
national public opinion. This is a hint at the flagrant failure of
France?s integration policy towards its Muslim-African constituents.
And yet, five centuries of intensive colonization throughout the world
should have made the presence of « basanés » on the French soil
commonplace, as well as thirteen centuries of uninterrupted presence
via five migratory waves should have granted Islam the status of
genuinely local religion in France, where its compatibility with the
Republic has been all the same continuously debated for half a century,
as if to ward the idea off that this ethnic and cultural identity group
? the first of such significance whose origins do not pertain to the
Eurocentric and Judeo-Christian sphere - will inevitably be
agglomerated to the peoples of France.
The French Muslim community is the most numerous in Europe, and is
also, proportionnally to its country?s area and population, the most
important in the western world. France is home to more Muslims than
each of no less than eight countries belonging to the Arab League
(Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Palestine,
Comoros and Djibouti). Thus, France would be entitled to apply for
membership to the Islamic Conference Organisation, or at least for an
observer?s seat in this organisation, the pan-Islamic political forum
gathering 57 states from different continents.
Integration entails the conjunction of mutual contributions, and not
the removal of the basic identity features. Of course, the « third
generation French » of immigrant origin are very sensitive to their
international environment, as it was proved by the sudden bursts of
denominational violence linked to the Palestinian intifada, the Gulf
war (1990-1991), the war in Afghanistan (2001-2002), the second war in
Iraq, or the war in Lebanon (2006). But even so they undeniably remain
the bearers of intercultural dynamics, because of their origins, their
cultural traits and their religious beliefs.
As socio-cultural mediators, the « bougnoules » of the old days ?
today?s « sauvageons » [49] ? are now empowered to become true
advocates of and vehicles for the cultural influence of France (an
influence which is the fundamental idea underlying the French concept
of « Francophonie » and the eponymic official organization of the
French-speaking countries, TN), to become the vanguard and avant-garde
of the « cultural Arabo-Francophonie » [50] that France strives to set
up so as to oppose the Anglo-American hegemony and to foster the
dialogue among civilizations by healing the wounds of its own colonial
past.
As the third millenium begins, the « homeland of short memory » is
evidently hindered by a cultural and psychological block, which is
brought to light by the lack of social fluidity. Reflecting a serious
identity crisis, this block is paradoxically in contradiction with the
French population?s multi-ethnic configuration, with the cultural
contribution brought by immigration, with the demographical needs of
France, and finally with France?s ambition to promote the «
Francophonie » as the federating axis of a multicultural constellation
intended to counterbalance the Anglo-American worldwide hegemony, which
is the condition of France?s future international influence.
Conclusion
Five years after the (dis)gust of Lepenist right-wind within the
French presidential election of 2002, as France is now getting ready to
elect a new president in May 2007, it seemed salutary to me to
highlight France?s incoherences, deciphering the official political
discourse, and taking the migratory fact debate beyond the mere Left-
Right division by putting the French collective imagination to the test
of historical facts and of the national everyday reality. In so doing,
I intended to bring a contribution to France?s post-colonial
transformation.
The French exception, so highly praised and claimed in the name of
France?s greatness, is a plain antonym to a culture of impunity and
amnesia raised to the status of a government dogma, which is thus
incompatible with the deontology of command and with the imperative of
exemplarity.
So I want to repeat my thanks to Bruno Gollnisch, to Philippe Val, to
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Philippe Douste-Blazy ? who, as the
representative of the city of Toulouse, initiated the controversial
bill about the « positive role » of colonization -, and naturally to
Nicolas Sarkozy, for their respective and invaluable contributions to
putting my academic knowledge in order. Indeed, the exercise made me
aware of the « positive role » of colonization... of the Metropole by
its Colonies, and of the colonizers-oppressors by the colonized.
René Naba, October 2006
Author?s (AN) and translator?s (TN) notes :
[1] The National front (« Front national ») is the most important
Extreme-Right party in France. (TN)
[2] The Battle of Austerlitz (December 2nd, 1805), also known as the
Battle of the Three Emperors, took place in Moravia ? an eastern region
of the present-day Czech Republic. It was one of Napoleon's greatest
victories, decisively defeating a Russo-Austrian army under Czar
Alexander I. It was the most prominent land battle of the War of the
Third Coalition, which opposed the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire
and the United Kingdom to Napoleon's recently formed French Empire.
(TN)
[3] The Battle of Valmy (September 20th, 1792) - also referred to as
the Cannonade of Valmy - was fought in northeast France during the
French Revolutionary Wars, and became the first victory of the French
revolutionary troops. On September 21st - the day after - the French
monarchy was abolished and the French First Republic proclaimed. (TN)
[4] The Battle of Arcole (November 15th - 17th, 1796) - also referred
to as the Battle of the Bridge of Arcole - took place in Italy, and
opposed Napoleon?s French army to the Austrian army, which was
defeated. (TN)
[5] The Battle of Waterloo (June 18th, 1815) was Napoleon?s last
battle, and was fought in present-day Belgium. Napoleon was defeated by
the Seventh Coalition forces, involving mainly the United Kingdom,
Prussia, Austria and Russia. His defeat led to his final overthrow, and
to the restoration of King Louis XVIII. (TN)
[6] The Battle of Sedan (September 1st, 1870) was fought in northeast
France during the Franco-Prussian war. The French army, under Marshal
MacMahon?s command, attempted to relieve the siege of Metz, but the
attempt only resulted in Emperor Napoleon III being captured and his
army defeated. This was the most decisive battle of the Franco-Prussian
war. (TN)
[7] The Fachoda incident was a crisis which almost led to war between
the United Kingdom and France. At the very end of the nineteenth
century, the two countries were striving for colonial influence in
Africa. A small French force had reached Fachoda - in the south of
present-day Sudan - on the White Nile (one of the two main tributaries
of the Nile), and occupied the small fort there. The Anglo-Egyptian
larger forces led by Lord Kitchener steamed up to the Nile, and on
November 4th, 1898, the French government withdrew his forces. In the
aftermath, a three-month negociation was conducted by the British Prime
Minister, Lord Salisbury, and the French ambassador in London, Mr Paul
Cambon. It resulted in the Anglo-French Declaration of March 21st,
1899. (TN)
[8] The Battle of Verdun (February 21st ? December 19th, 1916) was
fought around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. It
opposed the German and French armies, the latter finally defeating the
former. This battle - one of the most important of WWI - was a huge
massacre, with more than 250,000 dead. It still symbolizes the horror
of WWI. (TN)
[9] This substantive stems from a French adjective (« basané »,
basically meaning « dark-skinned », « swarthy ») which is nowadays
pejoratively connoted, for it has been turned into an expression,
approximatively meaning « the Darkies », which is used in France to
label ? and libel ? people with a darker complexion than « Whites »,
mainly Arabs (but more largely Blacks, Indians, etc.). (TN)
[10] The Battle of Monte Cassino ? also known as the Battle for Rome -
was actually a deadly series of four battles fought in Italy from
January 17th to May 18th, 1943. The Germans had set up several lines of
fortifications south of Rome, collectively referred to as the Winter
Line, of which the main part (the Gustav Line) barred Italy from the
Tyrrhenian Sea in the west to the Adriatic Sea in the east. The main
route north to Rome crossed the center of this line, in the Apennine
Mountains, where the historic abbey of Monte Cassino was founded in 524
A.D. by Saint Benedict, dominating the valley where the Allies reaching
for Rome had to cross the river Liri. The monastery was completely
destroyed by American bombings on February 15th, and Monte Cassino
finally fell on May 18th. This was a major breakthrough, but the Allies
freed Rome only on June 4th, 1944. (TN)
[11] The Battle of Abukir referred to by the author actually can be
distinguished in two parts, hence its « controversial » aspect.
First, the Battle of Abukir Bay (August 1st - 2nd, 1798), also known
as the Battle of the Nile, was an important naval battle of the French
Revolutionary Wars, opposing French and British fleets.
General Napoleon Bonaparte, who had not been elected First Consul yet,
intended to threaten the British position in India via the conquest of
Egypt. Three weeks after Napoleon landed in Egypt, a British 14-ship
fleet under Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated and destroyed the
French 15-ship fleet, leaving the French expeditionary force
unsupplied. Second, although his fleet had been destroyed, Napoleon got
his final victory in Africa in the Battle of Abukir (July 25th, 1799),
decisively defeating the Turkish army - disembarked in Egypt from the
British fleet. (TN)
[12] The Battle of Trafalgar (October 21st, 1805, west of Cape
Trafalgar in south-west Spain) was the most significant naval battle of
the Napoleonic Wars ? a French defeat -, and part of the War of the
Third Coalition (see note [2]). A British 27-ship fleet under Admiral
Horatio Nelson destroyed 22 ships of a combined French and Spanish 33-
ship fleet, while losing none. Nelson died late in the battle, but he
had already ensured the UK?s naval supremacy. (TN)
[13] After the Nazis invaded the until then unoccupied « Free Zone »
of southern France on November 11th, 1942, the French warfleet ?
anchored in Toulon - scuttled itself on November 27th, so as to avoid
being taken by the Germans as well as being used by the Allies :
Admiral Jean de Laborde, who gave the order, did not try to flee with
the fleet and reach North-Africa, where the Allies had landed. It can
hardly be considered an act of true resistance against the Nazis, it
was rather a refusal to choose. (TN)
[14] The exact definitions given in French by this dictionary are :
« COLONISATION. 1: Le fait de peupler de colons, de transformer en
colonie. La colonisation de l'Amérique, puis de l'Afrique, par
l'Europe. 2 : Mise en valeur, exploitation des pays devenus colonies.
COLONISER. 1: Peupler de colons. 2: Faire de (un pays) une colonie.
Coloniser un pays pour le mettre en valeur, en exploiter les richesses.
»
The controversy rose because the expression « mise en valeur » - «
enhance the value of » the colonized country bears a positive meaning.
Thus the definition has been perceived as highlighting the positive
side-effects of a hugely negative process. (TN)
[15] Léon Blum claimed that he « loved » his country « too much to
disavow the spread of French culture and civilization ». In the
newspaper « Le Populaire », dated July 17th, 1925, he wrote : « We
recognize that the superior races have the right, and even the duty, to
raise to their own cultural level the other races who failed to reach
it by themselves ». Alexis de Tocqueville legitimated the butcheries,
for he considered « seizing unarmed men, women and children as one of
those regrettable necessities to which one is submitted, who wants to
go to war against the Arabs ». For his part, in his speech to the
Palais-Bourbon (the French national assembly) on July 29th, 1895, Jules
Ferry contended that « there is a right that the superior races have
because there is a duty for them. They have the duty to civilize the
inferior races ».
See Olivier Le Cour-Grandmaison, « Quand Tocqueville légitimait les
boucheries » and Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire and Nicolas Bancel,
« Une histoire coloniale refoulée », both in « Le Monde Diplomatique »,
June 2001 (Within the global report « Les impasses du débat sur la
torture en Algérie »). (AN)
[16] Rudyard Kipling (1865 ? 1936) published "The White Man's Burden"
in 1899, an appeal to the United States to assume the task of
developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War.
(TN)
[17] The author coined this expression out of the names of Charles
Darwin (« On the origin of species by means of natural selection ») and
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816 - 1882), a French aristocrat,
novelist and man of letters who became famous for advocating White
Supremacy and developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race
in his book « An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races » (1853-
1855). (TN)
[18] From 1877 to 1912, about thirty ethnological spectacles took
place in the Acclimatation Garden of Paris. Some were also set up upon
the Universal Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889 - within the latter, the
showstoppers were the inauguration of the Eiffel Tower, and a «
niggers? village » involving 400 figurants. Then followed an exhibition
in Lyon (1894), the two colonial exhibitions in Marseille (1906 and
1922), and the great exhibitions in Paris in 1900 (including a
Madagascan Diorama, which attracted some fifty million visitors) and in
1931 (the curator of which was no one else than the old Marshal
Lyautey, who had served in Algeria, Indochina, Madagascar and
Morocco...).
See « Zoos humains, de la Vénus Hottentote aux Reality Shows », La
Découverte Ed., March 2002, under the collective coordination of
Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boetsch, Eric Deroo and
Sandrine Lemaire. See also Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel and
Sandrine Lemaire, « Le spectacle ordinaire des zoos humains » and «
1931 ? Tous à l?Expo », both in « Manière de Voir » n°58, July-August
2001. [See also Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire,
« Ces zoos humains de la République coloniale », August 2000, http:
//www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2000/08/BANCEL/14145.html, TN]. (AN)
[19] On November 21st, 1944, a battalion of 1280 Senegalese
infantrymen disembarked in Dakar, and was gathered nearby in the camp
of Thiaroye. These veterans began to protest because their pays in
arrears still remained unpaid. Further, huge discriminations were
obvious between North-African and metropolitan French soldiers as
regards the payments. Bitter and disillusionned, they mutinied and
briefly confined a French general who promised they would be paid as
soon as he would be freed. Instead, the French army slaughtered them in
the night of December 1st ? they were in a daze (for they were asleep
when the massacre began) and disarmed. The number of casualties
apparently remains unknown, but was most probably huge. The military
censorship was able to hush the slaughter up, since it had occurred in
wartime (WWII was not finished yet). (TN)
[20] At least 100,000 Madagascans (according to the statements in
January 1949 of Pierre de Chevigné, the French High Commissionner of
Madagascar) were killed by the French colonial army?s repression of the
national revolt that began in March-April 1947. The army (up to 30,000
soldiers) used the terrorist methods that later prevailed in Algeria.
(TN)
[21] Both words are racist terms. « Raton » basically means « little
rat » (but this word is not used in present-day French, except in the
French expression « raton laveur » meaning « racoon »). Though the
dictionary « Grand Usuel Larousse » states that the word « bicot »
derives from the slangy « Arbicot », itself derived from « Arabe », one
may note that « bicot » is also a colloquial word designating a kid (a
young goat). (TN)
[22] See « Dictionnaire Le Petit Robert », edition of 1996. (AN)
[23] I coined this translation from the hallowed French concept of «
délit de faciès » - literally « facies offence ». A « facies offender »
(for whom there is no such terse equivalent in French) designates a
person being considered an offender because of his / her mere physical
appearance (usually the complexion, or the distinctive « ethnical »
features of the face, hence the reference to the facies). It is of
course a witty designation for what is basically a racist police
behaviour. (TN)
[24] In this article, « clannish » is the approximative translation
for the French adjective « communautariste » which refers to a society
whose organization tends to consider the affiliation to a specific
community (in the usual contexts, the main criterions are religion,
foreign origin, ...) as important as (or more than) for instance the
affiliation to the French nation or the « European citizenship ». (TN)
[25] See « Du Bougnoule au sauvageon, voyage dans l?imaginaire
français », René Naba, L?Harmattan Ed., 2002. (AN)
[26] Bizerte is a city on the Mediterranean coast of Tunisia. Due to
its strategical status of sole French (and later NATO) base outside of
Algeria on the southern coast of the Mediterranean (near the Sicilian
Straits), France had transformed the Lake of Bizerte into a military
harbour, and dug a canal to link it to the sea. Thus, despite Tunisia
having become independent in 1956, France wanted to keep control over
its military base. Seeking for more diplomatic relationships and
support in the Arab world, President Habib Bourguiba wanted to oust
France completely. On July 19th, 1961, three Tunisian battalions
encircled the French base, but President De Gaulle refused to give up,
and the French army imposed a maritime blockade, bombed oil stocks and
crushed the Tunisian troops. France only agreed to leave the base on
October 15th, 1963, once the Evian Agreements (March 18th, 1962) had
put an end to the war in Algeria - these agreements granted France a
base in Meirs El Kebir (Algeria) for fifteen years, so Bizerte was not
that useful anymore. (TN)
[27] The tersest form of the French expression still remains in the
colloquial language : « faire suer le burnous » (literally, « to make
the burnoose sweat »). Depending on the context, it may be perceived as
racist or not. (TN)
[28] « Harki » - from the Arabic word « harka » meaning « military
expedition or operation » (according to the « Trésor de la langue
française ») ? designates an Algerian who fought for the French during
the Franco-Algerian war. (TN)
[29] See « La République Xénophobe, 1917-1939, de la machine d?Etat au
? crime de bureau ?, les révélations des archives », Jean-Pierre
Deschodt and François Huguenin, JC Lattes Ed., September 2001. (AN)
[30] In French, le « Bureau de surveillance et de protection des
indigènes nord-africains chargé de la répression des crimes et des
délits ». (TN)
[31] A coal mining company. (TN)
[32] See « Une théorie raciale des valeurs ? Démobilisation des
travailleurs immigrés et mobilisation des stéréotypes en France à la
fin de la Grande Guerre », Mary Lewis, in « L?invention des
populations », under the coordination of Hervé Le Bras, Odile Jacob Ed.
(AN)
[33] Jean-François Paul de Gondi (1613-1679), best known as the
Cardinal of Retz, was a French statesman, memorialist and intriguer,
involved in the Fronde (revolt of the French aristocrats against Louis
XIV, then an infant). He is notably remembered for his memoirs (first
published in 1717). (TN)
[34] This district matches the present-day Hatay province of Turkey.
(TN)
[35] Which only later became the Ministry of Defence (first in 1969,
and then again in 1974, its name remains unchanged since then). (TN)
[36] This is a transparent allusion to the scandal of President Chirac
and his wife?s « frais de bouche » - i.e « personal » kitchen expenses
? while Chirac was the mayor of Paris. This was recently subject to a
criminal investigation, that finally (and unsurprisingly...) got
nowhere. (TN)
[37] It would be irksome for both the reader and the translator to
give explanations for the abundant allusive references constitutive of
this paragraph and the next ones. It would take pages, so let us only
say that the author refers to different headline scandals, in most of
which politicians were involved. (TN)
[38] « HLM » is a French acronym meaning « Habitations à loyer modéré»
- low rent, state-owned housing. (TN)
[39] The Outreau Affair is a recent gross and tragic miscarriage of
justice. It concerned an alleged network of pedophiles. 18 people
charged with pedophily and incest were held on remand for between one
and three years. Most of them were finally found innocent (whether in
the first trial or in appeal) and acquitted, but this has been a huge
judiciary scandal, and the reform of the French judicial system has
become a parliamentary and headline topic in the immediate aftermath.
(TN)
[40] Literal translation of the French expression « les charters de la
honte » which designates the charter flights forcedly bringing
immigrants back to « their » country. (TN)
[41] « Racaille » is a slangy word approximatively meaning « rabble ».
It was used by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy in October 2005, a few
days after he said he wanted to « clean the suburb with a Kärcher ».
These words are one of the reasons why Sarkozy has been (rightly)
accused of having contributed to spark the civil unrest and riots of
November 2005. (TN)
[42] In French, « la France d?en bas », an expression coined by the
former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin while in office, to
designate the lower classes of the French society. (TN)
[43] The French hallowed expression is « zone de non-droit », which
can also be translated into « no-law zone ». (TN)
[44] It is the term used by the French Council of State. (TN)
[45] In French, « théorie du fusible à la française ». (TN)
[46] See « Chirac et les quarante menteurs » and « Mitterrand et les
quarante voleurs », Albin Michel Ed. (AN)
[47] Actually, the armistice itself was signed in Rethondes on June
22nd , 1940, symbolically in the same place and in the same railcar
than the armistice of November 11th, 1918. However, it is the meeting
of Pétain with Hitler in Montoire on October 24th, 1940, which
sanctionned France?s collaboration with the Nazis. While the armistice
was merely a suspension of hostilities, the meeting in Montoire was an
actual capitulation to Hitler, since Pétain approved the collaboration
with the Nazi regime, although Germany had broken its promises by
annexing the region of Alsace-Lorraine in August 1940. Thus, this
meeting is Pétain?s very Walk to Canossa... [the author refers to Holy
Roman Emperor Henry IV humiliating himself to have the Pope Gregory VII
lift his excommunication, in 1077, TN]. (AN)
[48] In 2000, there were 5 million civil servants in France, the most
important numbers in the European Union, amounting to twenty percent of
the French working population. (AN)
[49] Basically meaning « wild child », the French word « sauvageon »
is nowadays mostly understood approximatively like « savage ». Though
noticeably milder, « sauvageon » also contains the notion of «
uncivilized ». The present-day understanding of the word still includes
the connotation of « young » : one would usually not designate a mature
adult offender ? even if Muslim-Arab... ? as a « sauvageon ». (TN)
[50] The expression was coined in 1995-1996 by Stellio Farangis,
former Secretary General of the High Council of the « Francophonie ».
(AN)
René Naba is a French-Lebanese journalist and writer. His most recent
book is "Aux origines de la tragédie arabe" [i.e. The roots of the Arab
tragedy], Bachari, 2006.
This paper is the author?s contribution to the seminar organized on
October 6th ? 7th by the Festival TransMéditerrannée ([log in to unmask])
in Septèmes-les-Vallons, the theme of which was « From one shore to the
opposite : writing history, decolonizing memories ».
Translation from French into English and comments by Xavier Rabilloud,
proofread by Nancy Almendras. Xavier Rabilloud and Nancy Almendras are
members of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es ), the network of translators for
linguistic diversity.
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