The Fragile French Republic
Among Parisians, one senses a quiet resolve to fall back into routines and social habits, not only because they must, but because they should, and can—because the so-called Islamic State is not, of course, an existential threat to Paris or to France, unless the French choose to give themselves over to hysteria, and to treat it as if it were.
.. And yet the policy response seems to reflect exactly this, less confident, stance. The choice is unfortunate but unsurprising; any democratic government, trapped by electoral calculus and the felt imperative of immediate action, might be expected to do the same. Yet French authorities have been particularly alarmist, opting for a response that is both notably bellicose and notably heedless of civil rights. They have retaliated with bombing raids in Raqqa, with calls to close French mosques and deport more radical preachers, and with the declaration of a three-month state of emergency that has already allowed for more than 1,000 warrantless police searches, 165 warrantless arrests, and the placement under house arrest, without judicial approval or the possibility of legal recourse of any kind, of more than 250 people. There have been serious calls for the internment of the thousands of people listed by the intelligence services as possible threats; Prime Minister Manuel Valls has declared himself open to the possibility.
.. What is certain, however, is that such responses are of precisely the sort the Islamic State sought to provoke. “What IS wants is to set off civil war,” pitting Muslims against their would-be oppressors in the West ..
.. A history of political upheaval and collapse seems to have instilled in the country’s political leaders the conviction, even in times of political calm, that France’s Republican project is terribly fragile.
.. “Anxiety” over the survival of the Republican model, a collective project that from its start has sought to impose national unity, and uniformity, from on high, is indeed “hard-wired into French Republicanism,” said the historian Emile Chabal.
.. the brutal Algerian war of independence, in which France’s colonial subjects effectively turned Republicanism against the French, demanding for themselves the freedom and equality it nominally guaranteed.
.. The possibility that the country’s particular approach to Islam, or the integration of its post-colonial underclass, or the poor concrete neighborhoods of the banlieues, might contribute in some way to this sad phenomenon has not been the subject of any serious political debate since the start of the Syrian conflict.