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France: Apartheid French-style

01 January 1991

France: Apartheid French-style
artdoc August=1992

Publicity about the Front National's (FN) programme on
immigration, outlined here by CARF, is Part of a process by which
racist issues are continuously being put on the political agenda
in France by the extreme Right. Last November, the FN's
second-in-command, Bruno Megret, announced a programme of 50
measures against immigration. The FN is usually careful to avoid
overtly biologically-based racism, but this time it was there for
all to see. First, Megret linked the debate on ecology and
protecting the natural environment to the issue of ethnic purity.
`Ecology, is first of all, keeping faith with the laws of nature
... why fight for the preservation of animal species and at the
same time accept the principle of the disappearance of human
races by general inter-breeding?' Creating an apartheid-like
system of separate provision for `French' and `non-French'
people, grotesque measures, including compulsory AIDS tests, are
envisaged in the programme to stop the entry of immigrants to
France. All people who gained French nationality after 1974 (when
primary immigration ended) are to be re-examined, with
`Undesirables' rounded up and deported immediately on chartered
aircraft. Nationality rights would be based on `blood' rather
than on where a person was born or lives. At the cultural level,
the FN calls for the `banning of incessant cosmopolitan
references from school books' - in the 1930s, `cosmopolitan' was
the coded way of speaking about Jews.

Le Pen later elaborated on the proposals when he launched a
`white paper on defence'. He promised rightwing members of the
armed services a 75% increase in the military budget and said
that under the FN schools would focus on `patriotism', meaning
they would work closely with ex-servicemen's associations and
young `nationalists'.