Andreas Whittam Smith: The French fear of 'the other'
[Andreas Whittam Smith is co-founder of The Independent.]
In France the fear of "the other" has flared up again. The list of groups that have been given this status at one time or another in French history is quite long. On this occasion the "others" are the Les Roms, that is the Roma or, as we prefer to describe them, Gypsies or travelers. As in Britain, they suddenly arrive, put up their camps and immediately engender local opposition and even fear. President Sarkozy has decreed that they should be removed and sent back to their countries of origin, generally Romania and Bulgaria.
To the extent that individual Roma people have behaved illegally, then President Sarkozy's actions, although aggressive, would be within the rules that govern the free movements of people within the European Union, of which both Romania and Bulgaria are recent members. However in a circular dated 5 August sent by the Ministry of the Interior to officials around the country, the Roma are singled out. Of the 300 illegal camps that should be removed, the phrase is added "en priorité ceux des Roms." As can be seen, this little phrase turns the emphasis from illegality to race.
Which in turn puts France in breach of European rules. Hence the stern words of Viviane Reding, the EU Justice Commissioner. She called French actions a disgrace and said that she would propose that the European Commission takes legal proceedings against France. All the time protesting its innocence, the Ministry quietly rewrote the offending circular so that now it refers to the removal of illegal camps "whoever the occupants might be".
Jews have often headed the list of "others". For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, France has sometimes exhibited a virulent strain of anti-semitism. The anti-Jewish policy of the French wartime government headed by Marshall Pétain has been excused as unavoidable given that the country was under German occupation. But the French decrees were in some respects stricter than the Nazi, particularly in assessing Jewish ancestry. As Pétain's private secretary, Du Moulin de Labarthète affirms in his memoires: "This legislation was, if I dare say, spontaneous, purely native" .
Freemasons and Protestants also played the role of the "other" at least until the end of the Second World War. Freemasons were thought by many Catholics to want to destroy family values and to deny religion. Maurice Barres, a right wing polemicist said that Jews and Protestants were incarnations of cosmopolitanism, and therefore rootless parasites. They loved universal rights such as the right to life, to freedom, to own property "because it masked their foreignness."
One of the most striking actions against the "other" in French history was the public degradation in 1895 at the Ecole Militaire in Paris of Captain Dreyfus, the Jewish officer who was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany on charges cooked up by the Army High Command. At a formal ceremony, the poor Captain was stripped of his buttons, braids, epaulettes and red trouser stripes and his sword was broken before he was led away in rags to begin a long prison sentence.
How can one explain these fears?..
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
In France the fear of "the other" has flared up again. The list of groups that have been given this status at one time or another in French history is quite long. On this occasion the "others" are the Les Roms, that is the Roma or, as we prefer to describe them, Gypsies or travelers. As in Britain, they suddenly arrive, put up their camps and immediately engender local opposition and even fear. President Sarkozy has decreed that they should be removed and sent back to their countries of origin, generally Romania and Bulgaria.
To the extent that individual Roma people have behaved illegally, then President Sarkozy's actions, although aggressive, would be within the rules that govern the free movements of people within the European Union, of which both Romania and Bulgaria are recent members. However in a circular dated 5 August sent by the Ministry of the Interior to officials around the country, the Roma are singled out. Of the 300 illegal camps that should be removed, the phrase is added "en priorité ceux des Roms." As can be seen, this little phrase turns the emphasis from illegality to race.
Which in turn puts France in breach of European rules. Hence the stern words of Viviane Reding, the EU Justice Commissioner. She called French actions a disgrace and said that she would propose that the European Commission takes legal proceedings against France. All the time protesting its innocence, the Ministry quietly rewrote the offending circular so that now it refers to the removal of illegal camps "whoever the occupants might be".
Jews have often headed the list of "others". For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, France has sometimes exhibited a virulent strain of anti-semitism. The anti-Jewish policy of the French wartime government headed by Marshall Pétain has been excused as unavoidable given that the country was under German occupation. But the French decrees were in some respects stricter than the Nazi, particularly in assessing Jewish ancestry. As Pétain's private secretary, Du Moulin de Labarthète affirms in his memoires: "This legislation was, if I dare say, spontaneous, purely native" .
Freemasons and Protestants also played the role of the "other" at least until the end of the Second World War. Freemasons were thought by many Catholics to want to destroy family values and to deny religion. Maurice Barres, a right wing polemicist said that Jews and Protestants were incarnations of cosmopolitanism, and therefore rootless parasites. They loved universal rights such as the right to life, to freedom, to own property "because it masked their foreignness."
One of the most striking actions against the "other" in French history was the public degradation in 1895 at the Ecole Militaire in Paris of Captain Dreyfus, the Jewish officer who was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany on charges cooked up by the Army High Command. At a formal ceremony, the poor Captain was stripped of his buttons, braids, epaulettes and red trouser stripes and his sword was broken before he was led away in rags to begin a long prison sentence.
How can one explain these fears?..