Salut!

France and anti-Semitism: when the right for once seems right, is the left left wanting?

My look at the strangely changing nature of French politics, in which the far right reinvents itself as defender of Jews while elements of the left seem, by comparison, anti-Semitic. But be careful. As I try to explain below, in this Comment piece for The National (to which my usual thanks for permission to reproduce), there is nothing simple about the divisions arising from the deadly Israel-Hamas conflict ....

On Monday, French police arrested eight youngsters, aged from 11 to 17, suspected of chanting slogans calling for the death of Jews in an unsavoury episode on the Paris Metro last month.

Filmed on October 31 by another passenger, the group also targeted the police, sexual minorities, and France itself, before mocking one woman brave enough to intervene. “We are Nazis and we are proud,” they chanted during a tirade of hatred that lasted no less than 10 minutes, just weeks after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel.

Image of the Battle of Gaza 312BC: from The illustrated history of the world

Voltaire, Gaza and beyond: why authorities mind you speaking your mind

That's me done with Voltaire. He's a great starting point for any discussion of free speech. But you always have to remember he didn't say it. He certainly thought it, but he never actually said or wrote - as far as is recorded - the words routinely attributed to him. For one last time, I invoked the great French philosopher for just that sort of discussion (and thanks to The National for letting me reproduce my articles here) ...

 

Nicolas de Largillière

'Police partout, justice nulle part.' The over-the-top French protest slogan highlighting a real crisis

The phrase - Police everywhere, justice nowhere - appears in French on banners and in chants at all demonstration in Paris and around France against police violence. At some stage of most demos, the professional hoodlums known as Black Blocs, and other fringe elements, can be relied upon to have it both ways, namely by mounting vicious attacks on the police they accuse of being violent. But the hyperbole and double standards do not negate the valid nature of such protests. In France, but by no means only in France, the police do not always behave in a manner the public is entitled to expect. The resulting stain on the reputation of law enforcement officers as a whole is one unfortunate consequence, as I argue in this piece for The National (see the article and all my work for the newspaper at this link) ...

Image: Liftarn, Open Clip Art Library

 

 

Pope Francis in Marseille: if ever healing powers were needed ...

 

The Pope will be in Marseille this coming weekend. Parts of the left decry President Emmanuel Macron's intention to attend the main focus of the visit, open-air Mass at the OM stadium, the Velodrome, as an insult to France's secular status. I'm of the left, OK softishly, and have no such complaints since French presidents have often attended religious service, not as worshippers but as heads of state.

My preview for The National ...

Catherine de Medici marries the future King Henri II of France, 1533

Macron all at sea in the South Pacific

The explorer James Cook was the first European to sight the archipelago he called New Caledonia in honour of his Scottish father's native land, which he thought it resembled. Nearly 250 years later, 170 years after France declared it its own, islanders are restless. Many want independence. A sham referendum says a majority don't. But Emmanuel Macron prides himself on a modern, apologetic outlook on colonialism. His visit to the South Pacific resolved nothing. My thoughts for The National ...

A 48-hour visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to the south-west Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia has highlighted rather than calmed stirrings of discontent among those who dream of bringing 170 years of colonial rule to an end.

As far as it is possible to travel from Paris and still be on French soil, this far-flung outpost of France’s historic empire is fiercely divided on its destiny. Up to half its 280,000 citizens, notably the poorer indigenous Kanaks, want the excitement and challenge of independence while the other half, including better-off islanders with roots in metropolitan France, clings to continuity and stability as a French dependency.

Successive referendums have produced votes against severing the colonial ties, but by majorities that were narrowing until a poll in December 2021 was boycotted by independence supporters. Their demands for a delay in holding the referendum because of the impact of Covid-19 on New Caledonia were rejected, rendering meaningless the subsequent near-unanimous vote, in a derisory turnout of under 44 per cent, to remain French.

 

 

Nahel, French policing and the wages of sin

 

When I submitted my analysis of the latest French social crisis - the atrocious police killing of Nahel during a routine stop, and the fierce, unjustified rioting that followed - there were two important matters I did not know about.

I heard later about the vile attack on the home and family of an entirely blameless mayor in L'Haye-les-Roses. And later still about the utterly repugnant crowdfunding whipround for the family of a certain Florian, the police officer who killed Nahel Merzouk.

 

Nahel's photo, released by his mother. Described by Wikipedia as fair use

Grief, shame and mob violence dominate France after Nahel M's senseless killing

 

Much of my time as a journalist covering events in France - continuously for 20 years and intermittently beforehand  - has concentrated on the country's lamentable record in assimilating its large population of people who emigrated from former French colonies, mainly north and sub-Saharan Africa, or descend from them. As night follows day, fierce rioting has followed the senseless killing by police of a 17-year-old boy whose offences, irritating and dangerous but hardly at the high end of criminality, were to be driving without a licence and being unwilling to stop and be checked. We now know the M stands for Merzouk.

 

The accused officer has issued an apology. He faces a voluntary homicide charge. He also has the wholly dubious honour of being the intended beneficiary of a crowd-funding whipround, created and doubtless enriched by odious far right sympathisers. As I write, it stands at a shameful 830,000 euros - compared with 150,000 euros so far collected for the family of Nahel.

 

Much more, including the death of a fireman and a hideous firework attack on a mayor, his family and home, has happened since I wrote this analysis for The National (reproduced with the editor's consent). Sadly, we have not heard the last of this latest uprising against police violence, routine discrimination and stubbornly racist attitudes ...

 

Image by Toufik-de-Planoise

 

Senegal: Mane and N'Door call for calm as death toll rises

 

This is my look at the eruption of violence in Senegal, sparked by a prison sentence passed on a popular opposition leader after what his supporters see as a cynically engineered prosecution and - at the time of writing - yet to be enforced. My thanks as usual to The National for permitting me to reproduce my work here ...  

 

Random images of Senegal from the National Archive UK

France: its eternal beauty and intermittent beastliness

It is fair to say both countries of my dual nationality are important to me. They have exceptional if different qualities and glaring flaws.

Often, what I write about France is affectionate and admiring. Sometimes it is defensive, as when oafish attacks are aimed in its direction by the usual Little Engerlish suspects.

That’s how I introduced this article at Facebook. I went on to say it would be absurd to overlook the flip side, a country thoroughly uneasy with itself, large numbers of its people prepared to engage in or support casual disruption and even violence.

The spiteful sabotage by the anti-government CGT union of gas supplies to 100 restaurants is a case in point. Wholly blameless in the battle with the government and President Macron over limited pension reform, they should have been serving visitors to the Cannes film festival. The misguided, badly targeted action shows the far right is not alone in deserving reproach, as I seek to explain in this piece for The National …

 

Mayotte: immigration, misery and the legacy of French colonialism

I suggested to The National that current chaos in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte - which in 2011 became France's 101st département - 1could be a good subject for my latest Comment piece. This is the result, reproduced with the editor"s consent ...   

 

 

Mayotte: residents of Kawéni, the biggest shanty town in France, lead miserable lives. Photo: Emily Cooper