What is France So Concerned About?
Or rather, what makes France so uncomfortable.
It’s a Friday morning, you are accompanying your child on a school trip, but while arriving at your destination, you get called out.
Why? Your hijab.
This is what happened on October 12th, 2019, during a school trip to a local regional council. Julien Odoul, a sitting regional counselor and darling of the French far-right, gave a woman an ultimatum: take off what he referred to as her “Islamic” veil or step out of the room where people were gathering.
Odoul then went on to tweet the same day about the “communitarian” nature of her clothing and started asking rhetorical questions such as “How many of you would let a woman in a hijab take care of your children?” or “How many of you would want to live in suburbs plagued by communitarianism?”, without ever defining or contextualizing the term.
But it’s not like he needed to.
Hours later, social media began to blow up while national media outlets were already fuming about “Islamic radicalism” and debating the right for Muslims to appear with visible religious garments in public spaces and the relationship Muslims nurtured with French institutions such as universalism or “laïcité”. These weeklong debates and unrelentless expressions of national uproar served a single purpose: to remind viewers that what is at stake is not religious freedom, but rather the entire system of “republican” values, identity and beliefs, the legitimacy of France’s core institutions and the foundations of the French identity. In other words, the “French story” is what is at stake.
Although Julien Odoul and his far-right peers are the most outspoken proponents of this rhetoric, they’re not the only ones who spew racist, xenophobic misinformation and far-right talking points online to spur mass paranoia.
Several other elected officials, from municipal and regional council members to the French president himself, his closest cabinet members including Marlène Shiappa — current Minister of Citizenship — or Gerald Darmanin — current Interior Minister — and even members of some leftist parties have all, at least once, expressed concerns around the threat of “communitarianism” and the danger it poses by allegedly fostering “Islamic-radicalism” or “separatism” in minority majority suburbs and “Islamic-leftism” on university campuses.
Anywhere else in the world, wearing a hijab would not have been seen as a big deal, or even a noteworthy feature, at all. Anywhere else in the world, a hijab would’ve simply been seen as a manifestation of one’s religious identity or level of devotion to their faith.
Not in France though. The display of these “communitarian” lifestyles, behaviors or claims acts as a constant reminder that the country is rapidly changing, but these public displays are also a reminder of France’s racist and colonial past and present which the country has yet to reckon with. As France’s North African, Muslim, and Middle Eastern populations grow and become increasingly diverse, the country faces an unprecedented identity crisis. If Muslims, North Africans, and Middle Easterners are French, aren’t their cultures French too? Shouldn’t their stories and practices be included in our concepts of French identity? What is the “French story” and who gets to tell it, write it, sell it, be included in it, and pass it on?
As far-right talking points flourish in the mainstream, the media and political elite have become increasingly friendlier to the rhetoric that addresses, covers and stigmatizes these “communitarian” manifestations in opposition to “Frenchness”.
At the same time, numerous elected officials from all over the political spectrum — mainly the center-right and far-right — have been seeking to label these same manifestations as proponents of the much bigger and electorally electrifying “authority crisis” plaguing the nation.
As the 2022 presidential race enters a critical phase, candidates from the right, center and left are now vying for their party’s nomination, and to achieve that, they need a lot of media scrutiny. An obstacle that can be overcome by engaging and surrendering to far-right rhetoric, which essentially dictates the form and substances of todays’ political debates.
To become the political standard bearer of your political family, candidates will have to brand themselves as saviors of the republic, fixers of institutions, and figures of authority.
But the media and governement not only define said behaviors, lifestyles and claims as an affront to “republican” values and norms but also as a symbolic rebuttal to everything France believes in and stands for, as a threat to the French lifestyle and the egalitarian, universal and democratic ideals it holds dear and as a manifestation of the spread of an insidious chasm seeking to bring havoc and division onto the republic and its most cherished institutions.
This chasm takes various forms in the French psyche, from “communitarianism” and “separatism” to “Islamic leftism” or “racialism”.
This “communitarian” obsession has increasingly defined French politics throughout the past 40 years. It began in earnest in the 80s and 90s, when “communitarian” incidents similar to the Odoul affair were picked up by the local and national press, but this societal preoccupation truly entered the national conversation in the late 2000s and early 2010s just as far-right talking points and parties were gaining momentum.
In reality, these chasms in the French story are not threats, but they uncover uncomfortable truths and reminders that France has chosen to ignore for decades and still stubbornly ignores today. They bring light to struggles and issues that uniquely affect certain communities and reveal the existence of different cultures and communities that have always been part of France’s construction, but never or rarely, part of its storytelling.
They are uncomfortable precisely because they expose France’s media, political, cultural and economic elites to the risk of losing control over their idea of “the French story” structured around ideals such as indivisibility, universalism and national unity, but also Whiteness and Catholicism. In their view, France is not a nation of disparate “communities”, especially if these communities do not benefit from a proximity to these two last institutions.
Debating about religious freedom or labeling any lifestyles, behaviors or cultures fostered and displayed by immigrants and Black and brown communities in France as promoting “a radical Islamist and separatist agenda” could be considered France’s national sport if it weren’t for football.
Our nation’s obsession with these chasms is undoubtedly an obsession with its own history. It is about a deep rooted denial of the past — and present — ,but also an obsession over the fear of losing control over a false narrative manufactured and driven by the country’s many elites.
On October 2nd, 2020, in his République en actes speech, Emmanuel Macron — in a mix of condescending and combative tone — insisted that: “What we must tackle is Islamist separatism. It is a conscious, theorized, politico-religious project which is concretized by repeated departures from the values of the Republic”.
He then proclaimed that: “There is in this radical Islamism an almost methodical plot to contravene the laws of the Republic and to create a parallel order, to erect other values, to structure society around a new vision, separatist at first, but whose final goal is to seize complete control of it.”
For now, France’s storytellers are not interested in adding more voices or charachters to the script.