Marie Curie, Joséphine Baker, Manouchian… It was foreigners who made France write in your book “French but not Gaulish” (Robert Laffont). How do you explain that the country seems to have such a tense relationship with immigration today, as evidenced by the electoral results of Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, for example?
All countries have a tense relationship with immigration. Even in the United States where the melting pot is however obvious. And this is not new: the Italians, the Poles, the Portuguese… all have experienced integration problems in France. In Aiguës-Mortes (Gard), in 1893, there was even a massacre of Italians… Immigration is the integration of very different experiences, between those who arrive in a country and those who live there, this can cause problems. Even more in societies that are afraid, jostled by crises: climate, war, attacks… With Patrick Lemoine, we do not deny these difficulties. But it shouldn’t be the tree that hides the forest: France wouldn’t be what it is today without immigration. Without the Marie Curies, the Indigenous peoples, Joséphine Baker or Kylian Mbappé. To put it another way: without immigration, the French national narrative would be very sad.
In your book, you quote one of your friends who explains to you that “the problem is not immigration but Islam and its conception of the relationship between men and women”. What do you answer him?
That I don’t remember that in 1968 all Catholics were convinced of the equality between the two sexes… We forget that, in their relationship to women or to homosexuality, they have also evolved. When a religion is frozen in an open society, this causes problems. Today, the most aggressive are the Islamo-fascists. But we will only get out of it by relying on the vast majority of Muslims, who reject this ideology. There’s nothing genetic about it. It is historical developments and struggles for emancipation that transform populations.
Cohn-Bendit and “Frenchness”
You consider the concept of national identity to be outdated. “It must be understood that the new multi-ethnic mosaics installed once and for all in Germany as well as in France redefine and perhaps abrogate the notion of a national identity”, you write. Are there no common values, culture, history and language?
Whether ! But this story is not a block: there was not only the Resistance but also the collaboration! And there is not just one but several identities in France. Romain Gary, what is his identity? Read Delphine Horvilleur’s wonderful book, “There is no Ajar. Monologue against identity” (Grasset, 2022). And my children and grandchildren, what is their identity? Me the “German Jew”, born stateless, I have two sons: one married to a German of Moroccan origin, the other to a German of Eritrean origin. When our generations theorized the multitude, our children live it. What I am criticizing is a narrow notion of national identity: “as soon as you become French, your ancestors are Gallic”said Nicolas Sarkozy [lors d’un meeting en 2016]. But the ancestors of his father or his wife Carla, were they Gauls? Identity should not be frozen, it is constantly evolving. I myself feel fully German, fully French and fully European.
Delphine Horvilleur: “We’re never done saying who we are”
A new law on immigration is announced by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. Its philosophy: to facilitate expulsions but to regularize certain foreign workers. What do you think ?
Integration through work, that’s right. But not only in the sectors in tension. It is enough to pass in the office buildings in the morning, in the hospitals or the Ehpad to see that the house France would not turn without them. Regularizing workers means offering them social protection, giving them access to unions and agreements. I understand that at the same time the government is saying that it will deport more. But we must not lie either, the countries of origin must accept these returns. Mass expulsion is a mirage. Miss Meloni [nouvelle Première ministre d’extrême droite] in Italy, she expelled whom? What our societies want is a rational management of these movements. In the common house, for a long time, we forgot the doors: they open and close.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, promises to close them completely…
Our problem, given the anxieties today, is that a large part of the population accepts rejection as a political value. Democracies are in danger when majorities are no longer democratic.
Immigration: an extremist obsession that has become a republican obsession
You welcomed Emmanuel Macron’s speech in January 2017, emphasizing the humanity of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her policy of welcoming refugees to Germany when Manuel Valls criticized her. Do you have the feeling that the Head of State, whom you supported, has changed on the subject?
When he was elected, a whole bunch of subjects were not his cup of tea, he knew them badly, such as immigration, drugs, the end of life… He makes me feel like I’ve lost his “en same time” on everything. On ecology, to say as he did during his vows that we could not predict the climate crisis is silly, but let’s be honest: how many French people could say the same thing? The problem with environmentalists in France is that they understood early on but still don’t know how to win a majority. The ecological transition cannot be an avant-garde policy!
French but not Gaulishby Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Patrick Lemoine (Robert Laffont, 320 pages, 21 euros).
