If you mock a Frenchman for his French ideas, his French attitudes, his French style -- as we do here at Pave -- you are a cruel racist -- even though no superior racial claims have ever been put forward for anyone against a supposed race of French people. However, when white French kill scores of minority French, well, mes amis, that is just so much police work. Forgotten or fixed, like parking tickets. The French have no recollection of being racists, ergo, les Français ne sont pas des racistes.
...tens of thousands of Algerians, at the time citizens of France, converged on Paris to demonstrate peacefully against a curfew imposed specifically on "francais musulmans d'Algerie" by the prefect of police. The police responded to this "illegal" demonstration by detaining 11,000 people and murdering (estimates vary widely) 75 to 200 Algerians. Dozens of victims were knocked unconscious and thrown into the Seine from the St. Michel Bridge in the center of Paris to drown.Neither [the Paris Prefect of Police, Maurice Papon,] nor any other police officer was held accountable for the events of October 1961 however. ... The incidents of October 17 were successfully covered up for decades by the authorities. Papon, with support at the highest levels of the French government, shut down any investigation of the events. The media was banned from reporting on them. Books and articles were suppressed. The official account acknowledged only 6 killings "in self-defense". Police who objected were subject to beatings and other intimidations.
FILM SPOTLIGHTS PARIS NIGHT OF BLOOD
October 23, 2005 (Guardian) - Today Nuit Noire (Black Night) will be released at a select number of French cinemas. The controversial film, made by one of France's most respected directors [scil., Alain Tasma], reconstructs the events of the night of 17 October 1961... Hundreds of demonstrators were killed or injured but there was no official acknowledgement at the time - or for decades afterwards.For some, Nuit Noire is an overdue attempt to throw light on a shameful episode; for others, it is an unwarranted slur on a glorious imperial history. ... Two weeks ago, Philippe de Gaulle, the son of President Charles de Gaulle, was cleared of having insulted the memory of Algerians who fought beside the French in the North African state by doubting their genuine loyalty in an interview. ... At a meeting in Montpellier last week, Jean-Claude Perez, who spent several years in prison for his OAS [Organisation Armée Secrète] activities, told hundreds of former colonists that he was proud of what he had done. He regretted that generals had lacked 'the balls' to kill de Gaulle. At a dinner later, former pieds noirs showed off membership cards for the ultra-right National Front.
The meeting's organiser, Maurice Villard, described Nuit Noire as 'an insult'. 'Even if it was true that some people were killed in Paris in 1961, such measures were justified,' he said. 'We were in a state of war.'
What sort of "state of war" justifies enjoining armed police to mortally score-settle against unarmed minority citizens? Let's see, that would be a state of war principled on...racism. The French find "le colonialisme" less damning, though colonialism as practiced by the French is racism times two.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ALAIN TASMA, DIRECTOR OF OCTOBER 17, 1961
September 28, 2005 (WSWS) - WSWS: Is this incident well known?AT: If one interests oneself, yes. ... It has absolutely not entered into the consciousness of the French people. Absolutely not. In fact, people confuse this with the Charonne incident. I don’t know if you know this. There was a Communist Party demonstration against the OAS attacks at the Charonne Metro station in Paris. There were nine dead. That is enormously talked about, because there were nine Communists, French, white....So there is an effort going on to deny what happened. But to film in Paris, we needed to have police authorization, in order to block certain streets, park trucks and so forth, and the Paris police read the scenario, and didn’t argue with any of it. Thus, they admit it more or less.
WSWS: What do the police say about this incident?
AT: The young policemen—I had police advisers...—who saw the film surprised me, they had no critical attitude toward the police actions. They said, I understand quite well the police of that time. What we showed about the conditions of life, about the combination of cowardice and... There was a quite definite group of racists, of colonialists who agitated for the OAS, and the rest were just like is often the case, as it was during the Second World War, of people who were hesitant, who see-sawed from one side to the other.I think the reactions [to the film] will be passionate, because it remains impossible to talk about the Algerian war. It is accepted that there was officially sponsored torture in Algeria, one can make a film in which one shows French soldiers torturing, no one will say it’s not true. Ten years ago, that might not have been the case. Today nobody will deny that there was such an outburst of violence. Nobody.
In the US, you have the ability to discuss contemporary history; in France, we don’t have that. ... We have a difficult time in France treating current events.
WSWS: How do you explain, not the actions of individual policemen, but the level of brutality, of cruelty, on the part of the French state toward the Algerians?
AT: There is of course the relationship of a colonializing people in the face of a colonialized people. ... And you had [police chief] Maurice Papon, who in 1944 had handed over Jews in Bordeaux to the Nazis, who had with extreme brutality delivered Jewish children to the Nazis when the Nazis demanded it, this man who demonstrated total indifference, total inhumanity. Cold, a technician, who never asked himself once what was a Jewish child or an Algerian worker. He was a police mathematician, if one asked him to do a certain thing, he did it. When he said for each one of us, we’ll do ten of them ["Pour un coup rendu, nous en porterons 10." ], he let loose, he opened the door for the violence.WSWS: What do you think of contemporary French cinema?
AT: I think it is in search of itself. I think it has become terribly “embourgeoisé,” it does not respond to necessity. We are in the period of a French cinema which is bourgeois, made by people from a privileged background, who have come from the film academies.
[Emphases added.]
We will revisit the Algerian War of Independence in November.
PFFT (What is this?): Glorious imperial past 0 | Rayonnement français 0
Old news.
How about something more up to date?
A couple dozen nazis marching in ohio vs. hundreds and sometimes thousands in present day europe.
M. Zmx,
That it is old news is precisely the point. But Nuit Noire and the comments of the director, M. Tasma, a Frenchman, are not. Where is your breezy rejoinder to your compatriot?
Why are you so dismissive of this episode of French racism? Is racial murder tarted up as a police action fine by you? Do you not "like facts" (Posted by: zoomerx on October 13, 2005 01:34 PM)? Or perhaps you just enjoy "pontificating on the subject of bigotry" (Posted by: zoomerx on October 11, 2005 04:47 AM). Or is it that "the truth hurts" (Posted by: zoomerx on October 13, 2005 12:16 AM), M. Zmx?
We are keen for your response to Armen catching you out, calling your bluff.
DGB
yeah by 1961 we had stopped all OUR lynching. and 14 years had passed since desegregation of the Armed Services.
Oh I'm not denying the facts Damian but this was an unique event at a time of extreme tensions due to the war, which should sound familiar to you. Still, it was shamefully hidden under the carpet (I myself didn't know about it for a very long time) and it should be made known to the public.
Speaking of unawareness (or denial in your case)it's ironic that around the same year, African-Americans could finally enroll in public schools or board a bus, only at their own risk. I don't recall Vietnamese or Algerian immigrants experiencing the same tragic ordeal in racist France, do you?
As for Armen's example, it's always easy to point out at incidents perpetrated by underaged punks, mostly young arabs (the number of anti-semitic incidents have drastically decreased by the way), but I can't deny it is a concern and an embarassment for all French people of all backgrounds.
As for the Toledo riots, to dismiss it as a "closed incident" is of course a joke, as if it were the only instance of racial tensions the US has experienced in the past decades. In a way, denying your own problems as a consequence your own past racist policies is just as bad as the French government brushing past events under the rug, n'est-ce-pas Damian?
Zoomerx, you’re the one who brought up the Toledo incident. This isn’t something unique in Europe or America especially when you have different ethnicities living in the same community (i.e.: the neo-nazi marches previously mentioned, race riots in Paris, etc...)
In a way, denying your own problems as a consequence your own past racist policies is just as bad as the French government brushing past events under the rug. Let’s not forget that France played a significant role in those “racist policies”.
Lastly, I don’t understand why you linked that article about Nixon; after all, here’s an image of a French leader shaking hands with the most notorious anti-semite in history.
Let’s not forget that France played a significant role in those “racist policies”.
Absolutely, and so did Spain, Portugal, Holland and various African nations. The difference is that segregation was long behind us by the 1960's. May Rosa Parks rest in peace.
Lastly, I don’t understand why you linked that article about Nixon.
You brought up the subject of antisemitism. Are you surprised that ordinary Americans (the President of the United States and the most influencial Christian figure in America, for instance) could also be anti-semites?
