“Nothing, nothing must be given up.” Those were the closing words of a speech pronounced on December 10th marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed in Paris in 1948 during the first general assembly of the United Nations. During that speech earlier this month, the orator lauded the universality of laws and the equality of human beings, and this with no distinction made of origin, condition, beliefs, appearance or place of birth, sex or gender.
“To think of settling our contemporary problems while forgetting these rights […] would be to make not just a political error, but also a moral one,” he said, before launching an appeal to the audience to never give up anything to the enemies of the notion of natural equality, those who deny our common human condition. “Each time we give up a centimetre, it is a centimetre of retreat that we accept for ourselves, or for our children, or for our brothers and sisters.” Less than ten days later, that same speaker gave up at every level.
For they were the words spoken by Emmanuel Macron, who was twice elected as France’s president by a majority of voters who took to the urns to block the path of the far-right, whose candidate Marine Le Pen made it through to the second and final round of the presidential elections in 2017 and 2022. We know very well, as Mediapart documents it on a daily basis, that for almost seven years the policies led by Macron have taken no account of the plurality of the votes cast in his name. Instead, he has preferred to impose upon the country a forced march towards inequalities and other injustices, and not without cynicism and amorality.
But one line of defence had not been totally overrun – that of the relationship with the world and others, the foreigner and the elsewhere. In sum, that of humanism, where the essential is at stake, and in face of the far-right and its diverse partisan expressions.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Since the founding audacity of the French Revolution, an intellectual and political family has been united by the proclamation to the world of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen which was natural equality, and which was and remains the motor of invention, of conquest and the defence of the fundamental rights of humankind. Natural inequality – meaning the privilege of birth, origin and belonging – is the radically undemocratic creed of the far-right, with the concrete consequence of establishing a hierarchy among humanities, identities, cultures, civilisation, beliefs and appearances.
Since the European catastrophe of the mid-20th century, with its crimes against humanity and the genocide of the Jews, we know just how much these ideologies are potentially criminal, opening a path to an endless hunt against what is otherness, against minorities and the diversity they represent. Cast by the defeat of Nazism and its allies into the margins of public and political debate, the far-right has since endeavoured to exist by making migratory issues its Trojan horse. It has forever been its obsessional refrain, and in France notably since the creation in 1972 of the Front National, now renamed as the Rassemblement National.
Beyond the xenophobia and racism spread by this anti-migration obsession, its political objective is to breach the principle of the universal equality of rights and, by doing so, to attack our democratic culture, its values, and its references. There have been 30 laws on immigration introduced in France since 1980, none of which have resolved any of the urgent issues facing France, whether they be social or environmental, ethical or geopolitical. But what they have succeeded in doing is to place at the heart of public debate the words and ideas with which the far-right prospers.
These include the idea that human rights do not apply equally to all, that it is normal to establish national preferences, that we must barricade ourselves against the world around us, that immigration is a threat, even a danger, and that the section of our people who originally come from immigration represent a peril for France, its identity and its eternity. That is what is contained in the deadly ideology of “the Great Replacement”, which is a call to erase, exclude, discriminate against and expel human beings who are examples of the diversity that France is made of.
Now, in the manner of a political diversion, Emmanuel Macron, siding with this xenophobic agenda, has reached out a hand to the Rassemblement National by giving a blank cheque to his interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, whose ideological bearings come from the far-right, and who drove the legislation in parliament. All of this follows his forcing into legislation, earlier this year and without a vote in parliament, of his reform of the pension system, which was widely rejected by the public. Standing on the cliff edge, he could have brought things to a halt by shelving his draft legislation on immigration after it was initially rejected by the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, or he could have recognised the political crisis for what it is and dissolved parliament, to be followed by fresh legislative elections. But in an abuse of his presidential powers he chose to drive on, stubborn to the point of humiliating his own political camp by ignoring the “red lines” that some in his Renaissance party warned should not be crossed.
The result is a composite motion drawn up between the far-right and the conservative Les Républicains party, the latter radicalised to the point of being ready to govern with the former. The legislation “To control immigration, to improve integration” gives way to all the demands of the Rassemblement National, which is now boasting about it. These include measures of national preference, the stripping of nationality, the placing in question of birthright citizenship, placing restrictions on the right to asylum, the criminalisation of not having a residence permit, measures to facilitate deportations, the fragilization of fundamental rights to healthcare and housing and of the protection of minors, the multiplication of obstacles facing foreign student candidates, etc.
Since the theorization of dialectics by German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831), philosophers have debated about the moment when the infinite movement of things and beings transforms an accumulated quantity into a new quality. This is what is called a “qualitative leap”, and that is what has happened with the draft legislation “to control immigration”. Before this, there have been renouncements, many compromises, and many cowardly moves. But this time we are living through a point of no return. The xenophobic programme of the far-right has become law in France. Suddenly, the precipitate of previous defeats creates a hitherto unseen crystallization, the consequences of which will be experienced by human beings, women, men and children, now to be subjected, with few options of recourse, to the arbitrary decisions of the administrative police.
What is grave about this decree is that it admits the premise that the foreigner is a public enemy.
This moment in time is inexorably reminiscent of another, which was disastrous. On May 2nd 1938, under the French government of Édouard Daladier – whose name is indissociable from the Munich Agreement of capitulation towards Nazi Germany and which were signed in September of that year – a government decree was promulgated in France which drastically hardened conditions for foreigners to enter and reside in the country. It instituted a state culture and practice that would legitimise the relationship between the French administration and the Nazis during the subsequent German occupation of France. On January 1st 1939, writing in the publication Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme, a politician who had served as a minister in France’s 1936 Front Populaire coalition government, and who was far from an extremist, warned of a “Wave of racism in France”.
His name was Maurice Violette, and what is being unleashed in the French media today appears as an echo of his warning. “For the first time, a wave of xenophobia is crossing over our country,” he wrote. “It boasted until now of being a land of exile; today, it appears to be giving racism worrying concessions […] Out of all this new legislation, a major principal emerges: the foreigner no longer has any right in France; he is handed over in the most total manner to the arbitrariness of the police.” He concluded: “What is grave about this decree is that it admits the premise that the foreigner is a public enemy.”
Contrary to the nonsense put out today by what remains of the presidential camp, this legislation will not lead to the weakening of the far-right but, on the contrary, will legitimise it more than ever. Contrary to what is said by the media who join in this iniquity, this law is in no way what “the French” wish for. That is an invention of opinion polls and which firmly contradicts the unanimity of the vital forces in our country, of its associations, its healthcare professionals, its trades unions, its universities, its church leaders and its public rights watchdog, which are firmly against this legislation that turns its back on concerns about the world and about others.
From that standpoint, and beyond the retorts that politicians, parties and movements will invent, there remains for us, all of us who live and work in this country, but one solution: to join together, to stand up in opposition, and to hold strong. Which signifies that we must disobey, as thousands of doctors have already announced they will in an open letter this month protesting the removal of healthcare rights for undocumented immigrants.
This law will not be implemented with our involvement. We do not respect it because it does not respect our common humanity.
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- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse