What could be more peaceful than a village festival? What’s more, in a town of 500 inhabitants like Crépol, located between Grenoble and Valence at the foot of the Vercors massifs. A place where nothing ever happens. At least that was true two weeks ago. Because it was there that on November 17, a group of young people from a neighboring town showed up armed with knives.
Confusion still reigns over the exact motive which ignited the powder. Still, around two o’clock in the morning, reinforcements arrived and blades began to cut through the air, killing the captain of the rugby team, Thomas, who was only 16 years old, and injuring eight other people, three of them seriously. The next day, the testimonies all described an attack carried out by young delinquents from the neighboring town of La Monnaie in the suburbs of Romans-sur-Isère. Nine witnesses took the trouble to specify that the attackers wanted to “plant white people”.
It did not take long before a majority of French people recognized this as another manifestation of the growing crime which plagues these neighborhoods where mainly a population with an immigrant background lives. A violence which also responds to an identity movement often directed against those whom, in these neighborhoods, we call the “Céfrans” or the “Gauls”. It is this same criminality which was manifested during the riots in June, punctuated by looting and which caused nearly a billion euros in damage according to the MEDEF. This violence is not new. It has punctuated the life of France for more than two decades and has been identified many times, notably by the Minister of the Interior of the socialist government Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who, in 1999, was the first to speak of “wilding “.
Everyone knows this, but is it allowed to say it? We can doubt it since it took ten days for the National Assembly to devote a minute of silence to the memory of Thomas while it only took 24 hours for Nahel, this young delinquent who fell under a police bullet when he refused to stop while driving a car rented and registered in Poland. Thomas had no criminal record.
While all the testimonies published in the press pointed to young people with immigrant backgrounds, officials made it clear that they were all French. Which no one doubted. While the names of adults apprehended by the police were already circulating on social networks, contrary to judicial tradition, the prosecution worked to hide them for several days. An “indecent” cover-up, in the words of the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère, Marie-Hélène Thoraval. Although nine witnesses claimed to have heard these young people say that they had come to “plant white people”, the prosecutor did not accept the racist characterization of the accusations as requested by the victims’ families.
As chance would have it, this tragedy occurred a few days before the death of the former mayor of Lyon Gérard Collomb. When he resigned from the Ministry of the Interior, he was not afraid to tell the truth about these enclaves which are “ghettoized” on the outskirts of all cities in France. “Because we live side by side and I say it, I fear that tomorrow we will live face to face. »
The observation of this old socialist was not primarily a matter of left or right, and even less of political recovery. Five years before the death of young Thomas, this is the reality experienced today in Crépol that the former minister had dared to name. That a few days later, a handful of so-called “ultra-right” lunatics attempted to avenge Thomas does not change a reality that some still struggle to discern. Even if it is obvious to 75% of French people who tirelessly repeat it in survey after survey.
Since 2014, recalls the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère, 150 million euros have been invested in this suburb which has a media library, a crèche and numerous sports clubs. Which does not prevent, she emphasizes, that “a fringe of the population […] refuses any form of citizenship and integration”, including around a hundred thugs linked to drug trafficking who make rain and shine.
How can we blame this average citizen for pointing the finger at “these governments which have always defended the France of cities against the France of Thomas, rural France, the France of people who raise their children properly, […] not in hatred of France and the French”? As if to prove him right, recently, a young man driving a stolen car who had dragged a police officer for 20 meters after refusing to stop was only sentenced to… 35 hours of community service!
The death of Thomas shows that the latent war which was already corrupting the suburbs of large cities has now spread to medium-sized towns and even rural areas. Faced with these two Frances who stare at each other, there is no worse remedy than to look away.