Thinking Class

#132 - Andrew Hussey - France Is Fracturing Along Ethnic And Religious Lines

• John Gillam

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Professor Andrew Hussey OBE is Dean of the University of London Institute in Paris and Director of the Centre for Post-Colonial Studies at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. Born in Liverpool, educated at the University of Manchester and Jean Moulin University Lyon 3, he is the author of The French Intifada (Faber, 2014), Paris: The Secret History (Penguin, 2006), The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (Jonathan Cape, 2001), and Fractured France. He was awarded an OBE for services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and France. He writes for the Observer, the Guardian, and the New Statesman. His forthcoming book, The White In-Between Sea, explores the real life of the South of France from Corsica to the Spanish border.

In this conversation, Andrew and I think out loud about: 

  • Why France is fracturing into fragments that do not speak to each other
  • The three Frances: the citadels, the banlieues, and the forgotten white working-class periphery
  • How French prisons became the engine room of radicalisation
  • The difference between Maliki Islam and Wahhabi puritanism and why it matters
  • Why the French Republic's promise to make everyone a Frenchman is being tested to destruction
  • The RN rallies: Hussey spent time with the supporters and found not fascists but ordinary people
  • Whether the progressive left's grievance politics has made integration permanently impossible
  • The Charlie Hebdo demonstration and the moment Hussey converted to French Republicanism
  • Naboukh la France: what the ancient curse really means and why it matters
  • What all of this tells Britain about what is coming

Find Professor Hussey's work:

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Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

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SPEAKER_00

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Professor Andrew Hussey. Andrew is the Dean of the University of London Institute in Paris and Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies at the University of London School of Advanced Study. He was born in Liverpool, educated at the University of Manchester and Jean Moulin University in Lyon, and was awarded an OBE for services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and France. He is the author of the French Interfada, The Long War Between France and its Arabs, Paris, The Secret History, and most recently Fractured France. He writes for The Observer, The Guardian, and the New Statesman. In this conversation, Andrew and I think out loud about why France is fracturing along ethnic and religious lines, how French prisons became the engine room of radicalization, the difference between Maliki Aslam and Wahhabi Puritanism, why national rally supporters are not all monsters, the ancient curse of Nabuc La France, the Charlie Epto march that converted a sceptical Englishman into a French Republican, and what all of this tells Britain about what is coming. This is an enjoyable conversation with a fellow Englishman who has exiled himself to France for many decades, and it pairs well with the episodes recorded with Driss Garley, a friend and colleague of Andrew's. I recommend listening to those too should you have the time. And if you find this conversation valuable, subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack, and share it with anyone who will find it interesting. Enjoy the show, classmates, and now Professor Andrew Hussey. Joining me today is Professor Andrew Hussey. By Professor Hussey's estimation, France is fracturing and in many different directions. The secular public republic with a Christian inheritance has banlieus that are made up of people from all over Africa and of every different creed and colour. We've seen the Gilets Jaune movements in recent years and the rise of Le Rassemblement National. It doesn't appear to me to be a separate story, but actually altogether the same story. And Andrew has spent his career living inside the country, and he's here to explain it to us through the eyes of a fellow Anglo-Saxon, if that's your background. Andrew, you you spent decades living in France as an Englishman. Perhaps before we get into the the history, you could describe the France that you actually live in. Not that of official discourse, but the one you see on the street. Where are these fractures that you are seeing, these fault lines in in society?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, I'll be very geographically specific to start off. I live in uh the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, which is the south of Paris. It's just south of uh Montponas, which is a well-heeled, uh very very famous district. Um, and it it's uh it's it's it's often been called the back end of Montponas, I think it was the architectural historian Ian Nern who called it that. It's a traditionally working class district that through the 70s and 80s has uh changed through immigration, so it's a very sort of um diverse, you know, um population that lives in this very small area, still effectively a working-class population. And and and I think it works. I I like living here, but um the fractures, if you like, are all around. Not far from where I live, you can see a cité, and a cite, well I mean by that is the council of states, um uh which are the beginning of the Bonneux, which is the beginning of the the edge of Paris, the outside of Paris. And the the the the the lines between the two uh actually quite porous between the Bonneux and the centre of Paris where I live anyway, because it's in the south. But you do see there's tensions between the population of the Cité, which is you know literally not even a mile away, it's maybe three-quarters of a mile away, and the population at Lucia. I'm talking about two very diverse immigrant populations. So, in a very literal sense, as a person, I can see the fractures, if you like, um, which are to do with the two very different populations in France, which is the population of the Bonneux and the population of the centre of the city of Paris. And in my book, Fractured France, what I do is I travel through France, and I don't just look at that um division or anything like that, but that's one of the themes that keeps me real caring, we are care reoccaring. And the question is, where is France? Um, where is France to be located? Is it to be located in nostalgia? Um, is it to be located in memory, or is it to be located in in the very fast changing um world of the 21st century?

SPEAKER_00

Hmm. Well, perhaps we could talk a little bit about the fast-changing world of the 21st century and perhaps the the latter part of the 20th century, because one of the fractures that you have uh identified is that which has been driven by changes in the global economy, and uh it you you've been, I suppose, inspired by or informed by the work of um uh the likes of Christophe uh you'll have to pronounce uh Guillois, how do you pronounce it? Guillet, there you go. Author of Twilight of the Elite's a very good book, and um and and you you utilize some of his framework to understand France starting to fracture along the lines of these citadels uh that uh get a lot of the the global capital moving through them, the opportunities uh they're not necessarily all uh shiny and uh squeaky clean. In fact, they they have the bon lieu in there as well, but they are moving away from the remainder of France at a rapid pace, particularly with regards to economic opportunities. Um which which other ways do you find that it fractures? Is there a uh from from what I can see outside looking in, you you you can often see, for example, in response to a football match where Algeria and Morocco have been playing, or PSG have won, then all of a sudden you'll have the official France of the police trying their level best with lots of uh heavy uh weaponry and um preventative measures taking on uh what seem to be um a lot of people from North African background hitting the streets or the West African background. But presumably there's some religious tension between Christian, Muslims, secular that take place within the Republic itself as they jostle for position. What does it what does it look like? What what are all the different ways in which it it breaks down, do you think?

SPEAKER_01

An awful lot in what you've just said. So I'm gonna rewind to the beginning where you talk about Christophe Guillet. And I think this is important to sort of lay out the framework for understanding contemporary France. So there's a division between the Bonnie and and the citadels, the metropolitan centres of big French cities, okay, so we're aware of that. There's also a third element, and that's what Guillet calls La France Pariphanique, which is peripheral France. Now, peripheral France doesn't necessarily refer to the Bonnie. It also refers to the white working class enclaves, if you like, the small towns and hamlets and villages that have been forgotten by infrastructure. And Guill's interesting because actually his real academic interest is in um uh real estate immobilier, and how he got into developing a lot of his theories was actually looking up where people lived, who bought what, and how they lived. Various different populations. So he sets up a framework which I think is quite effective. You've got the Citadel, Metropolitan France, you've got the Bonneux, which we know about, and then you've got La France Père Felique, which is the France of um the places that I've just talked about, Les Oubliers, where you find a lot of support for the Assemblement National, for example. Now the problem is, just to start off, these three populations are all at war with each other, but they don't speak to each other as well. They don't have the same interests. So spinning back even further, the original title of the book was Fragments, um France in Fragments. And Granter wanted fractured France, so I went along with that because I I gave in. It's not a bad title, but there's a difference between fracture and fragments. A fracture is is a metaphor for something that hurts and damages and and you know potentially destroys. Fragments is something else. First of all, it's fragments because the book is autobiographical, it's kind of like a part of my life and my journeys, and you know, fragments of France. What I've seen in France shows to Queen Victor Hugo. Well, it's also fragments in the sense that what I sense is happening in France isn't so much the tripartite civil war that Guy analyses, it's more to do with what I would call, and and I know Alan Finkelkraut said it very well as well, is the Lebanisation of France. Lebanon's a country I used to know quite well and I used to go to. And one of the things about Lebanon is without giving me a lecture on Lebanese history and and the constitution, it it is hamstrung by its constitution. But in in Lebanon, for many, many years, for many decades, you've had a load of people, groups of people, whose interests don't reflect anybody else in the territory. So fragmentation is inevitable. And I see this happening in France much more than a fracture, actually, and much more immediate than talk of of civil war, which is you know, it's kind of on people's lips, it's in novels, it's in books and so on. I see it as a slow, I think I use the phrase a slow erosion or slow erosion of of um like a kind of like like a rock chase being worn away by pressures surrounding it. And I think the real question is, which is not going to be easy to answer, is how long these three populations can live with each other.

SPEAKER_00

I will try my best not to go off on a huge digression, but what you're saying feels like something I grapple with with regards to your mother country uh and and the country in which I I live in, um, is that uh Br Britain uh goes through a very similar phase. It has it has a a very dominant uh citadel in London and some of the former industrial cities that still get a fair amount of investment, but for the most part it's peeling off in various directions in much the same way you describe, including demographically, though, because of the different colonial histories of the countries, they're typically different populations that are uh immigrant populations that are living their own separate lives. And I ask myself all of the time, is that can such a nation-state remain governable if these groups continued to diverge? So um you are you're obviously grappling with that question with this fragmentation. Um, what do you think the the the state of France would need to do to be able to maintain itself as a coherent entity? Or do you think that there is a inevitability that current trajectory you're going to see a carving up into different regions? Um who knows, you don't have a crystal ball, but worth a thought experiment.

SPEAKER_01

I don't have a crystal ball, but I I don't mind thought experiments either. But actually you can look just on the ground what's happening in France, and without making any big predictions, you can see a process or series of processes at work. Now, this is the interesting thing that you've just raised is the very different colonial histories, and I think this is often left out or or misunderstood. So I'm gonna I'm not gonna digress, but I'm gonna give a potted um history of the two dialect the two colonial histories and how they diverge. Um Britain essentially had a commercial empire and it was run for money. The French had a commercial empire, but it included also La Mission Civilatis, the mission to make people into Frenchmen, that the universal republic applied to everybody, whether they're Muslim, Jewish, or you know, who whoever they were, that the universality of liberté égalité, um, you know, fraternité overrode local differences. Now, there's two things that are important here. Um, if we look at, for example, the actual nature of the French colonial relationship, particularly with North Africa, it's really complicated and intricate. And in some ways, I would say it's more like a family relationship, certainly, than anything like a you know, straightforward commercial relationship, because uh educated Moroccans, Tunisians and Algerians still speak French now in the Maghreb, though they're brought up speaking French, and effectively they're brought up with a French culture. I've met people in Tunisia who speak absolutely beautiful French and absolutely you know have a deep knowledge of the culture, Valerie and all of this kind of thing, but have never set foot in France. So I think the family relationship is really important, but like all family relationships as well, there are tensions as well, and family tensions can be worse than anything else. You know, love can turn to hate, resentment, and all of that kind of thing. And one of the inbuilt tensions, without going too far into this, is that um do you succeed in France? Can you succeed as a Muslim Arab in France? Well, the answer is yes and no. The fact is, you'll always always be you know part of that community, yet you will be drawn towards France, you know, linguistically, culturally, and so on. It's a it's a very complex relationship. Um so I'll probably stop there with the stuff about the colonial relationship. Globalisation is important to you as well. And what I have to say about globalisation is that you look at something like globalize the interfada, ha. Um, very dangerous statement. Um, and I'll tell you why it's a very dangerous statement in France, is because I think um globalization, global ideas like anti-Semitism, for example, they're kind of like the cloud. They're out there everywhere, they're international, they're hovering over everything, right? But as soon as you download it into a local situation, which is France, then it takes on the local conditions, and the history of anti-Semitism is far more vicious and far more virulent than Britain is not good at the moment. But um, it's actually worse in France and has been worse for a long time because of the long history of uh I was at the University of Lille in the 1980s when a large group of the professors were actually négationniste, which is the French term for Holocaust denial. They were supervising PhDs on Holocaust denial, and the French government had to step in and and and and you know deal with this, and it was a famous cause célèbre, and of course it exposed the wounds of Vichy, anti-Semitism, all of that kind of thing, which are all around you. So they're just two very ex you know, sort of clear examples of how the as it were, the the new French population, the population from the colonies, has to deal with these different layers of meaning in French society, as well as you know the residual problem of of the long-standing Jewish community in France. So, fragmentation, how does that work with all of this? Um When I talk about Britain, I realise I'm not that well qualified to talk about British society, but I do suspect that I've been there, I've been to these places. The the small towns in the north that used to be white working class uh industrial places, post-industrial, they're now often places that belong to someone else. And they don't want people there, you know, who are, as it were, in inverted commas, natives. Well it's not the same in France. There's a division between the Bonye, for example, and central the center, you know, the the Metropole in France. But is it the same level of exclusion? No. No. Because the population in the Bonne actually consume an apartment French television, French media, French motors, going out with French girls, smoking French weed, all this kind of stuff. The radicalised radicalization to Islam comes afterwards. That's a different story. You raise the Christian and Muslim things. It's not as straightforward as that. It's a and I think this is why it's difficult to have a crystal ball and to see where it goes. It erupts, doesn't it, into into riots and you know, various conflicts with the police, or you know, as as you suggest, uh official France comes out head down, heavy-handed on on groups of Maghreb after after a football match or something. But it's it's it looks simple, but in the words of the Who, the simple things you see are all complicated.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Well, uh uh a very interesting complication because often you find some of the most well-developed arguments will come from those people that you least expect. And uh in this case, uh someone who's become a a friend of mine, he is Franco-Moroccan. He wrote a book called A Reverse History of French Colonization. He's called Dris Gali, you might know him from the television. Drisgalli. Yeah, he's a very very uh very wonderful man. But the the interesting point being that he has a grandfather, uh Le Marocca, who had fought alongside the French in in the wars, um, and he talks of how there was a generation that actually had a very um a much warmer relationship with France. But what he argues as having taken place is that because peoples, when whole peoples um r reach a certain critical masses, it obviously becomes much harder to percolate amongst other people, and so the the separate identities become much more um pronounced. And he said, We've got a big problem where people are third, fourth generation French with the passport aren't feeling French at all and and and have a posture that can be anti-French or or what have you. He he he has effectively said, you know, the Republic as we know it, the Fifth Republic is is dead. We need to try and come up with a new a new kind of settlement, which includes those who are all going to be part of the civilization. It also includes the French that as we know them, understanding that there will be people of North African origin who are going to be part of that settlement. Uh but there needs to be something done about those who are living counter to the interests of a of the national whole, however you describe that. And I I found that interesting. But he says he always gets resistance. You'll get resistance from some people because he's a a Muslim, so he can never be trusted. Um, you'll get resistance from others saying, well, you couldn't possibly include some of this, these people of North African background in a in a new French Republic. But he said, Look, we're building a civilization here, so let's try and get people on the same page. But what I want to do before I ask you the question is just bring up a point you made, or not a point, a series of observations you made about Marseille as a place where just lots of different people since the dawn of uh of of history as as we see it have have generally rubbed along together, uh not necessarily mixed, but they've rubbed along together and things have kind of worked. But there's lots of distinct things that are not necessarily French, but something else. And I'm wondering whether the Gali vision of what do we do to build a civilisation um is something that can be done when you read of the levels of fragmentation in many different ways. So I'll pause there for a moment and say what do you what do you make of Garley's assessment and what do you make of the Fifth Republic being dead and a new settlement needing to be found amongst those who are going to be part of it and a kind of exclusion of those who are who are um who have a an anti uh republic posture.

SPEAKER_01

Again, wow, you're moving into heavy, deep territory. So I'm gonna rewind and and I'm gonna start off with Drif Skalil and a little bit of uh explication uh uh explanation, explication. Um I know Morocco quite well, I've been going there since the 1980s as well, so we've talked, I talked with Drif a lot about Morocco. And um uh the two things we both agree on. I don't agree about the Fifth Republic, but I agree on I agree on this. One of the most pernicious things that's happened in Morocco in the past 20 or 30 years has been the amend uh the the entry of American style identity politics into the university system. And this is something I know about because even last year I was on the Jouvie for a PhD in the University of Agadir, where I'm a fellow of the university, and I worked for a long time in Moroccan universities and and and with Moroccans um on various projects. And um what I saw what I saw was let's take this this gallier's father who fought for the French and then take his father who fought who who worked for the French for the for the Moroccan government, I think in in in in in television and radio, and then take someone like a friend of mine, Fatima Aroulet, whose father was a a leading figure with Istiqlal, which was the independent group in Morocco, and she's got a very high prestigious status in France in Morocco because of that. But someone like Fatima feels at home in France and in Morocco. Now, how do you get to that balance when you've got a substrata of academics who are constantly arguing about settler colonies, post-colonial angst, um, identity problems, the self and other, etc. etc., with an acquired vocabulary, an acquired method that comes from American campuses, which are very ignorant of the realities of the colonial reality of what was French Morocco, which is no more, but still is there in a different way, at least in the minds of people. And I think what this is doing, which is really interesting, and the journal Telkel, has done a which is a leftist journal, by the way, in Morocco, um, has done a lot of work on this, is to how do we get over the taboo of colonialism and independence? Because maybe it's not working, maybe it's out of date, and maybe Morocco, a country like Morocco, has to rethink its position with regard to Europe in loads of different ways, including immigration, for example, you know, including drug laws, including all kinds of uh kind of things that are unpopular. But you see, what happens is that um again, um American identity politics transmuted into Morocco again via the Anglo-Saxon to use that term, um, you know, university system of victim victim what's what I'm trying to say here. Um martyrdom, victim, complaining. Um actually quite well-heeled Moroccans teaching in universities, moaning about each other.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's a good it's a good point because when you think about colonial history, yes, you can obviously find a list of crimes visited upon the various North African peoples by uh the French from you know the Napoleonic era and and slightly before what have you. But as soon as you start engaging in that, you start going, well, how long's a a piece of string? Because it's not necessarily that was the initial crime that was conducted. We we people, if they look a little bit f farther further, will find that off you know, the Barbary coast, Alg you know, what's now Algeria specifically, they used to send pirates all out to sea and the French will be targeted, the Americans will be targeted. I think the Americans paid something like a a fifth of its entire government budget on on tribute to Algiers just to stop them from just from pi from piracy. Um yeah, so I think I think all of this colon post-colonial grievance politics, which is to say, yes, we can find examples of colonial powers acting badly, that's obvious. But to be stirring that up as though that's the ground zero amongst a huge diaspora within France, I mean, how i is the Algerian population of France something like 10% of the French population at this this stage? Something like that. I don't know if the figures, but it's it's a lot.

SPEAKER_01

It's a lot, and it's a lot important.

SPEAKER_00

And it yeah, it is it's an important figure, and I suppose that is the question I have for you is when we see these mini insurrections on the streets after football matches, for example, is this is this an example of communities reacting to French failure or French colonial history, or is it them asserting that France is not their country, or is it something else? Um Yeah, what do you think? Is it is is is it simple delinquency?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, okay. Exactly that can happen as well. I mean you can put a political gloss on these things, and it's not wrong to do that, because there is a sense in which, you know, the language of um I think the the the opening chapter of my book, French into Fada, is an inverted commas. It says, uh fuck France. And that was a chance that I've I've heard many times when there's been these mini insurrections, Nabuc la France, which is a curse in Arabic, which is a very old ancient curse, which is it's not just fuck France, it's like fuck you, your ancestors, nanna. It's a cry of pain, a cry of hatred, it's a cry of enjoying, you know, as well the exhilaration of combat with the official um forced order in Francis. Well, it's all kinds of things like that. But moving to Marseille, right? Um I'm a big fan of the Maghreb, I love the Maghreb. Um, but I love Marseille more. Now Marseille has got massive, massive problems. Uh Macron, who's a big fan of Marseille as well as a fellow northerner, he called it tragic and magnificence, which I think is a great way of describing it. And and and tragic in the sense that it's it's a long, long kind of you know, cavalry that that Marseille has been through for many years with crime and unemployment and stuff like that. Magnificent, because you know, architecture it's superb, it's beautiful. And there's the journalist Philippe Pujol who says, you know, Marseille is the most beautiful town in France, but it does not hide its wounds. And I like that because there's beautiful parts of Marseille, there's parts that are absolutely wretched, and I advise you not to go to without at least a guide or some kind of knowledge. I've spent time in the Cartier Nord, which is where there are about 130 drug gangs um fighting it all out, and where the the the the rule of law really doesn't apply very very much, it's a very, very dangerous place, which in some sense is a threat is a as much threat to French democracy as the Gilets jaunes or insurrections in the Bonnie. However, as a city, as a city, Marseille holds its itself together with this kind of métisse, mixed, you know, population. And and I like to me I'm I'm a romantic in some ways, so that's the very easy way to attack me. But I love the idea of the cities of the Levant before they became what they are now. I love I love Beirut, for example. You've got different layers of culture, different languages, um, different layers of history. But when it's all okay, they can interact with each other and all be part of each other. When it doesn't work, is when you get the fragmentation happens and you end up with what you have now in Lebanon, for example, keep you turning to Lebanon, but it was a French colony at one time and probably one of the most important. So does that make sense to how can I put it? The when Driss talks about building a new civilization, I really like that. I really like that, but you've got to drag people out of these old 1970s, 1980s post-Marxist grievance politics. Which to be honest with you is still there, it's still there. British universities as well.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, absolutely. Uh well that that takes me on to a question that is uh uh Rassemblement National inflected, Jordan Bardella inflected, about where to go then with regards to dragging people out of that worldview, because as we've just discussed, it's obviously peddled through universities amongst the to be graduate class. There's also something that's not potentially within every single part of the North African um enclouds that exist around France, but I probably are not insignificant number, is for those people who aren't on board with the civilizational um thrust of whatever the French Republic is, uh I know Bardello was recently on French television saying to a presenter, France gave Algeria its independence. Now it's time for Algeria to give France its independence. He's clearly getting to some of the points we've discussed with uh insurrectionist ideas, some of the crime that we've discussed, the lawlessness, and deciding that if he was to come to power in France, unless people want to be part of it, there's there's nothing to be done, and so perhaps it's better you go back to Algeria. Um do you think and I'm sure you're not an RN supporter, but do you think that is uh a sentiment that is shared in large parts of the country? I know that RN is becoming particularly popular. Uh and um yeah, what what chances are that someone even tries to enact such a such a policy and whether it's successful, judging by the the long routes in some of these places.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I'll come in it in two ways. Um first of all, um there was a review of Factured France in in the Irish Examiner, and the the the the the the dickhead who who wrote it said that I was sympathetic to the Assembly on National, which then became the headline under a photograph of me. So thanks very much. I'm not I'm not a supporter of the RN. Um but don't demonize them, listen to them, listen to what they're trying to say and listen to how and why they attract um their support. And and I I before the last elections, I spent a lot of time trailing round the various uh rallies for the RN, speaking to people who supported them. They weren't all monsters, they weren't all fascist goons. It was very rare to see a fascist goon these days at the Somer National. You can find them in in in France, but you've got to go to different places. The Sommerin National, I think what Bardella may have been referring to as well, is specifically the terrible diplomatic relations between between Algeria and France, which which are taking place now and which have been the case for the past couple of years, and particularly that there have been various spies placed in high places in France from the Algerian government and dirty tricks and bad facings and all like that, and there's been a problem of deporting people and you know uh and so on. And and I don't know whether Bardella was referring to that, but I guess that he would have known about it that diplomatic relations between France and Algeria are at an all-time low since 1962, I think somebody said quite recently. So I think that's true. Even the RN is not partisan enough to, as it were, send them all back. It's not gonna happen. And it shouldn't happen. What it is, is kind of as you suggested, is the Driskaliel approach, which is the hard one, and which is you know gonna take a long time if it ever can happen, is to bring people into civilization. And the word civilization is important because you know, in the post-colonial grievance world, uh civilization is a dirty word, white supremacy, etc. etc, etc. So it's not that all civilization is mixite, it's it's where I live, it's it's a question of people getting on and living together. And how do you make that work? How do you make that work? That's the real challenge. And that's why I think a lot of university people, that graduate class, as as you as you've explained, who are the products of these people as well, that they're under the weight of a destructive fallacy because the real task is actually how how to make civic society work, whether it's in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, or whether it's it's it's it's in France, and the two are so closely interrelated that you know it has to happen. So I'm not actually pessimistic. I don't see uh an apocalyptic war on the horizon as some far-right um novelists have been making up, people like Laurent Haubetton and and people like that. But um I do sense that the tensions are real, and if you look at a place like Marseille, what are the real problems in Marseille? The problems are that houses are falling down because they're not being maintained by the councils. Um the drugs, the police have completely lost control of the drug war. Islam is a way, way down on the agenda in Marseille. Not necessarily that's the case in the rest of France, it's very important in the rest of France, but in the city of the Levant, and I always think of Marseille as a sort of city of the Mediterranean as much as um a city of France, um it's it's got a lesser perspective. I'll just stop there as well, and I'll just say this as well. As a home in of Marseille, there's a really, really big question here. Really big question. The people ask about the south of France in particular particularly Marseille though. Is Marseille on the Mediterranean or is it part of France? In other words, is the south of France on the Mediterranean or is it part of France? And that's a really big question because Marseille is open to North Africa and it's open to the Middle East, uh, and all of those populations are there. But um it's a very big question because it it's about sort of, in a sense, a different type of colonisation. Because Paris controls Marseille from the north, that is resented. Holidaymakers in the south, which only began in the 1950s anyway, are kind of resented as a kind of neo-colonialisation of the Coban Salle uh population with their own dialect and and all of that kind of thing. And is it the case, and this is the subject of my next book, which I haven't written yet, so I don't have the answer to this, but is it the case that a healthier way might be to go looking at Marseille as the model and not as the um as as the worst example of what France can be?

SPEAKER_00

Hmm. Well, it's an interesting point. I I wonder uh on the Mediterranean front, I suppose when Marseille was founded, um at least with regards to its daemon convention, I know as you've mentioned you've you've documented that there were already Gauls present there, um, but it was actually um a people from from Greece that had founded the the city. Um at that point the Mediterranean both sides of were effectively a Greek civilization, whereas I suppose what became of North Africa through the Islamic expansion out of Arabia is um is something else. And so I think you're right, is historically Marseille occupies something very different to the rest of France, because France was a a patchwork of different regions and peoples, and actually the itself as a nation-state is something that isn't quite as obvious as those bound in by the uh the silver sea around the British Isles, um, because of just how cut off they they were in some ways. Um but I wonder if that's basically the dis detention is that you are mixing different people's different civilizations. So we're talking about the civilizational question. Yeah, Islam is not just some mere religion, it's a total civilizational framework. And I know it's not what you've you've made the point that Marseille doesn't suffer for the same problems as the rest of France, but if we're thinking about different people's and operating systems, what we're talking about here with this refresh refresh of French civilization is an attempt to somehow incorporate a totally separate one, um, different values, um, different ways of working. Does laïcité uh work? Can it possibly incorporate that? Um, and I know I've mixed a little bit the the question of where does Marseille sit? Does Marseille become the model? But I think the tensions, those those religious civilizational tensions perhaps don't get resolved on that level because people can just see themselves and feel themselves to be different, particularly when you have two large populations or or more. Um so do you do you think France is capable? Do you think the f this the s the secular France is capable of incorporating such a separate civilization into it?

SPEAKER_01

I'd like to think so. And I'm gonna start with where you finished, which is Leicité. And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, who's a professor at um the CNIS over lunch about this as well, because it's still a live issue in the Prince. And this is where I become, I hate to tell you this, a French Republican. I believe in Leicité, which has made me very unpopular in English academic circles, anyway, because it's it's it's seen to be, you know, oppressive anti-Islam, anti-this, that, and the other, and all like that. And what people forget is that it was introduced in 1905, I'm sure you know this anyway, to curb the power of the Pathic Church at the height of the Dreyfus affair. That's that's A-level stuff. The ACTA isn't an aggressive attack on the abaya or or or anything like that. It's saying that the state and the religion are not the same, and the the power of what was the that time the powerful Catholic Church. No, you can't be in charge. The republic, and divisible, cannot be divided by religion or creeds. Now, a little parenthesis about Islam and North Africa. Islam is many, many, many things. It can be the totalitarian Puritanism of the Wahhabi of Saudi Arabia, or it can be the actual quite gentle, superstitious, musical, um Maliki um Islam, which is practiced in North Africa. Well, it was practiced before, anyway. Uh, they were sort of semi-colonised before Saudi Arabia, and that allows music, it allows women not to wear the veil, it allows magic, it allows superstition, all kinds of things. One of the things that attracts me about Morocco is still the prevalence of magic in people's imaginations, it's a very poetic uh idea. But that's that's a parenthesis. But so Islam's not one thing. So spinning back to the religious question of laïcité, it's not simple, but it's important. And I got ambushed a couple of years ago by the BBC about ten years ago. I'm gonna complain about the BBC here, it was annoying. They sent this Pakistani Muslim woman to interview me in Paris. She'd never been to France before. She didn't have a clue about it here. And it was the conversation before the interview was nice, you know, she said, Oh, yeah, you know, nice as pie, chatting away, and all like that. As soon as the camera's on, let's have some clickbait. And she says, Why is France such a racist country? And I said, it's not. It really isn't. There are racists, like everywhere, of a particular type, like everywhere, but Nazi Germany had racist legislation. France doesn't have racist legislation. The republic, they can't speak French anyway. The republique does not allow for it. So Lacite is demonized and twisted into something it's not by non-French or non-French Republican supporters as saying that this is a again another post-modernist, post-colonial tool of oppression. And um, but I've got friends who are teachers who've just retired from the the French school system. The socialists, left right the lifelong um regard themselves as the good guys. We were the good guys. They are the ones who are called salope, uh, colon, uh the spatat, all for attacking girls who were their buyer in school, for example. Now their opinion would be a friend of mine La Hall, she's a teacher, she would say that as a feminist, she regards it as as as oppressive to women, but also as well against the spirit of the Republic. And then we're coming back to the same challenge, aren't we? How do you convince people who don't want to be convinced that the spirit of the Republic is about emancipation, libiete égalité, fraternité, and not about um oppression? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02

It does.

SPEAKER_01

It's a complicated argument, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00

It is a complicated argument, and I'm a monarchist in Britain, well, probably couldn't be in France. That's well, that's very uh it's very interesting. Uh but it you you know what you're describing is everything that is in front of successive future French governments because the civilizational inheritance, there is obviously a a Catholic one pre-revolutionary period, um there is the Republican one, and now there's the what do we do in a France that is made up of a patchwork of a very different people. Um that's what people will be trying to answer, I suppose. Um I'm glad you brought up the difference in the colonial backgrounds between France and Britain because I think in many ways that actually ties the fr the French government's hands with regards to how they might deal with um populations that are setting themselves truly against not just the state, but the French people, because they just see themselves as different, they don't accept themselves and they kind of just want to live apart from because of that universalizing of the Frenchman to all of the colonial possessions, probably makes a French government um makes it much harder for a French government to do anything about that, to say, actually, you'd be better off in Senegal, uh, because of the way you're responding. Um, because they've they've basically got out and said everyone's a Frenchman. That said, what I have been interested in seeing is that when, for instance, there have been hardline imams who swear that their swear enmity toward the republic. I think there was a someone of Tunisian descent who within 24 hours he was he was back in Tunisia having spent the last 40 years or something. In in France. So it it's interesting how quickly things can can move. I want to start thinking about a bit more of a comparison between France and Britain. So I've spoken to Theodore Dolrymple a few times, former psychiatrist and clinical psychologist. That's his pen name. He's called Dr. Anthony Daniels. And he spends time in France. Now he's retired quite a lot. And he he also lives in Shropshire. And he believes that the rate of well, you'd refer to it as fragmentation. He would call it a civilizational collapse between France and Britain. They're both occurring at quite similar rates, but what he says he appreciates about France is because the same number of people live in a vastly different bigger geography, is that you can you can find yourself outrunning it in some ways. So the kind of things we've talked about, the trouble on the streets that can happen, the the state on dunno banlieu um uh conflagrations, uh he finds that the state of collapse and fragmentation feels so much more um shap when he's that back in Britain than it does in France. I know you spend a bit of time between the countries. Would you agree with that assessment?

SPEAKER_01

Interesting that uh Theodore Dalrymple worked in prisons, didn't he? He was he worked in prisons for a while. And I've spent some time in French prisons, let me just say, as a researcher and not as uh an inmate. Um and it's interesting that he's a psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, because I think a lot of the uh the Spanish have done a lot of work on this as well. Spanish research have done a lot of work on this as well. The journey towards um radicalization is often rooted in psychological, psychiatric problems. And I've interviewed the psych the resident psychiatrists in various prisons in in France, and they say it is sort of um very, very they're at the front line of what we're talking about, if you see what I mean. And what they'll see is like a young lad from the Bonya, let's say, smokes weed, robs cars, gets done, is put into prison, and um, you know, for whatever amount of time, and his life's gone wrong, and then he meets a man, he meets an imam who's been radicalized in Algeria or something like that, and he will explain to him your life has gone wrong because you're not living the right way as a proper Muslim, and I will show you how, and I will send you back out into the world as a soldier for Islam. I've simplified it, but that's where French prisons become the engine room of radicalisation in France, and the directors of prisons I've spoken to in France are very interested about how that works in Britain, and my answer to that is that I do not know. But what I do know is that um in terms of civilisational collapse, I I I I I think it's a great phrase, but I think it's too it's it's too graphic and it's it's over overplayed. There are dangers and there are tensions, but I suppose in a way I do think France will survive all of this, not just because of accordion music, Serge Gannersburg, Gong Cru, and all of the things we love about France, but because at the core of it is something that Britain struggles with, and that is a very clear sense of what French history means and what it means to be French. Now that's under challenge and that's threatened and so on. But I remember after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, I went down to um a massive demonstration. I wrote about this with a New Statesman and uh long essay for the New Statesman, and I think that was the moment of my conversion from being a sceptical Englishman to being a kind of um full-on French Republican because I I believe in freedom and were under threat from a lot of people who don't know what freedom is, and I think very simply the French Republic can actually outlast and outlive that as a beacon of of how human beings can live together in a civilization.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it will be written. Andrew, before I let you go, I will ask you the question I ask all of my guests. What have you changed your mind on during the course of your life? Might have been a moral absolute, but perhaps something more quotidian in your concerns, and what was it that made you think differently?

SPEAKER_01

Quotations from Martin Amos, dude. I'm a big fan of Martin Amos anyway, but he talked about politics and he said this. Um I I don't know how I do this, right? But I still identify as a man of the left. Right? But feel as if this is Martin Amos as well. My politics have stayed the same and everyone else has changed and move on. I don't recognise myself in the so-called progressive left. Certainly don't recognise myself in any of the left-wing parties in Britain. Melonchamp is a is a demagogue a demagogue lunatic in France. So the options are limited for people like me. So it's not much that I've changed my mind. I feel everyone else has changed their mind without telling me.

SPEAKER_00

Do you do you well that that's an interesting distinction to make because I've um interviewed those on the left who would make the same argument? What one quite prominent person, at least here in Britain, being Paul Embury, who's part of the Blue Labour movement, wrote Despised, uh, why the modern left loaths the working class. Would you see yourself, if if you had to put your English hat on, seeing yourself more aligned to that blue labour style of uh left-wing politics than or clearly the progressive left, which you you don't recognise yourself a part of, or is it something else entirely?

SPEAKER_01

I I I I would identify with the blue the blue blue labor um blue left uh things. And I've done this before. I've done it. I've got conservative friends who are blue, uh blue curious, as it were. They want to know what it's all about. But it's hard these days to be a centrist. It's hard these days if you started off right right at the very beginning, saying we're taking a nuanced view and stuff like that, which is all these sort of euphemisms for actually saying you're open um handed and open-minded, and I'm not scared of hanging out with a somebody on lacionale. I'm a bit scared of some of the big skin-head friends that you might find in Leon. But um, you know, um yeah, I I I still cling to my faith in class politics. Full stop.

SPEAKER_00

And that's a big thing to say these days. Well, I think you can see that, and I think you can see that in your um in your charity towards the Rassemblement National supporters because um they're exactly the kind of people um and I would consider myself sympathetic to um their cause as well, in that they appear to be entirely normal and just have the same uh response that any human being would have to threats to cultural belonging, um a kind of lack of economic um uh prospects, a um feeling like there's a growing gap between rulers and rules, that no matter how you vote, things never changed. And these are things that, regardless of your staged in life, if they were happening to you, you're not going to be particularly happy. And um, the sooner the either so-called centrists or the progressive left get that and stop doing things like referring to the Unite the Kingdom rally in in Britain as just being the preserve of the far right, which even left-wing journalists have been on the ground talking about how they're just normal people from towns and villages who have got much the same uh set of concerns as the RN supporters, is that we we really need to start seeing that, or at least those who are in positions uh of influence and are governing classes in the the various countries need to start seeing that and stop the smearing because they're not going to put it back in the bottle. And these as far as I can see, these drives to do something about it uh will continue to get bigger and bigger. So either either let the democratic um uh method work its way through and get something that the current ruling classes don't particularly like, or put a bottle on it and watch it get worse and you know, maybe even see a second 1789 on your hands.

SPEAKER_01

From your books, I do a very old word goes back to Breton and an ancient Gaulish, it's still used these days in a place like Paris or Lyon to describe someone who's non-Pyrisian, non-hip, non-bobo, non-progressive, but do you know they make up the majority of the population? And there's so long you can keep sneering at your poorest elements in society without them biting back. That's already happened, it's already happening, and do you know it's not an unhealthy thing.

SPEAKER_02

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00

Hmm. Well, something else that will be written, Andrew. Something else that will be written. Uh before I let you go, where can where can people find your work? Uh, do you reside in any of the dark corners of the internet on social media sites? And what can we expect from you next?

SPEAKER_01

Okay, and I'm fairly anonymous on on social media and stuff like that. So that that's that's the end of that. But you can find me work in my books, you can find it in my journalism, um, you know, all of that kind of thing. And basically, the work on France is ongoing. So what oh Jesus Christ, I've got a to-do list. I'm translating Isidori Zoo into English at the moment with an obscure Franco-Romanian poet, but I'm doing that. That needs to be done. And very important about anti-Semitism with Izu, actually, because a lot of it is actually 1940s, is the same as now. Um, I'm just finished a small book called The Shortest History of Paris, which should be out next year. And um, I'm now beginning my epic journey through the south from Corsica to the Spanish border to try and investigate the south of France, the real life of the south of France. That's the subtitle of the book, uh, which is called The White in Between Sea. And the White In Between Sea, I've been studying Arabic for years, but I'm still rubbish. Um, but the White Embassy was used in Ottoman and Arabic maps of the Mediterranean. And I think it it's a very different concept of the Mediterranean than the middle of the world Mediterranean.

SPEAKER_00

Fascinating. I did I did recall you using that phrase at the end of Fractured France. So you were dropping breadcrumbs for your next book project. Well, I shall keep my eye out for Andrew. I hope to stay in touch so we can talk about it when it's it's ready to be presenters of the world. But thank you so much for for joining me today. It's been a great, great discussion, and good to hear hear from uh a fellow uh Ros Buff uh inside uh the Citizel.

SPEAKER_01

I mean uh just a question. I mean, I'm not gonna come I'm not coming across as a raving right winger, am I? But I mean I think these things need to be said. The left is rubbish.

SPEAKER_00

Uh I think you'd probably find quite a lot of uh sympathy with that within the comments um on my page. Though as I said before we started recording, I do that there are there are those of the left who are into the interviews that I do across the spectrum, but I typically find that they are all at pains to say what you've said, which is they do not recognise the progressive left as being part of their brethren, that they feel totally divorced from it, um, and that it doesn't represent the typical concerns that that they've had. Um so I I think it's you know that there's always time for the Paul Embury style left wing, uh the the William Clewston and Social Democratic Party, though not well known, but one of the most serious parties in the country with regards to what they produce from a policy perspective, they they actually put larger parties to shame, all very sensible people, which just sound like your everyday person. They represent the plukes, and uh the there's always time for that left wing, I think. Um, but the one that we've been subjected to for however many decades now, which is rampant in our institutions, it it it needs to go. It it needs to go.

SPEAKER_01

It's rampant in the institutions. That's that's that's one of the that's you know, um whether it's city councils or universities, it's uh working on my own.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, private sector, yeah. It's everywhere, it's everywhere. Well, there you go. Uh you are now rampant right winger, Andrew. I see delighted to have uh uh mediated over that conversion experience for you on thinking class, and uh we'll see, we'll see if you're still firmly uh goose tapping around when we speak about your new book. All right, thanks for that.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for that, John. Anyway, it's good, very good. Okay, thanks a lot.

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John Gillam

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