French identity debate is getting out of control

The French government has successfully instigated a national debate on the French identity, but it is escalating into a free-for-all.

Every night, sitting in his home in the Breton town of Saint-Malo, Marc Le Blevec (48) turns on his television set only to be confronted with the same old thing: the national debate on French identity. He finds the ubiquity of the subject “threatening”, Le Blevec said. “Since president Sarkozy started this, the media have gone into a frenzy. It is making people aggressive.”

His own identity defies categorisation. The sturdily built former soldier summed up his varying backgrounds: his father hailed from Brittany, a region on France’s north-western Atlantic coast. His mother is from the Antilles. He was raised a Catholic but converted to Islam a year ago. Next year he will be marrying a Moroccan. “I am afraid this debate is supposed to determine who the good French are.”

The government-instigated debate on national identity is an undeniable success. Since Sarkozy last October ordered all of France’s social institutions to hold meetings discussing what it means exactly to be French, newspapers, magazines, talk shows and newscast have been flooded with opinions and protests, definitions and angry refusals to give definitions.

For some, unwanted discussion

Prefects, the heads of local governments, have organised hundreds of debates at the president’s behest, often unwillingly. Many have no desire for a highly politicised debate with local elections around the corner in March. The government website debatidentitenationale.fr lists tens of thousands of reactions, all moderated by the ministry of national identity.

Le Blevec can tell all of France is up in arms about the national identity. At family dinners for instance, someone will suddenly declare that Muslims will never be truly French. Or that they are so lucky Brittany is a quiet region where the Catholic church still holds sway and immigrants are nowhere to be seen. “They always add: ‘but you’re different',” Le Blevec said.

Le Blevec's plight is exactly why Alain-Gérard Slama, a columnist for the pro-government daily Le Figaro doesn’t like Sarkozy’s latest brain-child. According to Slama, identity is a strictly personal matter. “When the state starts determining our collective identity we are treading into dangerous waters. Identity quickly becomes an instrument to antagonise people against each other,” Slama said.

Mona Ozouf, a prominent historian and Breton feels the debate is “quintessentially French, almost excessively so. It is imposed by the state upon its people, by the country’s centre on its periphery and it is all done in an authoritarian manner.”

"We will show them French identity"

She recalls Sarkozy’s words spoken in a small church in France’s Vercors region. “We will teach them what the national identity is,” the French president said. “Them,” being immigrants and Muslims. To Ozouf’s delight, in recent weeks Sarkozy has become more moderate when discussing national identity. “He can also tell the debate is getting out of hand now Muslims’ social position is openly being called into question,” Ozouf said.

While the national identity debate may be painful for the French, it is definitely self-inflicted. Its roots lie in the 2002 presidential elections, when nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, convicted of racism and anti-Semitism in the past, made it into the run-off, only to lose to incumbent president Jaques Chirac. Nicolas Sarkozy won the presidential elections five years later by promising to bolster national identity. “I do not want to give extreme-right forces a monopoly over French nationhood,” Sarkozy said, drawing on the lessons learnt from 2002.

Sarkozy formed a Ministry for National Identity, Integration and Immigration shortly after he was elected. The opposition sees every debate on national identity as a thinly veiled attempt by the government to steal voters from Le Pen. One socialist, Jean Christophe Cambalédis, even went as far as to draw an analogy between France’s wartime puppet regime and the current government. But according to Slama, himself a right-leaning liberal, there are deeper issues at stake. France is slowly turning its back on the historic way the French have dealt with identities: by leaving them a private matter, he said.

The debate on national identity is a step in that direction, Slama said. “Identity arouses passion in people. Politicians are supposed to quell that passion, and Sarkozy and his followers are doing exactly the opposite, they are stoking the fire,” Slama said.

Le Pen gets his way

Slama thinks Le Pen has gotten his way to some extent now that the national identity has become the subject of so much debate. “Le Pen’s ideas have permeated French minds,” he said.

Eric Besson, the minister of national identity, plays a key role in the debate. Since his quarrelsome exit from the French socialist party during its 2007 election campaign, he is considered a traitor by the leftist opposition, a qualification which weighs particularly heavy in France.

Besson began the debate on national identity by calling the burqa “not French”, echoing a sentiment earlier expressed by Sarkozy. The recent Swiss referendum on minarets has pushed Islam even further to the centre of the stage in the debate. So much so that now even Sarkozy’s party faithful are getting nervous the debate might be getting out of hand.