The urban violence that followed Nahel’s death on June 27 cannot be explained solely by economic and social inequalities. The memory of the Algerian war also deeply affects the imagination of the rioters. A persistence maintained by the government of Algiers, which considers itself the “moral guardian” of immigrants and their descendants.
This is the thesis of historian Pierre Vermeren, specialist in the Maghreb, professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and author of French Denial: our secret history of Franco-Arab liaisons (Albin Michel, 2018). Interview.
Le Point: According to you, the causes of the riots are not only economic and social, but also historical and cultural. For what ?
Pierre Vermeren: The economy is a structural cause. We have given up production by deindustrializing the country. Workers have been brought in whose children do not have jobs. No longer a question of being workers like the parents: the school, although it no longer manages to require of so many students a minimum linguistic and scientific background, continues to promise a rapid social ascent; the effects of a late selection by failure (each school level postponing the deadline to the following year) are very humiliating, making it difficult to go back. However, the school only promotes a minority. What to do for millions of people?
But the causes are essentially historical and cultural, otherwise the 1.5 million Franco-Sino-Vietnamese inhabitants would be there. These riots constitute the fantasy revival of a mini-war in Algeria: the fight against “colonial France” (sic) and its forces of order. The events started during Eid el-Kébir. In 2005, the riots had started in the middle of Ramadan. The religious festival is not the cause, but the occasion, of an over-mobilization of community and identity. In Algeria or in Iraq, the great Islamic festivals are occasions for rejoicing and over-violence that the press reports. There was also a concomitance with the holidays and the heat. And Nahel’s Nanterre burial was a second moment of symbolic Islamic communion: “Allah y rahmo” – “God bless him” – carried the banners in Arabic.
There are three types of actions: looting of opportunity, attacks on authorities, and damage to the symbols of the Republic. Have all been targeted? Places of worship? Halal supermarkets or fast food outlets, and which ones? A long investigative work is to be carried out, because the targets designate the intentions.
Is that enough to make these riots a “fantastic revival of an Algerian mini-war”?
No, of course not, but the support of the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, for “his nationals”, the presence of Algerian flags at the white march, the accusations of unilateral racism by the decolonials (we would still be “in colonization”), the diatribes dubious personalities, including self-proclaimed imams, then Erdogan, who often accuses France of genocide in Algeria, all this creates an atmosphere, a few days after the reinstatement of the anti-French couplet in the Algerian anthem ( “you must be accountable”) and Tebboune’s trip to Moscow. Resentments are a background noise that also crystallizes with the intifada, the Anglo-Saxon ethnic riots or the rage of the American ghettos. The symbolic stock is rich. Our specificity is the Algerian “inspiration” which works the imaginations.
How to explain the persistence of this Franco-Algerian resentment?
During the colonial era, Algerians had French nationality without citizenship (until 1958). Since the 1980s, their descendants in France have been told that they are all French by right, even if they are deprived of the social, linguistic or cultural attributes of this condition. In fact, these young people are not all French. France has 5 to 6 million foreigners. Nationality is not automatic (despite the abolition of the manifestation of will in 1998), it is subject to conditions of residence, birth and the nationality of the parents. A fortiori for minors born abroad to foreign parents. In France, we have the spirit of system. After prohibiting citizenship to colonized Algerians (which caused the war), their descendants in France are forced to be French, even without consent.
However, Algeria – and the reasoning applies to Morocco and Turkey – considers them to be Algerians. Foreign interference, cultural resistance, offensive Islamic culture, manipulated postcolonial pathology: it all gets mixed up. In France, the general tone of immigration since 1962 has been dominated by Algeria. It is a question of numbers and history, seniority, Francophonie, the strength of its nationalism, the virulence of its relations with France, but also a form of love-hate and dependence. Islam in France is predominantly Algerian, and moreover driven by Algiers. In this migratory bath, Morocco constitutes a powerful minority. However, when you live in the Maghreb, as I have done for a long time, or by watching its televisions, you see that the colonial imagination is very present. It is taken over here by the Islamists, the indigenists and the far left…
Algeria has expressed, through its Minister of Foreign Affairs, its concern for the safety of its “nationals”. Is this a sincere approach or a way to add fuel to the fire?
When the bosses murder young Franco-Maghrebs, no one demands accountability; when a policeman, in dramatic fashion, kills an outlaw, there are days of riots. However, the Algerian state considers itself as the moral guardian of immigrants vis-à-vis the French authorities: Tebboune does not speak of “young French people of Algerian origin”, but of its “nationals”. Whenever a Franco-Algerian crisis takes place, the country of origin gets involved. France considers the descendants of immigrants as French, Algeria and Morocco as Algerians and Moroccans, the imams as Muslims, the elites as victims… Faced with these permanent contradictory injunctions, they have cobbled together a complex identity. In France, many claim to belong to their original homeland; there, the same people are seen as profiteers, thugs, and the elites don’t have enough harsh words for them.
