When we see or hear evil we have a moral imperative to call it out. Otherwise evil seeps into our narrative, our media, our politics and our lives. The words uttered by Marine Le Pen ā Franceās presidential candidate on the eve of one of the most important elections in Europe ā insisting that colonialism was a positive thing, are so fundamentally wrong. To then further precise that in Algeria in particular it was beneficial is an incitement to hatred, a blatant lie and the worst form of fascism that we now face in Europe.
The actual denial of Franceās painful history in Algeria goes even beyond the amnesia of British colonialism. For young French people who are denied the truth about their past, actively lied to, this is a crime. And it is particularly so for the descendants of the Algerians in France, including for the pied noir families, who were all victim to this cruel and barbaric regime which ran for 132 years until 1962.
In the May 1945 uprisings following the Second World War, when Algerians who had fought to liberate Europe demanded their basic human rights, the colonial government brutally massacred 15,000 Algerians. 104 Europeans lost their lives. Wiping out entire villages, throwing people out of airplanes in a campaign of fear and brutal repression, the French violence was a turning point in the Algerian struggle for civil rights and justice.
Between 1954 and 1962 over one million Algerians were killed during the war of liberation. The extent of cruelty defies belief. Whether reading Alistair Horneās seminal A savage war of peace on the sheer barbarism, Henri Allegās The Question on the institutional torture centres (he saw the internal workings from painfully close up) or listening to the stories of the descendants who saw their parents brutally murdered, disappeared, tortured at the hands of ā no other than ā the likes of Jean Marie Le Pen. Like his daughter, Le Pen was a French Presidential candidate, and is a man known to have committed torture in Algeria.
Colonial Algeria was a crime against humanity – from its bloody initial conquest to its brutal end. It is a crime which Algerians ā astonishingly ā have somehow been able to overcome. When the French left in 1962 there was one university in the country – one in which you would not find Algerians. Today there are 48 vibrant institutions, full of students with whom I have had many interesting debates in recent years.
In the almost impossible conditions of continued French terrorist actions at the end of the independence struggle, which saw the Secret Army Organisation (OAS), a right wing French paramilitary organisation, destroying any infrastructure they could get their hands on, including burning down the national library, Algeria rebuilt a nation. The liberation movement rebuilt the Algerian identity, re-designed an education system and rediscovered their proud and beautiful culture.
Listening to this injustice and Le Penās degrading comments will make life more difficult for young French Algerians in particular. It will hurt French people in Algeria and Algerians in France. It will break the bonds of friendship which still span the Mediterranean between the shores of Marseille and the coast of Algiers.
Marine Le Pen is playing a dangerous, deceitful and immoral game. And it is one which will ultimately hurt France and French citizens far more than it will damage Algeria. Algerians know their history, and despite all the pain and bloodshed, can be proud of it. As my Professor Olivier Roy once told me, there is no way we can compete: Algerians have a deep understanding of French and European culture, of the Middle East, of African identity. They can adopt multiple identities, build on multiple allegiances and access a multitude of information sources. This century will be theirs if they can manage a peaceful and democratic progression which includes all of Algerian citizens in a real reflection about the future of the country.
The equivalent unfortunately cannot be said in the context of the French presidential election, tarnished with corruption, racism and lies.
Jessica Northey is a Research Associate with the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at the University of Coventry. She gained her PhD from the European University Institute in Italy and is a country expert with the Bertelsmann Foundation. Jessica has recently published ‘Associations and Democracy in Algeria‘ (2017) with Democratization and her upcoming book Civil Society in Algeria: activism, identity and the democratic process will be published with I.B.Tauris.
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3 Comments
To give you an example of the rancid whataboutery and racist, neo-colonial shite that this issue spawns in the UK, check the comments on the article below:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/27/bristol-city-slave-trader-edward-colston
The Guardian closed comments on the piece before i discovered it, which frustrates me, but then the responses to any comments I may have made would have been deliberately provocative.
You even have one sad character suggesting Bristol flagellates itself enough over its connections to the slave trade etc., in the teeth of the fact that Colston Hall was named after a slave trader.
I will not be emigrating, but the gloomiest picture of an ultra-nationalist, neo-colonial, ultra-neoliberal Conservative Party sweeping the national election here on 8th June, supported by a billionaire owned press that is just full of vitriolic propaganda against anything to do with public service or the socio-ethical, and even further to the right than most of the Tory party, that is a real prospect. Life here is descending into hell.
This is a really important matter which is assumed to be overpassed and done. The common conclusion is: the West did a great thing for humanity, they are in debt with us but we want it to be passed and move on.
This mentality is so ubiquitous that it has become second nature in almost all positions across the board, sometimes opposing imperialism while defending the history of imperialism.
In French Morocco the socilaist papers at the brim of West wold II didn’t oppose the ocuppation of Morocco. Nor the republicans during the Spanish Civil War show moral qualms for what they call Spanish Morocco, as far as I have seen, and according to Hugh Thomas one of the reasons the people was discontented was that Spain was not an empire any more, he is ,or was , an emperialist who was awarded by the Mexican goverment for glorifying Cortes and imperialism in his book Conquest.
This is the reason why West World II is claimed to be the most horrofic slump in history when it has been a flat surface of the same horror before and after, and that when people, even the people who has been for so long exploited by the west, have to fear the evils of totalitariansm the refrence is WWII and the heroes the imperialist.
Orwell was capable to see this but that doesn’t mean, in my opinion , he desagreed with it, he said the arabs always used a chance to beg and some were avaricious, a harsh crtic which he didn’t counter for the french.
When Westerners travel in the countries they colonized you can notice the sense of superior morality and condescendency because they are totally convinced they have never stolen anything and are trust worthy people.
The West should be held responsible for the explotation of resources and labor they did to enrich themselves, not only moraly but with compensation, there are plenty of records of the plunders, there would not only be the Nuremberg and Tokio Trials but many others, they wouldn’t demand less according to their standards. And maybe Columbus wouldn’t loom so proud when looking to the East through the Atlantic Ocean in Barcelona, if he isn’t taken to a warehouse.
I tend to agree with you, Hatuey.
As the descendent of Brtitish slave-owners, I am only too well aware of what we owe the so-called developing world, and would welcome some kind of process through which there were reaparations for the abused.
This subject does come up occasionally, on the Guardian on-line blogs for instance. And the problem is there is simply a lot of apathy about this, and there is a large minority of people in the UK, certainly on teh internet, who are aggressively reactive to any such idea. My posts generally get swamped by opportunistic and often venomous whataboutery.
In my home city of Bristol, Colston Hall, named after a man who did business with, invested in, the slave trade industry, is finally going to be renamed, after a long campaign led by the local African-Carribean community. This took years and is just the renaming of a hall that should not ever have been called Colston Hall.
The will is just not there for the idea of reparations, etc. That’s at the level of popular perception.
And look at the level of geopolitics! If we think of the US and France. The president of Haiti, Jean Baptiste-Aristide suggested that France pay Haiti reparations for its history of using Haiti as a slave colony and for extracting reparations from Haiti for losing it as a slave colony. He was kidnapped by the French, while in leceted office, and with US permission and complicity, and flown to a central african republic.
Keep this subject alive, by all means, but there are probably more pressing, achievable things to be done at this moment. This subject is easily batted away in these neo-colonial times, “Yes, it’s always the British Empire’s fault, isn’t it! And white males! We’re always demonised! Where’s our free housing and benefits! It all goes on the immigrants from Arica! And what about all that money we send to Africa!”