If I mention Le Pen in my title, it is because it is the father of the other who enjoys his electoral success. So this was my only nod to Father’s Day, because my subject is different.
Before telling you about the success of the far right which alarms a certain France, I will tell you about the part of this inglorious past which is starting to catch up with Europe. Once upon a time, nations took advantage of their scientific and technological superiority to look elsewhere on the planet if the grass was greener there.
Crossing the seas, they discovered rich countries around the globe inhabited by populations very different from themselves. Possessed by an insatiable gluttony, they decided to put these territories and these foreigners at the service of the development of their economies.
For our ancestors who saw these boats arrive, the rest of the encounter will be very dramatic. In fact, these Europeans made African youth the energy reserve of their emerging capitalist economy. What Quebecers call good arm juice.
When this slave trade, which lasted several centuries, ended up being criticized, a change of strategy was necessary. Also, failing to take them on board the boats and bring them to America, these Europeans decided, in this second act, to colonize Africa and have its inhabitants work in their land of origin. A way of perpetuating, with a little less violence, the economic model based on servitude and which was profitable for them.
At the beginning of this second stage of exploitation, the explorers preceded the missionaries who prepared the way for the military to divide Africa. When these colonial enterprises have in turn been criticized, the time of independence will arrive which would mark the neocolonialist phase of this domination.
Before granting independence to our countries in the 1960s, these Europeans had thought about a third way of perpetuating exploitation. In their universities, they had trained the political elite who would rule the new countries. Decision-makers, whom they could then put at the service of their interests by remote control from Paris or London.
At the start of this third stage, France took advantage of its imperialist power to bring tens of thousands of Africans to its soil. These guests were then installed in cities and put to the service of all the jobs that the French no longer wanted to do.
These foreigners were also encouraged to live as in Mali, Senegal, Morocco or Algeria and to keep their mother tongue in anticipation of their inevitable return to their country of origin. Why talk to them about integration and roots when we ultimately want to see them leave this country which was not even supposed to become that of their children?
These first immigrants reproduced in the enclaves where they were confined, well outside of French culture and the republican values that today’s politicians sing to them.
They were joined by other cohorts of workers. So much so that after two generations, they have become essential in the French economy. However, many of them remained culturally in these spaces of geographical and social seclusion, the famous cities.
So much so that for many young people who perpetuate this systemic exclusion, their attachment to France is very tenuous. Indeed, it is very difficult to adhere to Republican values when the Republic does not find a certain value in us.
While this ghettoized population grew in France, European neocolonialism drained the wealth of the former colonies. A very unbalanced relationship which led to this crisis between France and Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and possibly Senegal.
If I talk to you about Africa in this text, it is because its diaspora is mainly at the center of the French malaise which is bringing the far right closer to the gates of power.
But I wonder how the xenophobic projects of Bardella, Le Pen, and Zemmour will be received by the Africans who are their primary targets. Many French people have adhered to their very simplistic promise of closing the migratory tap and returning to identity-based nationalism.
What is fascinating about the vision of the far right is its ability to convince people that they will magically solve very complex problems with simple proposals that tickle the primal instincts of their fellow citizens.
Yes, it must be said that there are problems inherent to mass immigration everywhere on the planet. It must also be recognized that France is not the only one responsible for the problems facing the African countries where many of these migrants come from. We have a lot to reproach ourselves for.
But it is also true that because of the environmental crisis and the wealth gaps inherited largely from centuries of shameless exploitation of Africa by colonialist Europe, the causes of the problem are more complicated than they seem. presents the extreme right.
There is a certain part in the migratory flows which are reawakening European identity nationalism attributable to a return of the pendulum that the wisest saw coming at great speed.
I am thinking of the respectable Albert Jacquard, who died in September 2013. In Concern for the poor, Jacquard had correctly predicted that the day when Europe would be invaded by its poorer but more prolific neighbors was not very far away and that unless there was a radical change in relations with its former colonies, clashes would be inevitable . Westerners, says Jacquard, have embarked on a frantic race towards more and more. This race results in growing inequalities and tensions which can only lead to destructive conflicts.
If there is one piece of information to be learned from the latest electoral success of the National Rally, it is that in France, we are dangerously approaching this breaking point. Once in power, the far right will quickly realize that France is now a plural country, and this ideology of divisions between those who are and are not “pure wool” by their distant origin, their religion and the color of their skin will not work.
Do you know why ? Because people will not give in and there are enough of them to fight. It’s not easy to bring 9 million people to their knees who are determined to assert their rights. The latest explosive crises in the French suburbs give a good idea of what is likely to become the norm under a Le Pen government.
Should he come to power, the French will quickly realize, to paraphrase Einstein, that theory is sometimes when you know everything, but nothing works.