"Racism in France has always been a question of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim bias"

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00:00We can now bring in Jean Beeman, associate professor at the Graduate Center of the City

00:06University of New York. Thank you so much for joining us on the program today. Now, in addition

00:10to that murder we had in that report in the southern region of Vare here in France, we had

00:15a Malian man who was stabbed to death at a mosque back in April. Is what we're seeing here in France

00:22anti-immigrant? Is it anti-Muslim or is it both?

00:25Yeah, thank you for having me. I think it's important to highlight that this is both happening

00:32simultaneously. Racism in France has always been a question of anti-migrant bias and anti-Muslim

00:38bias. And unfortunately, what we're seeing now is an intensification of that on all fronts.

00:44Over the past decade or so, since 2015, when we had the flow of migrants coming in from

00:50Syria with the civil war there, we have seen the rise of the far right here in

00:55Europe. There is no far right government here in France, yet they hold significant weight.

01:01Polls showed that the far right could secure the presidency in the next presidential elections

01:05in two years' time. We've heard things like there being a migrant invasion in France and

01:09other parts of Europe. Is this starting to incite violence, you think, this kind of rhetoric?

01:13Absolutely. And I think I would gently push back and say, even if the far right are not officially

01:20in power in France, what we've seen, especially in the Macron administration, is a mainstreaming

01:26of far right discourse, which, among other things, provides legitimacy for this kind of

01:30violence, unfortunately.

01:32Now, the suspect who killed the Tunisian in the south of France had posted videos online.

01:39He even pledged his allegiance to the French flag. But the case is not being handled by the

01:46regular prosecutor, but by the anti-terror prosecutor here in France. What does that mean to you,

01:51that authorities are treating this case differently? And why so?

01:57I think it's promising that they might be treating it differently because of the sort of

02:00intensification of the attention on this kind of killing, on this kind of racist violence,

02:07excuse me. But I still think it remains to be seen how effective this will be and how France will

02:12really take this case and cases like it seriously. I mean, this is not the sort of the only case that

02:17we can point to that's very similar to this one.

02:19But is this an example of far right terrorism? White supremacist terrorism?

02:27Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely an example of white supremacist violence, which again is not

02:32new, but rather part and parcel of how France has always maintained its boundaries, unfortunately.

02:38So what can governments do to combat this?

02:43Well, I think France is at a particular moment where it needs to decide whether or not it's going

02:49to take seriously the questions of racism and anti-Muslim racism as a particular or not.

02:55And I think, you know, if they continue to sort of treat it as on a case-by-case basis,

03:00rather thinking about it as a systemic and structural issue, which many scholars such as

03:04myself have pointed to, I think we'll continue to see incidents like this happen. So it really

03:08becomes a question of how seriously France is going to take violence like this.

03:12So how, if they were to tackle it on a broad spectrum, what should the government be doing?

03:20Well, I think there needs to be a recognition of the systemic nature of this kind of racism,

03:25not just as thinking about particular incidents or particular individuals, but rather thinking,

03:31why are some of these individuals empowered to enact this kind of violence? And from where does that

03:38come? I think these are the questions that France has never really engaged with.

03:43In, we have Donald Trump as president in the United States here in France. We know who's in

03:49the leadership. But right now, a lot of countries are grappling with issues of identity, whether it's

03:55in the United States, who is American, who is French, what have you. Does the fact that we have far

04:01right figures in office complicate matters when we're trying to answer those questions?

04:08I think they complicate and also clarify, because I think part of the reason or one of the many

04:13reasons that people are drawn to far right politicians is because of how they sort of frame

04:18migrants, they frame people of color, they frame racialized minorities as the enemy, as the other.

04:24And they provide a very kind of convenient scapegoat for people to try to make sense of their own

04:28difficulties. So I think it reflects the ways that people are drawn to these kinds of politicians,

04:33these kinds of ideas, versus dealing with the actual problems at hand.

04:39Let's go back to what you were saying about how France can sort of tackle the problem. What should

04:45authorities be doing, clamping down on free speech, on these videos that people are posting online?

04:51Because we see that in the United States, it's a bit more different. Here in France, things are better

04:56policed. I don't know what things you think are better policed in particular, but I guess I would

05:03say that, you know, I definitely don't think tramping down on free speech is ever the answer.

05:08I think rather it's rather thinking about what are the punitive measures that society,

05:13states can put in place when incidents like this happen, just sort of among other things,

05:19create, send a signal that this kind of violence is not tolerated or should it be tolerated?

05:25Well, I think the problem is France has not done that in the past.

05:29But we've never had these sorts of deaths in the past either, these killings.

05:35I guess I would disagree with that. I think racist violence has actually long been part of

05:40France's history, going back to the colonial era. And even more recently, there's been quite a few

05:44incidents of killings of Black and Arab populations in France that have not been sufficiently acknowledged.

05:50So again, I think part of the issue is that France tends to see these incidents on a case-by-case or

05:56incidental basis, rather than thinking about the longer trajectory, the longer history of violence

06:01like this. I think for people from some of these communities, these kinds of crimes are less

06:06shocking than they might be to sort of the typical mainstream French person, for example.

06:11Okay. Ajin, be a manu-gaf. I'll leave you with that. Thank you so much for joining us on the program today.

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