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After Charlie: the Unravelling of the French Republican Response Raymond, G. (2018). After Charlie: the unravelling of the French republican response. Patterns of Prejudice, 52(1), 24-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2018.1430548 Peer reviewed version Link to published version (if available): 10.1080/0031322X.2018.1430548 Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the author accepted manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Taylor & Francis at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2018.1430548 . Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. University of Bristol - Explore Bristol Research General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/user-guides/ebr-terms/ After Charlie: The Unravelling of the French Republican Response GG Raymond Professor of Modern French Studies, Department of French, School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol, 17/19 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TE [email protected] Tel: 01199 287921 Mob: 07847 348779 After Charlie: The Unravelling of the French Republican Response ABSTRACT Starting with the assault on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, the French Republic has endured a series of terrorist attacks culminating with the massacre of civilians on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in an outrage deliberately and symbolically timed to coincide with the Bastille Day celebration of 14 July 2016. During this period, the governing and other elites in France have attempted to foster a sense of national unity around key republican values as the most effective response to the threat posed by terrorism. After examining the inconsistent postures struck by the French socialist government in the months following the outrages of 2015 and 2016, this article will analyse the contradictions of the previous administration in order to illustrate the argument that the problematic relationship between race, identity and secularism cuts across the traditional ideological cleavages of left and right. The failure of leading mainstream political figures to articulate an effective and unifying discourse in the face of the terrorist threat to France is not, however, purely a failure of communication. The article will address the adequacy of a blueprint for social cohesion shaped by the Third Republic and exemplified by the formal separation of church and state in 1905, and consider whether the traditional understanding of what it means to belong to the ‘one and indivisible’ republic has problematised the sense of national self-esteem and perpetuates the current tension in France. KEYWORDS France Republic Terrorism Parties Left Right Intellectuals Minorities Identity Introduction: after Charlie The attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, on 7 January 2015, which left 12 dead, including one of France’s most famous cartoonists, Cabu (Jean Cabut), was a tragedy that drew a unanimous response from the elites in France. The assault on one of the defining values of the Republic, freedom of expression, would be met by a monumental show of national unity around the principles of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Overnight, symbolic evocations of the refusal to be silenced sprang up in the espaces publics or public places that have such significance in France, since it was in the metaphorical public space created by the revolution of 1789 that the republican sense of citizenship was forged.1 Thus it was that all around the country and most impressively in Paris, on 11 January 2015, millions marched in a massive show of national unity, under banners proclaiming that they were also Charlie, brandishing giant pencils in homage to the slain journalists. And yet, within days, troubling reports emerged that in a number of schools there were pupils who openly challenged the mood of national unity, declaring they were not Charlie. The fact that this was happening in the institution that is supposed to be the privileged site for the inculcation of the nation’s collective values, l’école républicaine or the state school system, was a cause for soul-searching among teachers and educational psychologists.2 Would the French political elite be able to articulate a discourse that could succeed in engaging those troubled suburban constituencies notably absent from the mass mobilisations of January 2015? It was a challenge that prompted a remarkable admission from the highest level of government. 1 Jurgen Habermas, L’Espace public: archéologie de la publicité comme dimension constitutive de la société bourgeoise (Paris: Payot 1988). 2 Claire Leconte, ‘Minute de silence pour “Charlie Hebdo” refusée par des élèves: on est tous responsables’, Nouvel Obs, 14 January 2015. http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1306128-minute-de-silence-pour- charlie-heb... 1 A discourse driven by events Prime Minister Manuel Valls had already evoked, is a series of interviews published much earlier in his political career, that social segregation was something that was undeniably visible in certain parts of France.3 In his New Year address to the press, however, on 20 January 2015, Valls made the unusually frank admission that the principle lodged in the preamble to the French constitution, namely that the Republic was one and indivisible, fell somewhat short of the social reality. The assumption that the collective values of the polity could bind citizens into one cohesive body was clearly inadequate: ‘let’s not talk of integration, let’s forget the words that no longer mean much…we need to combat every day the dreadful feeling that there are second-class citizens…or some voices that matter less than others…a territorial, social and ethnic apartheid has descended on our country’. While acknowledging the emblematic and global significance of the slogan ‘I am Charlie’, Valls underlined that France could not be reduced to one message: ‘France promotes freedom of expression everywhere, but it also defends other values which it holds dear: peace, the respect for deeply-held beliefs, and the dialogue between religions’.4 The address seemed to mark a courageous departure from the usual assumption that the aspirations of the Republic for French society were achievable, if only the citizens could commit to them. Consequently, in March 2015, an inter-ministerial committee was created that would look into the various ‘social fractures’, in areas such as education, housing and employment, that might bear disproportionately on certain communities and act as a spur to radicalisation. Within months, however, France was confronted by another inexplicably brutal act of terrorist violence visited by one resident of France on another, when Yassin Salhi decapitated his employer, Hervé Cornara, at their place of work in a quiet corner of the country called Isère on June 26. Interviewed on the current affairs programme Le Grand Rendez-vous, Valls was careful to warn the viewers against the dangers of listening to those he called the reactionary bloc, comprising some members of the mainstream right as well as the far right. They were the elements determined to divide populations, neighbourhoods and territories, as opposed to the majority of people in the country who wanted to preserve the values of the Republic. It was nonetheless noticeable that Valls framed his reference to the death of Hervé Cornara and other outrages in the same terms as those employed by the centre-right politician whom he had criticised in the past, Nicolas Sarkozy. For Valls, France was subject to a constant and permanent threat which it would have to combat over the long term. Like Sarkozy, Valls described the struggle against jihadism as a war which crystallised a clash of civilisations: ‘We cannot afford to lose this war because it is essentially a clash of civilisations. We are defending our society, our civilisation and our values’.5 On the night of 13 November France was faced by a collective and violent loss of life on the streets of Paris the like of which it had not witnessed since the end of World War II. Terrorist attacks had left 90 dead at the Bataclan music theatre, 39 in neighbouring cafés and one at the Stade de France football ground. The scale of the attack and the extent of the loss of life left 3 Virginie Malabard, La laïcité en France (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 2005). 4 Lemonde.fr, ‘Manuel Valls évoque “un apartheid territorial, social, ethnique” en France’, 20 January 2015. http://www.lemonde.fr/polique/article/2015/01/20/pour-manuel-valls-il-existe-un-ap... All translations from French are by the author of this article. 5 Libération, ‘Le jour où Manuel Valls parla de “guerre de civilisation”’, 28 June 2015. http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/06/28/le-jour-ou-manuel-valls-parla-de-guerre-d.... 2 no room for nuance as Prime Minister Valls put forward a security response in line with the expectations of his fellow-citizens. The time for considered reflections on the possible consequences of the social apartheid in France had gone. Instead, as Valls informed the National Assembly, whatever difficulties there might be in the country’s less privileged neighbourhoods, they did not offer ‘the slightest excuse or the slightest justification for what had happened’. It was his colleague in government, Environment Minister Ségolène Royal, who succinctly summed up the view of the vast majority of the political elite in France: ‘You cannot hold the French Republic responsible’. 6 Mirroring the individual equivocations of Manuel Valls was a constitutional debate that raised questions over the very nature and purpose of the Republic, and its relationship with its citizens. Mindful of the public sensitivity to the origins of those responsible for the terrorist outrages on French soil during 2015, President François Hollande responded to the popular sentiment that the Republic could not accommodate divided loyalties.
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