Protests that turned France into a battlefield last week inevitably brought up the issue of immigration, albeit in different contexts and concerns. Türkiye also received its share of this agenda. An event of this magnitude contains dimensions that require everyone to learn a certain lesson. In fact, such incidents provide an opportunity for individuals to recognize and rectify their own mistakes, and to get their own affairs in order. However, more often than not, these opportunities are wasted on people who refuse to acknowledge their own flaws and turn a blind eye to them. Some rushed assessments and repeated clichés can lead to missed opportunities. For example, we say that these protests are a reaction against French racism, but often overlook how racism is perpetrated in France in the name of a certain race.
The truth is, the French nation has historically been a constantly changing population, with continuous influxes of immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and through Central Asia and Northern territories, not exclusively but largely blending with the influx of the German population. So, the North African, Arab, or generally African-origin immigrant population we see in France today is not just a recent phenomenon. Throughout history, this population has periodically infused its blood, race, culture, and language into the broader population of Franc, to the extent that there is no longer any characteristic physical feature that can be attributed to the French.
Yet, today we can talk about a French identity, nationality, and consequently nationalism. The racism perpetrated in the name of this nationalism has no real basis. Race is a complete superstition in France, and those knowledgeable in the matter know that.
The truth is, France is where the project of nation-building, which spread across the world after the French Revolution, was written, and its first implementation took place on these lands. It is a project to create a nation from countless ethnic groups and communities, which are as diverse, distant, and close to each other as possible.
This is where the misconception that nations give birth to states is corrected. Here, it is not the nation-state that gives birth to the nation, but the nation gives birth to the state. This reality, which historians like Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm have already emphasized, is depicted in a more striking manner by the renowned French historian Eugen Weber in the example of the formation of the French nation, identity, and society.
Contrary to the historical thesis produced after the formation of the French nation-state, he explains that there was no single and indivisible French nation before 1870.
The strong national consciousness we see in the French today, as well as the racism directed towards foreigners, is therefore a baseless racism. Perhaps there are certain attributions that require a political hermeneutics of racism: What does Frenchness represent in this nationalist discourse? Whom do foreigners represent, and what does the feeling of arrogance and privilege towards them signify?
In fact, among the people who came as immigrants and settled in these lands throughout history, the only distinguishable group is the Basque people living in an isolated area west of the Pyrenees in France. Yet, this people, who are more indigenous to France, are also targeted by discriminatory racism, both by France and Spain.
According to Weber's thesis, there is not a single France before 1870; there are many Frances. There is not one mother tongue; there are many mother tongues, many historical memories, and countless cultural formations among the peasants. These peasants, who are culturally and historically distant from each other, consist of people who are incredibly different in terms of their level of development and backwardness, civilization and savagery, cleanliness and filth, and those who speak noble languages and those who speak incomprehensible dialects. However, as a result of the techniques of nation-state and nation-building that have been implemented since 1870, these seemingly insurmountable distances have given birth to a nation-state where everyone can feel themselves as French, and have also been presented as a model to the world.
Through the policies implemented from that time onwards, these spatial and temporal distances have been bridged through schools, roads, and military institutions. The rural areas have been modernized and civilized, and everyone who does not see themselves as French eventually begins to see themselves as French.
Weber compares the assimilation model that France applies to its own people with the assimilation model it applies in Algeria. The basis of this comparison is Algeria, as described by Franz Fanon in "The Wretched of the Earth." The effort to assimilate the native peoples, who were seen as barbaric and savage, into civilization and Frenchness. Alienating them from their own culture and making them feel ashamed of themselves. Although this assimilation did not work in Algeria, it succeeded in France. The reason is quite simple, of course: in Algeria, it is directly carried out by foreign invaders and colonizers. Although they were able to create a mass loyal to themselves, they cannot be successful in the eyes of society.
However, in France, assimilation against its own people succeeds because the ones implementing it are "from within." Resistance against it has been broken from within. Here, assimilation has not only been forcibly and top-down imposed, but the peasants have also embraced the advantages that these policies provided them with, and in return, they have relinquished their own cultures and even identities.
A nonviolent nation-state, as Anthony Giddens put it, certainly did not emerge, but where and how violence was applied and on what legitimacy it was based also mattered.
Do those who engage in racism on behalf of France know what they are doing? In the name of which race do they exclude certain individuals? To whom and in the name of which race do they claim superiority? What are they pursuing? How is racism constructed and presented in order to conceal a sense of privilege or actual privileges?
These are the questions that need to be asked and followed up on.
