When jihadists massacred 17 people in Paris in January 2015, President François Hollande’s popularity rose. World leaders joined him in a march, and close to 4 million French people demonstrated across the country, to cries of “Je suis Charlie”.
Nineteen months and an additional 215 deaths later, we are unlikely to see such shows of solidarity. Hollande burned up political capital after the November 2015 attacks with a futile, protracted battle to revoke the citizenship of convicted terrorists.
Hollande makes a brave attempt to embody the “father of the nation”. But the French are beginning to ask why their government, and in particular the intelligence services who were severely criticised in a parliamentary report last week, cannot protect them.
Hollande pleaded for “unity” and “cohesion” when he visited the wounded survivors of Thursday night’s attack at Nice’s Pasteur Hospital yesterday.
“My responsibility is not to be deterred from the commitment I made in the name of the French to protect them,” Hollande said, refusing to “lower himself” to the level of “excesses” on the part of the right-wing opposition.
‘Spirit of January 11th’
Alluding to the famous “spirit of January 11th”, the date of the post-
Charlie Hebdo
march, prime minister Manuel Valls said, “The only response that is worthy of France will be to remain faithful to the spirit of July 14th.”
The head of the socialist party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, accused the right of “exploiting the dead and the anger of French people.”
The socialist deputy Sébastien Pietrasanta, rapporteur for the parliamentary commission report, said France has “vultures, not statesmen.”
Yet in the streets of Nice, one heard incredulity that a lone truck driver could travel unhindered down a mile of Nice’s most famous thoroughfare to kill 84 people.
Christian Estrosi, who last December prevented the extreme right-wing Front National (FN) from taking control of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, was criticised last year for describing millions of Muslim Arab French men as a “fifth column” who threaten the security of the nation. I heard praise for Estrosi, and his ideas, in the streets of Nice.
On the eve of the attack, Estrosi addressed a letter to Hollande, in which he told the president that it “time to replace the homages [to victims of terrorism] with action.”
The French right seems to have forgotten how many measures the Hollande administration has taken in the past 18 months, including substantial increases in personnel and funds for the police and intelligence services, a freer hand in investigations and “deradicalisation centres” for suspected potential jihadists.
“If all means had been taken, the tragedy would not have taken place,” the former prime minister and presidential candidate Alain Juppé said.
Nor do right-wing politicians offer constructive ideas about how to fight terrorism. A single intelligence agency, proposed by the parliamentary commission, might help, but the idea was rejected by interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
Right-wing deputies have suggested imprisoning more than 10,000 Muslims on the “S” list of suspected radical Islamists. One deputy proposes equipping security forces with rocket launchers. Another wants to put the army in power.
But it’s difficult to see what better intelligence could accomplish against self-radicalised “lone wolves.” Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the truck driver who killed 84 people on Thursday night, did not appear on any terrorism watch list. He wore western clothing and drank beer.
Presidential election
Yet again, Marine Le Pen, the FN leader who is likely to face a mainstream conservative in the run-off in next year’s presidential election, is the politician most likely to benefit from Thursday night’s attack.
“The war against the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism hasn’t started,” Le Pen said yesterday. “It is urgent to declare it now.”
Yet the Hollande administration never ceases describing its conflict with radical Islam as a “war.”
Hollande yesterday extended the state of emergency, which was to have ended this month, for another three months. Several right-wing deputies said they would not vote for it, and the leader of the Green Party, David Cormand, said he too would abstain, out of concern for “civil liberties.”
A psychologist who is counselling survivors of the attack told me he subscribes to the theory of the philosopher Michel Onfray, that the government is fighting a neo-colonialist war against jihadists without the consent of its people.
At the scene of the Bataclan massacre 19 months ago, I heard timid allegations from ordinary French people that the attack would not have happened had Hollande not joined the US in bombing Iraq and Syria.
Hollande remains caught between accusations of too much or too little action.