French Populism and Discourses on Secularism

Per-Erik Nilsson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781350055841
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

Per-Erik Nilsson takes a religious studies approach to analyse the intersections of secularism, nationhood and populism in contemporary France. This book provides insight into the French and European radical-nationalist ideology and activism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between religion and the state in contemporary Europe and beyond. When Marine Le Pen became the leader of the radical nationalist and populist party National Front in 2011, she made clear that secularism was a core value of party. This signalled a significant shift in the party's rhetorical strategies and previous reluctance to embrace secularism. Nilsson argues that this conspicuous appropriation first came about as a logical result of the obsession of the established mainstream political parties and news media with questions of secularism, national identity and Islam. He shows that a key player in understanding the National Front's change is the web-based journal Riposte Laïque, which has become a central actor in French radical-nationalist and anti-Muslim web and street-based activism. For the first time, this source is examined in order to understand French radical nationalists' recent appropriation of secularism, as well as debates on secularism, national identity and Islam in France more broadly.

1

Under Siege

Approaching Secularism, Populism, and Nationhood in France

The year is 2010. It is a grey and rainy December day in Paris. I am walking in the 12th arrondissement, one of Paris’s twenty districts. My destination is the Assises contre l’islamisation de nos pays [Conference against the islamization of our countries], located in the Espace Charenton, a large venue. The conference flyer I am holding in my hand reads: “Defend secularism, defend our civilization’s values.” The main organizer is the French secularist and web-based journal, Riposte Laïque. They organized the conference together with an ensemble of twenty-five web-based journals, and social and political movements, some of which are: Résistance Républicaine [Republican Resistance], Bloc Identitaire [Identity Block], Novopress, l’Obsérvatoire de l’islamisation [Islamization Observatory], Parti de l’Innocence [Innocence Party], and Ligue de Défence Française [French Defense League].¹ On the list of invited speakers I see, among others, Oskar Freysinger from the Swiss Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) [Democratic Union of the Center]; Tommy Robinson from the English Defence League (EDL); Renaud Camus from the Parti de l’Innocence; Fabrice Robert from Bloc Identitaire; Jean-Paul Gourevitch, an acclaimed international expert on immigration; Timo Vermuelen from the Dutch Defense League (DDL); Anders Gravers from Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE); Giselle Litman, the Eurabian author also known as Bat Ye’Or; and, finally, Pierre Cassen, the founder of Riposte Laïque. These groups and individuals conspicuously draw on contemporary radical nationalist, populist, identitarian, and anti-Muslim discourses; and they relate in one way or another to a European counter-jihad movement: a network of journalists, politicians, and web-based and street activists.² The network is heterogeneous, and actors within it draw eclectically on a wide variety of discourses that are adapted to their specific national and local arenas; however, according to Egil Asprem, they converge with regard to three aspects:

(a) Islam is seen as a new form of totalitarian ideology rooted in Europe and, as such, is seen as a great threat to European civilization;

(b) the political and cultural establishment is held responsible for the ongoing Islamization of Europe; and

(c) European civilization and Europe’s nation-states thus face two enemies: Islam and the political and cultural establishment.³

There had been some buzz about the conference in the news media during the preceding days. Major news channels had denounced the conference for being a meeting of the European extreme right. According to Riposte Laïque, the organizers were the victims of a “mass-media misinformation worthy of the Soviet press back in the day.”⁴ Moreover, the mayor of Paris, Socialist Betrand Delanoë, and the first deputy mayor of the 12th arrondissement, Communist Alexis Corbière, as well as the antiracist organization Mouvement contre le racism et pour l’amitié entre les peoples (MRAP) [Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples], had tried in vain to ban the conference.⁵ Regardless, the Parisian police had granted the organizers the right to hold the conference by referring to the French law of 1881, guaranteeing French citizens the right to hold public meetings. As I approach the conference, I notice that the police are actually present on site and have enforced a considerable security perimeter around the venue. As I reach the perimeter, two policemen ask me where I am heading and ask to look in my bag. I enter into a secured and desolate street. After a couple hundred meters, I see the entrance. A dozen white men and women stand outside. At the entrance, I am greeted by two large men with shaved heads who are wearing black bomber jackets and black knee-high leather boots. I later learn that security had been provided by one of the organizers, Bloc identitaire.

The inner entrance of the hall is narrow and packed with people. The walls are covered in posters portraying a woman wearing a niqab with a judge’s mallet in her hand, a not so subtle depiction of an imagined Sharia Court. The poster reads: “No to Sharia!”

I pay my entrance fee of ten euros and enter the major hall. Nearly all of approximately 200 seats are full. The walls are draped with French flags: blue, white, and red. The white middle section is decorated with the Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of Free France, the exiled government during the Nazi occupation of France, the cross being the resistance movement’s answer to the Nazis’ swastika. I was to learn during the day that the resistance movement is sitting in this hall, and their enemy is no longer the Nazis: it is the Islamists. France is under siege. While I am still standing at the entrance, a woman asks me if I am hungry. I realize that I am next to a food stand where she is selling ham sandwiches and wine. A large piggy bank for tips is standing in the middle of the table. The ham and the piggy bank are small symbols, but significant for French and other anti-Muslim movements: to eat pork functions as a technique of inclusion and exclusion, as it is seen to symbolize traditional French food, helping to designate the true French from the Semitic “others,” as it is not part of halal or kosher food.⁶ In 2006, French identitarians organized a soupe au cochon, a soup kitchen for homeless people which used and served pork, with the aim of excluding Muslims and Jews.⁷

Before I take my seat, I walk around the large hall and observe the many cameramen who are finalizing their set-up. The whole conference is being broadcast live. While approaching a book stand in one corner of the hall, I run into the person who invited me: a member of the Riposte Laïque editorial board. Up to this point, we had met on a couple of occasions for interviews. He is excited and tells me about what is to come. He is especially excited about the presence of Oskar Freysinger. I quickly learn that he is something of a star to the Riposte Laïque editorial staff. Freysinger, from the Swiss populist right-wing UDC, is one of the instigators behind the popular initiative to ban the construction of minarets in the country. During the campaign, Freysinger’s party published a poster portraying a woman dressed in a black burqa standing in front of the Swiss flag, which is pierced with black missile-like minarets. My host then guides me over to a book stand to show me a new and “important” book by Joachim Véliocas, who had listed all the mayors in France who, according to him, betray the secular principles of France by paving the way for Islamists.⁸ The book was published by the Tatamis publishing house, which, as I was about to learn, has filled its shelves with anti-Muslim literature and takes pride in printing books that are refused by the more renowned publishers.

The conference is about to start and I take a seat. A video starts playing on the large screen in front of the audience. An ancient map of France fills the screen, accompanied by the slogans “defend our secularism” and “defend our civilization.” This is replaced by images portraying a mosque and then Muslims praying on three streets in northern Paris (rue Myrha, rue Leon, and the Boulevard de Barbès). This is followed by a sermon from Amar Lasfar, the long-term public face of the biggest French Islamic organization, Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF) and since 2013, its president. These images are meant to illustrate an ongoing Islamization of France. The video then turns to show resistance against it. First, there is an intervention by some seventy people wearing pig’s masks at a Quick (French version of McDonald’s) serving halal meat in the city of Villeurbanne. Next are images of the EDL, accompanied by the text “British patriots, taking to the streets to say no.” The video ends with the slogan: “Defenders of secularism and the values of our civilization. You are no longer alone!!” The audience applauds the video; the mood in the room is vibrant.

Pierre Cassen takes the podium. He starts by thanking Espace Charenton for not giving in to the “politico-religious groups who think they are in Iran; that Sharia law rules in France.” The audience shows its agreement by applauding any positive identification with France and booing as soon any connotation of Islam is mentioned. He continues to thank the police for resisting the pressure put on them by the mayor of Paris when he was “insulting the organizers and thus the participants of this conference by classifying them as haters, extreme-right wingers, and racists.” Cassen leaves the podium and a long series of lectures follow on the ongoing Islamization of France and the fundamental incompatibility of Islam and Western civilization. A couple of days later, Riposte Laïque summarized the conference: according to them it was a great success, with over 600,000 viewers of their broadcast:

During the conference, the speeches leaned both towards the left and the right. All the testimonials were very rich and touched upon different themes, such as: feminism, syndicalism, immigration, identity, secularism, and the Republic. All the participants gathered with love for our civilization’s principles and the refusal to see our countries lose their democratic conquests to an increasingly violent and threatening Islamism.⁹

In the articles in Riposte Laïque, the conference was seen as the starting point for a larger avant-garde movement rooted in the core values of the French republic and secularism. Riposte Laïque and its co-organizers had laid the foundation for a self-acclaimed avant-gardist patriotic resistance against a perceived onslaught on the French nation and its people: an Islamic onslaught that had led to the development of a corrupt political elite, a politically correct and gullible political left, and a far-reaching feminization and castration of the nation’s virility. This discourse on secularism has far-reaching echoes within contemporary French radical nationalist and populist milieus, most notably within Front National, with its leader Marine Le Pen. I was stunned by the participants’ passion and professed love for France, as well as their unyielding conviction that Islamists were waging a full-blown war of conquest against France, Europe, and Western civilization. To them, we were standing at a threshold. It was either them or us. It was a dire situation where one had to choose sides, to resist or perish.

Another aspect of Riposte Laïque and this conference was how secularism, this conspicuously multifaceted aspect of French politics and social life, appeared as an emblem, as a symbolic bridge, to unite, create, and reshape previously diverse and dispersed political and social voices around one cause. This cause was to purify France of all facets of Islam. But there was more to it. The cause was guided by a culturalist idea of who the real people of France were: those with a professed love for freedom, equality, and the nation-state. As Cassen said in his introductory speech, the Parisian Socialist mayor and the anti-racist organization MRAP had accused the organizers of being hateful and racist; but, in the eyes of Riposte Laïque, it was the other way around. The Socialist mayor and MRAP are the ones who hate; they are the ones who are blinded by racism: a racism targeting the white French population. On the other hand, Riposte Laïque, by their own logic, are the ones who love; they are the ones who see the order of things for what it is; they are the ones who are courageous enough to tell the truth; and they are the Republican avant-gardists standing up for the French people in the emerging apocalyptic battle between secular democracy and Islam.

A new media is born

Pierre Cassen founded Riposte Laïque in 2007. He describes himself as an old Trotskyist. He has been a member of the revolutionary communist party, Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR) [Communist revolutionary league], editor of the republican leftist online journal ReSPUBLICA, and national spokesperson for the secularist organization Union pour un movement laïque (UFAL). Cassen’s aim was to create a new journal to function as a forum for the defense of secularism against what Cassen and his co-editors saw as the most urgent threat against the Republic, a threat that Cassen’s earlier political allies did not take seriously: “Riposte Laïque was founded because we think that the gravity of the offensive brought about by political Islam in France, in Europe, and around the world, has been dramatically underestimated by a large section of the left and by the secular movement.”¹⁰ The naming of the journal was not self-evident, but Riposte Laïque was chosen because it was thought to “speak to the left,” as Cassen puts it.¹¹ The ambition was to “reunite republicans all over the political field,” to “encourage patriotism among ordinary people,” and to be “as little sectarian as possible and open to all.”¹² Cassen is adamant, as are the articles in the journal, that the Riposte Laïque editorial staff is not a homogeneous group and that they do not agree on a large number of political issues, for example, on same-sex marriage or the Israel–Palestine question.¹³ Cassen believes that, after almost ten years of existence, the ambition of Riposte Laïque to unify and awaken the left to these issues has not so far played out as planned: rather, the contrary. According to him, the left unjustly treats him and his fellows as “bastards,” “extreme-rightists,” and “all these sorts of derogatory terms.”¹⁴ Indeed, Riposte Laïque is frequently portrayed as being part of a blogosphere called the fashosphère, or the fascist-sphere, by left-leaning media channels.¹⁵ However, when it comes to getting the message out to the general public and making French citizens understand that Islam is incompatible with the Republic and its values, Cassen sees his endeavor as a success: “We have constructed a war...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Preface
• 1. Under Siege: Approaching Secularism, Populism, and Nationhood in France
• 2. A Green Cancer: The Construction of an External Enemy
• 3. Collaborators and Traitors: The Construction of Internal Enemies
• 4. The Real People: Identifying the True People of France
• 5. Reconquista or Death: The Exploration of Strategies to Purify the Nation
• 6. Echoes from the Past: An Outlook on Europe
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Imprint