For anti-racism group, French values can trounce terror
Etienne Allais, director general of SOS Racisme, says racist rhetoric has proliferated in French public discourse of late
Elhanan Miller is the former Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
PARIS — Fissures in French society are deepening as disenfranchised citizens from immigrant backgrounds drift further away from the values of the French Republic and racist discourse permeates mainstream media, the director of a leading French anti-racism group told The Times of Israel Tuesday.
Etienne Allais, 26, is director general of SOS Racisme, one of France’s most active anti-discrimination NGOs. Founded in 1984, SOS Racisme was the first organization to provide victims of racist attacks with legal assistance and educate schoolchildren about racism and and social prejudices. Today, Allais oversees 35 local branches across France, where volunteers receive 1,500-2,000 complaints of racism a year, ranging from verbal to physical violence.
To bring the issue to public attention, the organization has held large events geared at encouraging coexistence in day-to-day life. On July 14, 2011, France’s Bastille Day, they organized a concert geared at “fostering republican values” beneath the Eiffel Tower which was attended by 1 million people.
SOS Racisme does not keep statistics on the targets of racial attacks. “Our purpose is not to know who is more of a victim of these acts, but to fight them. We won’t focus our work based on the [victims’] origins, we are here to accept all victims, irrespective of religion and skin color.”
There has been a wave of attacks against Muslim religious sites across France. According to data collected by the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (CNCDH), a French rights group, racist and anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in France over the past four years, including an increase in physical violence. Allais said he has also noticed an increase in racist rhetoric in French society, both in the media and among politicians.
“Public figures feel more and more at ease to express themselves in a racist or anti-Semitic manner,” he said. “During times of economic and social crisis, there is always scapegoating. We have warned against this, because it’s extremely dangerous for a society.”
According to Allais, social scapegoating of immigrants was especially prevalent during the Sarkozy administration, which ended in May 2012.
“When we stigmatize Muslims, we do the work of the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo. They wanted to instill hatred in society; the more attacks there are against Muslims, the more they can push the point and say: ‘Look, we are right, join us.”
With anti-immigration rhetoric increasing in France after every terrorist attack, Allais said his organization opposes the “security outlook on immigration,” which reinforces the stigmatization of immigrants.
“If we say ‘immigration is a problem,’ people take it to mean immigrants are a problem. We fight against this trend, arguing that immigration is France’s richness, its force. Without immigration, France wouldn’t be what it is, or what it should be tomorrow.”
‘When we stigmatize Muslims, we do the work of the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo’
Allais said it is an illusion to think that closing France’s borders would diminish the risk of terrorism. “As everyone saw, these terrorists were French. It is first and foremost a societal problem, but unconnected to immigration. It’s not immigration that created terrorism. We must understand how people born in France are able to hate so much.”
Social stigmas and economic inequality lead marginalized individuals to stop believing in the values of the French republic, he opined. “The more young people are disconnected from the republican spirit, the higher the risk for acts of extremism, whether from the extreme right of from religious extremists … for us, prevention means recreating social connections between individuals and placing the Republic at the center.”
While French anti-racism laws are quite good, Allais argued, proving that an attack was carried out for racist motives often proves challenging.
“We often find that proving acts of racism [in court] requires more evidence than other types of acts, because our society still has difficulty coming to terms with it,” he said.
Housed in Paris’s working-class 19th arrondissement, SOS Racisme has been warning of the widening rupture between disenfranchised immigrants (and their descendants) and French society for the past ten years, Allais said. “We argued that if we do not receive the appropriate resources to do our work, we cannot protect society from this risk. Unfortunately, that’s what happened last week.”
“Of course security work is necessary to protect society from extremists, but in order to prevent things from deteriorating that far, social work is imperative. The [Charlie Hebdo] terrorists grew up in this neighborhood, you know.”
‘The right to mock religion is dear to us,’ Allais said. ‘We cannot live in a society dominated by taboos concerning religious people’
Allais rejected the suggestion that French values themselves lead young Muslims towards extremism. The principle of laïcité, roughly translated as secularism, brings the average French citizen to frown upon expressions of religion in the street, banning overt religious symbols in public institutions by law.
“I don’t think laïcité is a problem. I daresay that laïcité advances with the Republic and education. When the principle of laïcité was instituted in France, it was the separation of church and state. Now, laïcité is the liberty of every person to practice his religion in complete safety and in the best conditions. It is one of the historic foundations of French society which we are very connected to, because for us laïcité means you cannot discriminate between citizens based on religion.”
“When laïcité seems under attack and religion advances, it means the Republic is in retreat. When the Republic stops providing answers to certain questions, that’s where we find extremist phenomena.”
‘Charlie Hebdo was an anti-racist newspaper’
SOS Racism has maintained a longstanding relationship with the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo which was attacked by Islamist terrorists last week. When the controversial publication was firebombed in November 2011, SOS Racism organized a solidarity protest the following week. Cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo killed in the attack, regularly donated his caricatures to SOS Racisme’s publications.
“The right to mock religion is dear to us,” Allais said. “We cannot live in a society dominated by taboos concerning religious people. Every person is free to believe what he wants, but the state must guarantee the right to blasphemy, as long as it doesn’t deteriorate to stigmatization as defined by law.”
The difference between ridiculing religion as a concept and stigmatizing a social group is one that Allais is careful to emphasize.
“Charlie Hebdo was an anti-racist newspaper. It published caricatures of the prophet, but did not stigmatize Muslims. It didn’t say ‘Muslims are a problem for France.’ That’s an important distinction.”
The Times of Israel Community.