See Mustafa Dikeç's most recent contributions to Society & Space: Badlands of the Republic? Revolts, the French State, and the Question of Banlieues, The ‘Where’ of Asylum, Space, Politics, and the Political, and Politics is Sublime

People want us to demonstrate. Very well, but tomorrow what do we do? They point their finger at us with a nasty look on their face? I don’t want to be part of this France for a single afternoon, but every single day. —Youssouf from the Bondy banlieue

In the immediate aftermath of the horrors of 7 January, emotions run high, oscillating between a feeling of urgency to do something, and a feeling of resignation whereby everything seems futile. For what can anyone do against such reckless hate? On this day – almost a month after the release of the US Senate’s report on the gruesome CIA torture programme, and three weeks after the deadliest terrorist attack in Pakistan, the Peshawar school massacre where 145 people, 132 of them schoolchildren, were killed – a minibus full of explosives went off in Sana’a, killing at least 37 people and wounding 66. This was added as yet another news item on the long list of terrorist killings, without anyone organising rallies or identifying themselves with the tortured or murdered victims of such terror. No one even wiggled a pen in the air.

But the horrors of 7 January were not limited to Yemen’s capital city. For three days, the French capital was caught up in murderous events, and Parisians had a taste of what it might be like to live with terror, experienced on a daily basis in several other parts of the world. Unlike those parts of the world, however, Parisians do not live under the constant threat of established armies, private mercenaries, or drones operated from the Nevada desert. They might also take some relief that the perpetrators of the crimes of 7 January were identified and hunted down by legitimate authorities, which is rarely the case in regions destabilised by constant terror, induced by military interventions and other forms of violent attacks.

In a sign of solidarity, millions of French citizens stood up against terror, to show the world that they were ‘a united people’. The gatherings were massive, emotional and, in a way, encouraging – encouraging in that despite everything that has happened, the citizens of this country publicly manifest their solidarity and unity. But the murderers of 7 January were French citizens, too, born and raised in this country. The details of their lives that have started to emerge suggest that they all went through a radicalisation. They were not born with an inclination or bred from childhood to plan and kill journalists, police, or Jews in their own country of birth and residence. This suggests the possibility that their indoctrination and radicalisation into murderers could not have happened in the absence of long-standing and deeply entrenched grievances. It is the hate stemming from such grievances that the ideologues of terrorism mobilise, which is why the deprived and disenfranchised neighbourhoods in the peripheral areas of cities – banlieues, slums – where unemployment hits as many as half the youth population are targeted as potential recruiting grounds. But what could cause grief to a French citizen, in this cradle of human rights, united under the ‘one and indivisible Republic’?

Let me make it clear that I am categorical in my condemnation of what happened. There is no theoretical, theological or sociological justification of these murders. But if we are troubled about what has happened, troubled enough to take a hard look at, rather than falling in love with, ourselves, then it is important to inquire about the conditions that made such a mobilisation of hate possible. In the highly emotional aftermath of the incidents, it is hard not to feel moved by the extraordinary mobilisation of citizens. Newspapers are full of comments about how proud we should be as French citizens, how a united and solidaristic people we are, how the spirit of May 1968 continues despite the attack on its inheritors, how we value equality and freedom of expression, and so on. If all were nice and dandy, then what made such radicalisation of these three French-born and raised citizens possible? Why, a decade ago, did 300 cities go up in flames for two weeks, and what has been done since? How is it that the extreme right has become the second major political force in this land of freedom, equality and fraternity? Marine Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right party, had already topped the presidential polls before the incidents, in September and November 2014, and extreme right leaders are now having a field day in France and the rest of Europe (for example, see here and here).

This is not at all to suggest that the murderers’ actions can be justified by the circumstances. But to warn that despite the timely and admirable display of unity under an alleged one and indivisible republic, the French society is deeply divided, owing to its long history of discrimination and the increasing hostility towards immigrants – a poisonous mix of xenophobia and Islamophobia that several French politicians, endowed with the authority of the state, have unashamedly mobilised for their political ends. Muslims are the most stigmatised group of this divided society, spared neither by satire nor political discourse and action. We are living in a deeply divided society where the discrimination of Arabs, blacks and Muslims does not even shock anyone, where political power is concentrated in the hands of a homogeneous political elite, despite token appointments.

The perpetrators of the hideous crimes of 7 January had the somatic features and names that could have easily made life a nightmare in France. It is no secret that France has a solid track record of discrimination against its Arab and black citizens, including job and housing markets, and identity checks by the police.[1] Now of course the police are more popular than before, and this is not surprising – even François Hollande’s popularity went up in the polls after the incidents. The police are cherished, and rightly so, because they risked – and some lost – their lives while trying to protect citizens. But this should not make us forget the deep-seated tensions between disenfranchised Arab and black youth and the police, which is fed by a long history of police harassment and violence against these populations, the perceived immunity of the police, and the colonial history of France. As Abdel from a banlieue of Lyon once put it with reference to the tension between banlieue youth and the police, ‘The Algerian war is not over in France’.[2] The mutual hostility between the two groups is played out in an uneven terrain, since the former is stigmatised and delegitimised by official statements, while the latter are typically spared of much criticism, even when their use of force exceeds legitimate limits and turns into violence disproportionately visited upon the former group.

Following the death of a young demonstrator at the Sivens Dam site in October 2014, who was killed by a flashbang grenade thrown by a gendarme, Prime Minister Valls told the National Assembly that he ‘would not accept the police and the gendarme to be accused [mis en cause]’. The demonstrator killed in this incident was not part of banlieue youth, but the categorical response of the Prime Minister shows the extent of the ‘untouchability’ of the forces of order. However, with hindsight, there is more to be concerned about in this incident. The flashbang grenade that killed this protestor was the same kind that was used in the special forces operations to neutralise the terrorists on 9 January 2015. What does this tell us about state responses to protest if the same arsenal of weapons are deployed to disperse ecological demonstrators and to neutralise murderous terrorists?

There were ample signs of the growing tension between the police and Arab and black youth, and the other hardships that the latter group suffer, most spectacularly in the recurrent revolts of banlieues, which have continued to increase both in geographical extent and intensity over the years (five large-scale revolts in the 1980s, 48 in the 1990s, and the revolts of 2005 touched some 300 communes). The majority of these revolts followed the death of inhabitants that implicated the police, yet no police officer has ever been sanctioned in any significant way, if sanctioned at all.[3]

Furthermore, the political significance – political in that they brought into sharp relief the fault lines and geographies of grievances in the French society – of such revolts were increasingly undermined by official statements. But not all revolts received the same hostile response. Exemplary here is Nicolas Sarkozy’s response to the 2007 Lorient revolts staged by Breton fishermen:

Fishermen don’t cheat. When people here demonstrate, when they use violence, it’s not to have fun, it’s never to harm anybody, it’s because they’re desperate, because they no longer have any option, and they feel condemned to economic and social death.[4]

They are, therefore, legitimate. But when the banlieue youth were revolting in 2005, the same Sarkozy characterised them as ‘thugs’ and ‘scum’ to be cleaned up by power hoses, or as ‘barbarians, murderers, or, in the best of cases, delinquents’ (see here and here). Such demonising language only aggravated the resentment that was in the first place responsible for such outbursts of grievances, which was even acknowledged by a senior official of the French Intelligence Service:

Riots, according to my observation, riots occur in neighbourhoods with a large population of immigrant origin, so they primarily reflect a difficulty of integration, and resentment, so, a resentment very strongly felt by young people of the second generation, and even the third generation too […] These problems are experienced as a rejection from society, and, let’s say, they have the feeling they’re relegated… [S]o that factor of riots is connected to, is connected to the fact that, one is in touch with other cultures, while also integrated in French culture, but with the feeling of being rejected by French society, you see? That’s it. Now, incidents that trigger riots, that’s another issue completely, you see, there’s the triggering incident, and there’s the background that’s going to make it, because incidents triggering riots are like the spark that sets fire to a stock of gunpowder, but that’s what the gunpowder is. It’s that resentment.[5]

This feeling of rejection and what I have elsewhere called ‘the paradox of actually existing republicanism’,[6] which, despite an alleged commitment to equality, institutes a division between white and darker citizens of the republic in its everyday workings, was powerfully articulated by Abdel from the Lyon banlieue of Vaulx-en-Velin, one of the poorest and most notorious in France. When I asked him why he did not want to acquire French citizenship even if he had the right to, he said:

Well right now, I don’t see, I don’t see the point, no… because whether you’re French or not makes no difference… except you’re eligible to vote, and to have a job as a civil servant, but apart from that… I don’t see it […] whatever your ID says, for them, we are, well, we’re Arabs, what, we’re, we’re sons of immigrants… and even our kids will be told they’re children of immigrants, and… well, I don’t know, I… it’s as though they don’t want us to even exist in this country… exist as we are, what, we’re French we’re French, there are white French people, there are Black French people, there are yellow French people, there are grey French people, there are French… there’s all sorts! But we, we are always reminded of our origins, we keep being told, but you’re the son of, of… immigrants, son of… why keep telling us that? We know, we don’t need to be reminded! You too, you’re the son of, I don’t know, Spaniards, I don’t know, son of… real French people, if there are any left, there can’t be many, can there! French is a mixture, well, you know… but with us in particular, you really feel it with the, well, with the Arabs, they’re always, always… oh well.[7]

It is the coupling of everyday hardship and discrimination with stigmatising comments that create the conditions that turn resentment into hate, hate into radicalisation. The appeal of fundamentalist discourse resides in its potential to turn a feeling of powerlessness into one of being all too powerful, guided by a divine source and a heavenly objective, as experts on the appeal of jihad for disenfranchised youth explain. If there is an element of truth in this observation, if the fundamentalists do indeed capitalise on the imposed inferiority of discriminated youth and provide them with doctrines and fora designed to make them feel somewhat powerful, then the French state has been doing exactly the opposite – not just in terms of concrete policies, but also by the deployment of stigmatising language by its high-ranking officials that went unsanctioned. The successive French governments not only failed to address the problems leading to such discontent, they flamed the fire of resentment by tolerating inflammatory language that combined xenophobia and Islamophobia.

Between 2009 and 2011, we had in office a Minister of the Interior, Brice Hortefeux, condemned for racial insult during his term, after he said, with reference to a young militant of Arab origin, who – surprise! – ‘eats pork and drinks alcohol’, that he did not ‘fit the prototype at all!’. Then he added: ‘There always has to be one. One is alright. It is when there are many of them that there are problems’. In 2009, a Secretary of State, Nadine Morano, during a debate on national identity,declared that what she ‘wants from a young Muslim, when he is French, is for him to love his country, for him to find a job, for him not to speak slang, for him not to wear his cap backwards’. In 2014, the same politician posted a photo of a veiled women on a beach on her Facebook account next to a photo of young Brigitte Bardot in bikini, and commented that while the latter gives an image of France ‘proud of the freedom of its women’ (forgetting its rampant sexism) the former insults French culture. ‘When one chooses to come to France’, she wrote, neglecting the possibility that the veiled woman might have been born there, ‘it is imperative to respect our culture and the freedom of women. If not, one should leave!’. A couple of months later, coming across a woman wearing a niqab(outlawed since 2011) and with a suitcase in the Gare de l’Est, she told her to uncover her face, and, then went to the police asking them to intervene.[8] As she later wrote on her Facebook account: ‘It has to be reasserted that it is a real public security issue. Who is under this dress? What is there in the suitcase … suspicion is warranted when a person is hidden’. Known for such stigmatising and Islamophobic remarks, this politician served between 2008 and 2012 as Secretary of State first, as Minister later, and is now a European Deputy. Readers might think that these are just right-wing bigots, but after Morano’s remarks on the veiled woman on the beach, Harlem Désir, former president of SOS Racisme (which is basically a Socialist Party satellite), former head of the Socialist Party, and member of the current government, stated that he ‘understood her reaction’, and that women wearing veils on the beach had always seemed ‘aberrant’ to him.

I am not trying to suggest that the French state officials caused the attacks to happen. But several governments that faced the increasing signs of a rising discontent have been too coy about addressing, or simply chose to neglect, the root causes of the grievances of the deprived and disenfranchised groups, contributing to their further stigmatisation and demonisation with such remarks. As the authors of an official report on the participation of inhabitants observed, the unprecedented revolts of 2005 only gave rise to a state of emergency, more repressive policies, and a top-down urban renovation programme that had little consideration for the inhabitants concerned. Their proposals to give political voice to the inhabitants of popular neighbourhoods, outlined in a 2013 report commissioned by the Secretary of State for Urban Policy, were ignored. The five reports on ‘integration’ that were since submitted to the Prime Minister went straight to the bin, partly because they were critical of the notion. All of these reports were univocal in their insistence on the importance and urgency of fighting against increasing racial discrimination. No concrete measures were taken.

In light of the emerging accounts from the survivors of the massacre, it turns out that this issue of ‘what the French state has done for banlieue youth’ was a point of contention within Charlie Hebdo, some arguing on the side of ‘nothing’ and others of ‘plenty’. Of course this sounds like a very French take on things that asks too much from the state. Perhaps one could ask: What has the French state done to prevent their disenfranchisement and stigmatisation? Has it sought effective policies to curb unemployment? Has it sought effective policies to end discrimination in the job and housing markets? Has it done anything, rather than covering up and justifying, police harassment and violence? Has it sanctioned government ministers for making publicly racist and Islamophobic remarks? Has it not itself, through its policies and the public discourses of its officials, including its President, contributed to the further stigmatisation of this group?

It was ironic to see that Marine Le Pen was not invited to the rally, but Sarkozy was, who, now relegated to the second rank in the protocol, seemed more intent on pushing his way into the first rank of the rally to appear in photo shot. It was also ironic to see Ahmet Davutoğlu at this rally for freedom of speech, the Prime Minister of a country that Reporters Without Borders identified as ‘the world’s biggest prison for journalists’ in its 2013 Press Freedom Index when Turkey stepped ahead of China in terms of the tally of jailed journalists. The invited political leaders made it to the first pages of newspapers, and the rally achieved its pragmatic political purpose for them.

The ironies of the rally also brought back memories of an earlier tension in Charlie Hebdo regarding freedom of speech. Nobody went out to demonstrate for freedom of speech when Siné was fired fromCharlie Hebdo in 2008 when one of his cartoons, which took issue with the engagement of President Sarkozy’s son to a Jewish woman, was judged anti-Semite, although it was arguably no more anti-Semite than the many cartoons published over the years were anti-Muslim. This apparent double-standard and the constant stigmatisation of the already deeply stigmatised and politically most disenfranchised Muslims did not go unnoticed by even the least committed of this religious group. What kind of message does this send to Muslims whose discontent over caricatures mocking their religion is silenced in the name of freedom of speech?

It is one thing to criticise powerful and dominant groups in a society, another to constantly take the piss out of its most stigmatised by mocking their dearly held religious beliefs. The misdemeanours of Islamists and the abuses of Islam to mobilise hatred and violence are already widely criticised in the Muslim world. Even without the help of French May 1968 inheritors, many courageous people in Muslim countries are themselves capable of criticising, through mockery, such aberrations made in the name of Islam, without recourse to what one journalist called, with reference to Charlie Hebdo’s Islamophobic cartoons, ‘repeated pornographic humiliation’ of this religion, its prophet and followers. Charlie Hebdo was right to practice and insist on freedom of speech, but it was far from even-handed in its attack on organised religions.[9] Especially after 9/11, as a former Charlie Hebdojournalist wrote in 2013, an ‘Islamophobic neurosis gradually took hold’ in the journal. If the whole point of satire, vulgar or not, is to criticise uses and abuses of power, just what a cartoon depicting a naked Muslim prophet asking ‘Do you like my butt?’ achieves remains obscure.[10]

It is one thing to feel resentment for discrimination and stigmatisation, another to kill people, and the path from one to the other is neither short nor straightforward. But a warmongering response similar to Bush’s after 9/11, which Prime Minister Manuel Valls chose to adopt in his immediate response to the attacks, will only aggravate the tensions, problems and grievances. There are already many reported assaults on mosques and insults on Muslim women depicting signs of their religious affiliation through dress, who, once again, seem to be disproportionately victimised. It is also highly likely that Arab and black male youth will suffer a backlash that will do little to improve their already precarious position in the job and housing markets, and their experience of police harassment. It is the hate arising from such everyday grievances that the fundamentalists will seek to mobilise for recruiting future terrorists. The rally and its political theatre is over now. Very well, but tomorrow what do we do? 

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Claire Hancock for her comments and suggestions, and to Natalie Oswin for her invitation to contribute this piece. 

Notes

[1] On job and housing market discrimination, see, for example, the 2010 report of HALDE (Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Egalité) and a 2013 report for Le Défenseur des Droits. On abusive and discriminatory identity checks by the police, see the 2012 Human Rights Watch report and the website of an association that was founded in 2011 to fight against such practices and other forms of police violence.[2] See Dikeç, Mustafa (2007) Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics and Urban Policy (Wiley-Blackwell), page 144.[3] On the ‘impunity’ of the police, see the 2014 Collective book Permis de tuer, chronique de l’impunité policière (Paris, Editions Syllepse). See also here (which includes a link to an Amnesty International report) and here.[4] « Parfois, la violence a du bon… », Le Canard enchaîné, 11 April 2007, page 8.[5] See Badlands of the Republic, pages 158-59.[6] See Badlands of the Republic, page 177.[7] This interview was conducted in Vaulx-en-Velin on 23 May 2002.[8] The law was voted in 2010, and went into effect the following year. During the discussion of the law, the French Jewish Union for Peace co-signed a letter, arguing against the law on the basis that it was racist and stigmatising. For more on the debates around this law, and the contradictions of French citizenship in relation to femininity and female dress, see Hancock, Claire (2014), ‘”The Republic is lived with an uncovered face” (and a skirt): (un)dressing French citizens’, Gender, Place & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2014.958061.[9] This imbalance led some commentators to argue that ‘the journalists and cartoonists of Charlie were racists’.[10] See the issue of 19 September 2012.