Lambert here: Diagnosis easier than cure.
By Aristotle Kallis, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Lancaster University. Originally published at Open Democracy.
On 21 April 2021, the publication of an open letter in France about the threat of a “civil war” made waves. About 1,000 signatories from the armed forces blamed "fanatic partisans" for creating divisions between communities, and claimed that Islamists were taking over whole parts of the nation's territory.
The finger of blame pointed decisively in the direction of both “Islamist” militants and “anti-racist” protesters as the primary sources of social division and hatred. The article started life as a marginal contribution posted by a retired general on his personal blog, which was signed by around 20 former military officers. But it soon gained media traction and graduated into a weighty ‘open letter’ that was picked up by the right-wing magazine, Valeurs Actuelles.
Marine Le Pen, the radical-Right presidential contender, enthusiastically endorsed the letter, calling it a grave warning that a veritable “battle” for the heart of France is well underway. Since its publication, the number of signatories has risen exponentially – to six figures and counting.
A second statement, which warns about a “civil war” and accuses the French president, Emmanuel Macron, of having “surrendered to the Islamists”, was signed by an unknown number of active French soldiers and was also published by Valeurs Actuelles, in May.
The outcry from progressive and (most) liberal audiences was predictably loud. This was by no means the first time that the weekly magazine had weighed in on France’s culture wars on race, Islam and immigration. This time, the majority of the critiques focused on the second letter’s veiled threat of a coup d’état.
What made these criticisms even more credible and troubling was that the first open letter was published on the 60th anniversary of the failed 1961 coup known as the ‘Algiers putsch’, when a number of retired generals tried to force General Charles de Gaulle not to abandon French Algeria.
The Silent Majority
The Valeurs Actuelles of 2021 is, of course, a very different publication from the one originally launched in 1966. It began as an ideologically eclectic, anti-Gaullist, conservative outlier that harked back to the intellectual traditions of early 20th-century radical nationalism. In 2019, the magazine featured a controversial interview with none other than Macron.
However, the creative ambiguity of its title (roughly translated as ‘Contemporary Values’) is as poignant today as it was more than half a century ago. As its former managing editor and architect of its current editorial stance, Yves de Kerdrel, claimed, the magazine’s raison d’être remains the same – voicing the views and concerns of those “invisible” majorities who “have had enough”.
This kind of language evokes one of the key rhetorical tropes of the populist radical Right over the last century: its claim to speak for the ‘real’ social majority that is ‘silent’ or has been silenced by those in power and by the elites supporting them.
Liberal elites have serially underestimated the emotive power and effectiveness of this claim at their peril. By claiming a direct rapport with a purported social majority, the political entrepreneurs of the radical Right do not simply claim that they alone speak for the mainstream; they also strike at the heart of the legitimacy of a democratic political system that is portrayed as ignoring or actively repressing the views of the many.
Mainstreaming the Right
By comparison, little has been said about the letters’ aggressively Islamophobic tone or their openly racist and classist allusions to the “hordes from the banlieues”. This is not, however, surprising.
For years, French mainstream politicians and media have spoken openly about immigration and Islam as a national “problem” requiring exceptional – and even transgressive – responses in order to protect the nation and the republican ideal of cultural integration. After all, it was the current president who devoted a large portion of his 2019 interview with Valeurs Actuelles to the totemic issues of the Islamic veil, the defence of the French integrationist approach, and the alleged threat posed by “political Islam”.
In choosing Valeurs Actuelles as interlocutor and in pitching his message in terms that appeal to broader conservative audiences, Macron was either signalling a strategic shift to the Right from his self-professed centrism or – more likely – reflecting the re-centring of French mainstream politics in an increasingly nationalist and identitarian direction.
What has rendered the original open letter (the so-called ‘generals’ letter’) so taboo-breaking – and therefore troubling to the mainstream – was not its ideological content (anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-anti-racist), but its coded threat of military intervention in defiance of the constitution and the wishes of the government.
An early opinion poll indicated that a strong majority of respondents (58%, to be precise) support the ideas expressed in the letter. Rather more surprisingly, 49% broadly supported the idea of a military intervention in order to restore order, regardless of government authorisation.
So who speaks for the mainstream? Is it those decrying the letter’s identitarian obsessions? Those who object to its authoritarian, anti-constitutional tone while broadly accepting the diagnosis of a society “disintegrating” and on the verge of a “civil war”? Or could it be that the author and signatories of the letter provide a more accurate reflection of the actual pulse of mainstream society?
Taken together, the poll’s findings highlight an uncomfortable truth and a difficult challenge. It is not just that the centre of gravity of mainstream society has been steadily shifting in a nativist and exclusionary direction. More alarmingly, the normative liberal discourse of the ‘mainstream’ has followed suit, in a cynical pursuit of electoral votes.
While this strategy may appear sensible in strategic terms, it could be counter-productive and self-defeating in the longer term because it reinforces and legitimises the populist shift itself, rather than trying to deconstruct its arguments convincingly.
This item, a recent (late May) piece at CrookedTimber, seems relevant:
https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/26/social-democracy-is-bound-to-struggle-in-a-world-of-nation-states/
I don’t recall seeing this linked at NC at the time; perhaps it was linked and I missed it.
Thumbnail sketch: growing awareness of the “citizenship premium” among the non-elites promotes (one can add — don’t recall whether CB points this out; was heat stressed when I read this yesterday — that this can be manipulated to promote) anti-immigrant sentiment at the expense of intra-nation class struggle.
He thinks that this will be a headwind for progressives into the foreseeable future.
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I’m glad to hear the good news re: Yves’ medical procedure and am wishing for a rapid recovery.
I wouldn’t take this too seriously. It’s a classic PMC liberal-IdPol view from the outside. I’d suggest instead keeping up with John Lichfield, for example, who lives here, and has a generally saner view of these issues. Very briefly, three points.
The letter didn’t attract nearly as much attention as might have been expected, because the French people had other and more important priorities. It received some coverage in the media, and earned a rebuke after a pause of several days from the Armed Forces Minister, because even retired officers are supposed to keep silent about political issues, but that’s about it. It convulsed the narcissistic IdPol world for a bit, but that was all.
Second, this was because the views in the letter are widely shared among the French people, including by many immigrants from “Muslim” countries. The most influential Imams of France, as well as many secular Muslim intellectuals, are if anything pleased that Macron has finally grasped the nettle. Although the language is exaggerated, and some of the thinking and expression is clumsy, most French people would accept that was was said is objectively true in many cases, and arguable in others. The problem is that such views, though widely shared, are impossible to voice in the PMC-controlled media. Immigration, in particular, is a subject which may not be discussed. Ever. Even to mention the word is apparently to provide comfort to the extreme Right. The fact is that mass immigration from the Maghreb over the last generation or so was never planned, never really debated in parliament, and essentially allowed to happen as a way of acquiring a cheap and disposable workforce. Giscard d’Estaing’s decision in 1976 to permit those with work-permits to bring their relatives to live with them created a sudden and massive surge of poorly-educated, often very socially conservative, immigrants from the countryside. No thought was given to the consequences and there was no discussion of how to deal with the influx. To point out that most of the immigrants went to areas already suffering from high unemployment, that there was an enormous need for teachers of French as a foreign language which isn’t being fulfilled, that social services were already over-strained, is simply not allowed. The problems created by parents not allowing their daughters to attend mixed gym classes, or husbands not allowing their wives to be treated by male doctors, do not, it seems, actually exist, and even to mention them invites cries of “racism” and even “islamophobia.” You can guess the result. As any serious attempt to discuss immigration gets pushed to the margins of politics, only marginal figures are talking about issues that matter to a lot of French people. Unsurprisingly, this benefits the Right, and so we begin again with a cycle in which any suggestion that immigration might have teeny-weeny problems attached is comforting political extremes, which means that these same extremes, which at least discuss the subject, pick up even more voters, and so on.
Thirdly, anyone who believes that political islam isn’t a threat hasn’t been to France recently. Since 2015, about 300 people have been murdered by groups and individuals explicitly in the name of this doctrine, which holds that secular states and republics are in themselves sinful, and must be overthrown and replaced with islamic states founded on the principles of religious law. In the meantime, Muslims are enjoined not to obey civil laws which conflict with their religious beliefs and to demand that the state, as well as local government and the private sector “respect” their opinions. So increasingly, Evolution is not being taught in science classes, fervent Muslims are no longer expected to work for female bosses etc. Political Islam is not native to France, but has been exported as a “soft power” weapon by countries like Qatar and more recently Turkey, who supply Imams and fund mosques. Somebody has to get a grip on this and finally, Macron to his credit has started to do so. But he’s not alone: many voices on the Left, the traditional guardians of Republican and secular values, are starting to demand action as well.
So is there going to be a “civil war?” Not in the traditional sense, because the sides are not remotely comparable. Political islam is the ideology of a very small (if growing) part of the Muslim population, and the non-Muslim population does not, and never has, regarded Muslims as an enemy. In spite of all the provocation, not one single Muslim has been killed in retaliation for the attacks since 2015: the violence has all been the other way. But the state has left the suburbs of the major cities to rot. The police no longer go there, social services hardly exist, schools barely function. Such law as there is is exerted by criminal gangs and islamists. Both are now heavily armed: AK47s are circulating freely, and gang violence has become a common occurrence. Somebody has got to get to grips with this problem, and when that happens, there will be violence. On the other hand, if nothing is done, then the violence, when it comes, will be even greater.
There’s a lot more to say but I think that’s enough to inflict on you.
David: Thanks. As I was reading, I kept wondering how Kallis, who appears to have been born in Greece, could be so naive. It occurs to me that he is an example of indoctrination into the Anglo-American echo chamber.
There’s this paragraph: “The truth is that progressive, inclusive politics are often a counter-intuitive proposition. Stereotypes and fears about ‘others’ are culturally reproduced, possibly even rooted in universal human psychology. Nationalism has reinforced default assumptions about who is entitled to group membership and has normalised treating strangers differently.”
The difficulty is that the vast majority of the French still subscribe to laïcité, which Americans tend to find a difficult concept because it doesn’t allow the endless burbling of religion in much of the public space. To be inclusive, one must be forced to listen to religious lectures in the public space! Just like America! Everybody sing “Amazing Grace”!
Also, Kallis seems to forget about the cultural and political power of liberté, égalité, fraternité. These aren’t empty ideas.
If anything, Kallis’s analysis shows just how shallow the current values (valeurs actuelles) of the English-speaking world are. One no longer has expectations of those applying for citizenship to change ideas and behaviors as adaptations to their new status?
Further, it isn’t clear what “Islamophobia” means in the French context. Many of the arrivals from the Maghreb are either already secularized, or they are fleeing the religious wars of Algeria. So I suspect that there is plenty of skepticism of religion among Muslims themselves in France.
Something very similar as what you wrote David about France could be written about Sweden and the same kind of arguments as that guy is putting forward is being put forward in Sweden.
But about the article: A truly open, liberal and progressive elite would not have the type of prejudice that I get the impression that the author of that piece has. I mean, what kind of closed mind can be so totally and utterly convinced about his rightness to write something like:
Not conceding ground seems like an argument that the other side is so utterly wrong that he can maybe, possibly consider to listen to the other side but change his mind in any way? No, not the author of that piece he knows that the other side is wrong already before engaging with them….
To me it would seem that the author has by writing something like that already lost the battle over who is more open-minded. What is the point of talking with him since he’s already stated that he will not change his mind.
I’d say that people with that level of empathy needs to experience themselves what the other side is experiencing, hearing about it or reading about it is simply not enough he needs to live it as he simply can’t empathise. Put him in as a teacher in a problem area, have him take public transport in a problem area, have him work in a shop in a problem area etc and then maybe he can understand the arguments being put forward to him.
Thank you for your comments! I too was struck by the tone-deafness, although it’s been over a decade since I’ve spent time in France. Sadly, violent Islamists are a real thing throughout the world and are a problem first of all for the Muslims themselves. Violent extremism in the Muslim world is not simply a reaction to Euro-American imperialism; it pre-dates colonialism, which it has ultimately defeated in most places.
France has a complicated history of military interventions in civil society, and the police are far more militarized than in the Anglosphere. There is also a long history of civil unrest and street-brawling across the French political spectrum, to which the forces of civil order are expected to respond in an even-handed fashion — a virtual impossibility.
I was at first shocked by the “generals’ letter,” but I suspect that it was a ham-fisted attempt to stand up for the principles of Republicanism and laïcité, which are at the core of liberal democratic values in France. However, like most of the world enmeshed in the neoliberal death-spiral of over-population, scarcity, rationing, and hoarding, France has a very serious problem with class and a huge economic divide between her haves and have-nots — while purporting to maintain the core values of liberté, égalité, et fraternité, which are far less accepting of this than the Anglo-Americans appear to be.
A very unsatisfactory article. It’s only based on identity. Where are class, income, wealth, ownership? Where is some mention of the “gilets jaunes” phenomenon that involved all these issues only a couple of years go?
All identity all the time makes it impossible to understand why people are reacting the way they do.
Worse it robs many people of the ability to even understand their own situation. Under all identity analysis a person can only be poor due to discrimination. So if they are ‘white’ it must be because poor ‘whites’ are the victims of racial discrimination by someone. Huh?
The ” White Privilege” ideologist would square that circle by saying the White poor are clearly too stupid to leverage their White Privilege to their own material betterment. So therefor they deserve their own self-created poverty.
The author writes of “progressive, inclusive politics”, but the adjectives “progressive” and “inclusive” seem to be drifting farther and farther apart, since the advance of identity politics — to which much of the left is attracted — fosters discrimination among ethnic groups. Cornell West is considered a progressive, but he wrote the preface to the book “Whites, Jews, and Us” by a French politician called Houari Bouteldja, which contains chapters called “You, White People” and “You, the Jews”. She leads a party that opposes feminism and favors the patriarchy, male chauvinism and homophobia and whose central plank is wiping out Israel.
Source: A Native with a Pale Face, by Ivan Segré, Ross Wolfe, Los Angeles Review of Books, November 14, 2018
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-native-with-a-pale-face/
She once wrote “We must resist the ideology of White universalism, human rights and the Enlightenment, progress …”
Source: Decolonizing Europe, by Houria Bouteldja, spokesperson of the PIR.
https://decolonialityeurope.wixsite.com/decoloniality#!Decolonising%20Europe/c48f
All of this angst in France about the fundamentalists is ironic, given that France has supported the jihadists is Syria. According to Hillary Clinton’s emails, Sarkozy wanted regime change in Libya to prevent Libya’s efforts to establish an African currency.
I suspect that there is a general perception among Muslims that France, Europe, and the U.S. are at war with Islam. Not all Muslims will believe this, and not all of those will be fundamentalists, but this issue is lurking in the background. The U.S. has also experienced some jihadist attacks, but does not have the same Muslims social problems faced by France. Anti-Zionism is criminalized in France.
I have lived in France for most of the past 60 years. I was here during the generals’ putch in 1961 when the prime minister, perspiring as if he were about to be shot, went on television to ask the Parisians to go as a herd to the airport to stop the putchists (who actually did take over Corsica). Nothing remotely comparable could be imagined in France today or any other democratic country.
Today’s social and economic problems in France are little different from those of other comparable countries. Immigration is hardly the most intractable. As in the rest of Europe and America, most crimes are not committed by immigrants. Not one French voter in 50 wants a military coup. There is no majority for leaving the EU as Britain did. The French police are far less trigger-happy than their American peers seem to be. There is not a single “no-go zone” in France and there never was. Even Algiers was controlled in the 1950’s although with methods that would be unthinkable now.
In 60 years France will almost certainly remain a democracy. Almost all of today’s immigrants’ children and grandchildren will be integrated (as more than half are already). There will be new social and economic problems. They are likely to be much the same elsewhere.
What distiguishes France is the attention paid by the media to a tiny number of self-appointed Parisian intellectuals. This is not new. They had lots of followers before 1940 and the Communists retained theirs into the 1960’s. Not one French person in 50 today knows or cares about their ideas.
This article: another tone-deaf shrill from the philosophically bankrupt cultural left. It’s too bad they are going to take down the economic left with them. What could have been. Unless something surprising happens, the answer to the neoliberal trashing of every society is going to come via some form of nationalism. The French then should be glad that their situation appears to be coming to a boil soon. I fear that the US and UK won’t be so lucky. Thank you everyone for your thoughts.
In paragraph 19, you could replace the word ‘Nationalism’ with ‘Critical Race Theory’ and the paragraph would still be true. I hope this is what the author was trying to impart when they mentioned the asymmetric development of social attitudes.
It is indeed worrying that 58% of the French public expressed at least some degree of sympathy for a possible rupture of the constitutional order, as suggested by the veiled threat of a military coup d’état contained in the letter by retired military officers published in Valeurs Actuelles.
On the other hand a recent judgment by one of the top French courts (there is a cluster of them and I don’t recall which one) itself constituted a rupture of legal principles that seems to have been unanimously ignored by the elite. The judgment whereby the killer of Sara Halimi would not be tried by a court of law on the grounds that he was under the effects of a drug (cannabis) constitutes a dramatic departure from French case law, as explained several years ago by the fact-checking (“désintox”) department of the French daily Libération, since it is settled case law that the French penal code does not consider voluntary intoxication grounds for exemption from criminal liability.
Accordingly to condemn the threat of a coup d’état alleging constitutional legitimacy seems rather disingenuous.
Article 122-1 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure: “A person is not criminally responsible if at the time of the deed suffers from a mental or neuropsychic disorder that has eliminated his discernment or the control of his acts.”
There is no mention of drugs.
In a similar case some years ago, the French newspaper Libération asked two criminal lawyers, who both denied that drug consumption can be an extenuating circumstance:
“Désintox [désintox means “fact-checking”] contacted several criminal lawyers. All of them unanimously denied the notion that the consumption of narcotic drugs can be considered an extenuating circumstance. On the contrary, as Stéphane Babonneau [a French lawyer] explained: “Consequently it is generally ineffective and even counterproductive for a lawyer to argue that his client committed the offense under the influence of drugs, since this circumstance increases the sentence incurred and is in no way a mitigating circumstance. The same reasoning applies for offenses committed while intoxicated [i.e. drunk].” The lawyer Sahand Saber agreed, stating that “French criminal law does not consider the consumption of narcotic products a mitigating circumstance for any criminal offense”.”
Source: Non, la consommation de drogue ne constitue pas une circonstance atténuante, par Jacques Pezet, Libération, 17 août 2017
https://www.liberation.fr/desintox/2017/08/17/non-la-consommation-de-drogue-ne-constitue-pas-une-circonstance-attenuante_1590383.
FRENCH ORIGINAL:
Désintox a contacté plusieurs avocats pénalistes. Unanimement, tous s’opposent à l’idée que la consommation de stupéfiants puisse être considérée comme une circonstance atténuante. Bien au contraire, comme l’explique Me Stéphane Babonneau : «Il est ainsi généralement inopérant et contre-productif pour un avocat de plaider qu’une infraction a été commise par son client sous l’emprise de stupéfiants, puisque cette circonstance aggrave la peine encourue et n’est en rien une circonstance atténuante. Le même raisonnement s’applique pour les infractions commises en état d’ivresse.» Une affirmation que vient appuyer Me Sahand Saber, qui rappelle que «le droit pénal français ne considère, pour aucune des infractions prévues, la consommation de produits stupéfiants comme une circonstance atténuante».
The author writes that effective counter-narratives to right-wing populism are required, and that progressives have failed to address this challenge effectively. Well, if so, it is certainly not because progressives haven’t tried. For instance the article on “great replacement” in the French Wikipedia at https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_remplacement
starts out by defining so-called great replacement theory as an “extreme right-wing, racist and xenophobic conspiracy theory” and then devotes 87 words to summarizing the arguments in favor of great replacement theory, followed by 3,336 words (38 times as many) summarizing the arguments against it.
So it would seem that great efforts have been expended in the cause that the author advocates, but apparently in vain, alas!