Eyewitnesses said the armed attackers who slaughtered a dozen people in Paris today identified themselves as Muslim. France has a large Muslim population, a legacy of the colonial era.
Today, the demonization of Muslims is part of the rightwing extremist formula in France. The Front National propelled itself into the mainstream, with non-stop fear and resentment of Muslims, hatred of Jews, and bigoted racism targeting the Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira, a black woman from Guiana, which is an integral part of the French Republic just as Hawaii is an integral part of the United States.
Six months ago, a major controversy erupted when the Front National's founder,
Jean-Marie Le Pen, posted a tasteless anti-Semitic joke referencing ovens to his blog on the party's official website. His daughter, and the party's current leader, Marine Le Pen, looks forward to the elimination of school lunches prepared according to Halal guidelines. If she ever gets her way, Muslim kids will eat pork and ham, but they'll never be truly French.
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Mainstreaming extremist ideology made room on the political spectrum to accommodate far-right political movements like Bloc Identitaire. The slogan says, "Native born French AND PROUD!" |
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For the immigrants from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco who came to France in the 1950s and 1960s as invited guest workers and stayed to raise families, the current climate of hostility is unexpected and unfortunate. Ironically, many people of the Maghreb are hardly distinguishable, by appearance, from the French. For some, an unspoken code of "don't ask, don't tell," now applies to Muslim identity.
Other, more recent immigrants, who came to France uninvited, from the Arab world, are made to feel unwelcome in a number of ways. After high school, young people may find themselves excluded from the job opportunities and prosperity French people enjoy. Segregated in communities beyond the edge of major cities like Paris, alienation is more than a mental state. There is physical separation.
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The sense of danger some French people feel around Muslims came into sharper focus last year on May 24. It was the day before the election for seats in the European Parliament. In Brussels, the city where the EU Parliament is seated, a man opened fired at the Jewish Museum, and killed four people. He was arrested a week later and identified as Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen of Syrian origin, who had gone to the Middle East to enlist himself with ISIL. When his picture appeared in the commercial media news reports, it was noticed by four journalists who recognized him (Nicolas Hénin, Pierre Torrès, Didier François et Édouard Élias.) They had gone to the Middle East, too, to report on the Syrian civil war and ended up prisoners of ISIL. Nemmouche was the jailer who tortured them while they were held. |
From Libération
September 8 2014 |
Le 6 septembre, le journal Le Monde publie une information tirée des éléments transmis ces derniers mois par la direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (DGSI) à la section antiterroriste du parquet de Paris, notamment des PV d’audition des ex-otages : dans un hôpital désaffecté d’Alep, Mehdi Nemmouche aurait été en 2013 le geôlier des quatre otages, lesquels se le rappellent avec différents niveaux de certitude. |
On September 6th, the newspaper Le Monde, published information sent by the Director of National Security ( DGSI) to the Paris Public Prosecutor’s antiterrorist department including the official reports and transcripts from testimony given by the ex-hostages. The four recalled with different degrees of certainty that they had been held during 2013 in an abandoned hospital in Aleppo with Mehdi Nemmouche as their jailer. |
The journalists observations about Nemmouche, after months of confinement in close quarters with him were extraordinary. They said that he wasn't anything like the radical Islamist described by the media. Yes, he tortured them and other prisoners, too. He was violent and cruel. But he had no particular religious or ideological beliefs. At times, he came across as a typical French youth, who sang pop songs, talked about his family, and passed the time with his prisoners watching downloaded episodes of 'Faites Entrer l’accusé, a TV show that re-enacted notorious crimes, in an expository style to show how they were accomplished and, eventually solved. He was bitter, cynical, and alienated. |
From Le Monde
September 8 2014 |
L'ex-otage français en Syrie Nicolas Hénin affirme que Mehdi Nemmouche a été l'un de ses geôliers pendant sa détention, dans un témoignage publié samedi par le site de son employeur, le magazine Le Point.
Quand Nemmouche ne chantait pas, il torturait.
Je n'avais absolument aucun doute [sur le fait que notre geôlier soit aussi l'homme du Musée juif de Bruxelles]. Avant même de voir ses photos ou d'entendre sa voix, le simple acte lui-même m'avait déjà mis la puce à l'oreille.
Puisque, malheureusement, dans notre détention, dans ses propos permanents, il y avait une espèce d'obsession antisémite, une obsession à vouloir imiter ou dépasser Merah, son modèle.
Ce qu'il y a d'extraordinaire : avec le parcours de Nemmouche, vous voyez bien que ce n'est pas un idéologue islamiste ! Il le disait lui-même : il se définissait comme un jeune criminel transformé en nettoyeur ethnique, c'est ce qu'il disait en permanence.
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The French ex-hostage held in Syria, Nicolas Hénin, asserts in testimony published on Saturday by his employer, the magazine Le Point, that Mehdi Nemmouche was one of his jailers during his detention.
When Nemmouche wasn’t singing, he was torturing.
I had absolutely no doubt [on the fact that our jailer is also the Brussels Jewish Museum guy]. Even before seeing his photos or hearing his voice I had a hunch.
Because, unfortunately, during our detention he kept talking about a sort of anti-semitic obsession of his, an obsession to copy or surpass Merah, his ideal.
The extraordinary thing about Nemmouche’s history is that you really see that he’s not an Islamist ideologue! He said so himself: he defined himself as a young criminal transformed into ethnic cleaner, that’s what he said all the time.
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Pierre Torres, a journalist who criticizes the French government's anti-terrorism efforts from the Left, offered an unforgettable picture of Nemmouche, as a certain type of young person who has become all too familiar to Americans in the last 20 years. |
From Le Monde
September 17 2014 |
Aux questions telles que: Reconnaissez-vous Medhi Nemmouche ? Est-il le sarcastique et pétulant jeune homme que l'on dit ?
Jeune-délinquant-Arabe-Syrie-attentat-France-terrorisme-antiterrorisme », toute l'artillerie sémantique est déballée afin de finir de nous convaincre que nous avons toutes les raisons d'avoir peur.
Nemmouche n'est pas un monstre. C'est un sale type, narcissique et paumé, prêt à tout pour avoir son heure de gloire. Ses raisons d'aller en Syrie se rapprochaient probablement plus de celles qui, à un certain degré, mènent des adolescents américains à abattre toute leur classe ou certains de nos contemporains à participer à une émission de télé-réalité, qu'à une quelconque lecture du Coran.
Ce qu'il incarne, c'est une forme particulièrement triviale de nihilisme. Il est, à cet égard, un pur produit occidental, labellisé et manufacturé par tout ce que la France peut faire subir à ses pauvres comme petites humiliations, stigmatisations et injustices.
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Questions such as, "Do you recognize Medhi Nemmouche? Is he the sarcastic and petulant young man people say he is?"
Young-offender-Arab-Syria-France-bombing terrorism-antiterrorism" means all the semantic artillery is unpacked to convince us finally that we have every reason to be afraid.
Nemmouche is not a monster. He’s a bad guy, narcissistic and lost, desperate to have his moment of glory. His reasons for going to Syria are probably closer, to some degree, to whatever leads American teenagers to shoot up their whole school, or take part in a reality TV show, rather than a result of reading the Quran.
He embodies a particularly trivial form of nihilism. He is, in this regard, purely a Western product, labeled and manufactured by everything France does to subject its poor to petty humiliations, stigma and injustice.
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