Algerian War (1954-62)

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    Shadows of Algerian War Loom Over Election Campaign in France

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    As President Emmanuel Macron addresses his country’s colonial history, echoes of that past have pervaded the messaging of right-wing candidates ahead of the voting in April.PARIS — Grim conspiracy theories about replacing white, Christian French with Muslims from North Africa. Vows to limit immigration from the region. And the evocation of memories of a supposedly glorious colonial past in Algeria.While President Emmanuel Macron of France has tried over the past year to address the painful memories of his country’s colonial history in Algeria, the long shadows of that past — provoked by such messages — have increasingly pervaded the campaigns of right-wing candidates in next month’s presidential elections.In the fall, one far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, said, “France does not have to welcome and keep all the criminals from North Africa.” Another, Marine Le Pen, said on Friday that memories could not be reconciled “by scourging ourselves in front of Algeria.”Mr. Macron’s attempts to heal the wounds of France’s colonization of Algeria have included acknowledging crimes committed by the French military and by the police, recognizing France’s lack of regard for former settlers and Algerians who had fought for the country, and easing access to archives related to the war.Those efforts continued on Saturday with an official commemoration on the 60th anniversary of the Évian Accords, which brought an end to the war for Algerian independence, and with a speech by Mr. Macron at the Élysée Palace in which he said, “The Algerian war, its unsaid things, had become — and still are when I listen to our news — the matrix of resentments.”Karim Amellal, a French-Algerian member of the government’s so-called Memories and Truth Commission on Algeria, said that Mr. Macron wanted to “untangle a knot that is the source of many problems, many stereotypes, many tensions.”But those reconciliation efforts have been mainly drowned out in a presidential campaign that has been dominated by heated debates on immigration and identity, themes heavily entwined with France’s colonial past in Algeria.Éric Zemmour, a far-right presidential candidate in France, has cited the “great replacement” conspiracy theory during the election campaign. Valentine Chapuis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe legacy of Algeria has perhaps been most evident in the phrase “great replacement,” a racist conspiracy theory claiming that white Christians were being replaced by nonwhite immigrants. The concept was popularized during the campaign by Mr. Zemmour, whose Jewish family comes from Algeria, and then picked up by Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the mainstream right, in coded attacks on Muslim immigrants.Sylvie Thénault, a historian of the Algerian war at CNRS, a national public research organization, said, “Today, behind the support for the great replacement idea, there is this past of French Algeria which is at play.” She described such notions as the “legacy of this French minority in Algeria for whom Algerian population growth was a threat.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians. Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Green Concerns: Despite the increasing prominence of environmental themes in France, the Green Party’s campaign has failed to generate excitement among voters.At the end of the 1950s, there were about 8.5 million Muslim residents of Algeria, and about a million settlers of European descent, known as Pieds-Noirs.The colonization of Algeria, and the 1954-62 war of independence that followed, ripped French society apart, opening up crises of identity that continue to shape France and drive its politics, with nostalgia and resentment still brewing among the seven million residents of the country who have ties to Algeria, including war veterans, families of immigrants and descendants of colonists.Mr. Zemmour, whose parents left Algeria just before the war, said in 2018 that immigration and the rise of Islam in France were like a “second episode of the Algerian war.” At a news conference in January, he said that “there is no French guilt” regarding colonization, claiming that it had brought roads, hospitals and oil wells to Algeria.Repatriated people arriving in Marseille, France, in July 1962, after fleeing Algeria.Gamma-Keystone, via Getty ImagesMany of the ideological conflicts that colored the war — such as the struggle over whether French identity could expand to include Muslim Algerians — have been imported onto French soil. Benjamin Stora, a French historian of colonial Algeria, has compared this phenomenon to the legacy of the American Civil War, which still impacts race issues in the United States.Central to what Mr. Stora calls a “memory transfer” from colonial Algeria to contemporary France are the political figures that today drive the public debate. Many of them are intimately tied to Algeria, like Mr. Zemmour is.The father of Ms. Le Pen fought as a paratrooper during the Algerian war and was accused of torturing prisoners. The far-right party he founded, today known as the National Rally, was rooted in popular opposition to the end of colonial Algeria, and several of its current leaders are descendants of French settlers.Even inside Mr. Macron’s government, some ministers have expressed concerns about attempts to examine France’s colonial legacy. Prime Minister Jean Castex, whose father fought in the war, criticized those who say “we should blame ourselves, regret colonization.” The education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, whose father was a prominent leader of the Pieds-Noirs community, has long opposed post-colonial studies, saying that they undermined French society.The far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, center, in Armentières, France, last week. Her National Rally party has its roots in popular opposition to the end of colonial Algeria.Jaak Moineau/Hans Lucas, via ReutersPolitical campaigns, according to Mr. Amellal of the Memories and Truth Commission, “are fields of expression where Algeria comes back obsessively within the far right” — but not only there.Mr. Macron said on Saturday that his efforts over the past year had been intended “to forget nothing, to deny nothing of the irreducible nature of the sufferings, of the pains, of what has been experienced, but to assume that they are all French.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      Macron’s Comments on Algeria Resonate as Elections Loom

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      The French president acknowledged the suffering of colonists who fled Algeria after the war of independence, a group that has long voted heavily in favor of the right in France.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France, addressing a community that has been fertile ground for the far right ahead of presidential elections this spring, on Wednesday acknowledged the suffering of the French and European colonists who fled Algeria after the 1954-62 war of independence and of their descendants.“The 1962 exodus is a tragic page of our national history,” he said, adding that the colonists and their descendants “were not listened to” and “were not welcomed with the affection that every French citizen deserves.”Mr. Macron’s speech was the latest step in a yearlong effort to resolve painful memories of France’s colonial past in Algeria. Following proposals made in a government-commissioned report, he acknowledged crimes committed by the French military and police and the state’s lack of regard for those who fled Algeria and had fought for France.But it also came as Mr. Macron enters the final stretch of a bruising campaign to serve a second five-year term in which his government has moved increasingly to the right on issues prominent in far-right campaigning such as immigration and the place of Islam in France.People fleeing Algeria on a boat, waiting to be taken back to France in 1962.Gamma-Keystone, via Getty ImagesOver the past year, Mr. Macron has recognized the suffering of nearly every community affected by France’s colonial history in Algeria, including independence fighters and immigrants, and Algerians who fought on the French side during the war of independence.“He achieved in six months what had not been done for 60 years,” said Benjamin Stora, a leading historian of the Algerian War and the author of the government-commissioned report.But Mr. Macron’s speech Wednesday recognizing the suffering of the colonists, known as Pieds-Noirs, and their descendants, was notable for its timing three months before an election in a political environment marked by heated debates over immigration and Islam that have echoes of the French colonial past in Algeria.Mr. Macron, right, received the report on colonization and the Algerian war from the historian Benjamin Stora in 2021.Pool photo by Christian HartmannThe trauma of that history continues to shape modern France, with nostalgia on the right and resentment among the country’s large Muslim population.The long shadow of France’s defeat in Algeria looms large in the rhetoric of Éric Zemmour, a far-right candidate for president whose parents left the country in the 1950s and who speaks of “reconquering” a France he says is being colonized by Islam and immigration. His message has resonated with many voters on the far right, leading to a jump in the polls last year that has gradually dissipated in recent months as Mr. Zemmour has struggled to broaden his base of support and attract working-class voters.Mr. Macron last year started addressing the recommendations in the Stora report by acknowledging the brutal killing of a leading Algerian lawyer, Ali Boumendjel, by French soldiers. He also facilitated access to sensitive archives of the Algerian War and was the first French head of state to commemorate the mass killing of Algerian independence protesters by the Paris police 60 years ago.The moves were widely criticized by the French right, which is still reluctant to openly criticize colonization, particularly the party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the National Rally, whose origins are rooted in popular opposition to the end of colonial Algeria.France’s National Archives near Paris. Mr. Macron facilitated access to sensitive archives of the Algerian War.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMr. Macron then asked “forgiveness” for the abandonment of Harkis, Algerians who fought for France during the war and have often shown strong support for Ms. Le Pen, his main challenger in the presidential elections in April.The Pieds-Noirs emigrated to Algeria from France and European countries, often as laborers and farmers, while the nation was under French rule, for about 130 years. After Algeria won its independence in 1962, about 800,000 of the colonists fled to France and many others who stayed were massacred. Their fate has long fueled resentment, and nostalgia for the colonial past, feelings that have often translated into support for the far right.In 2017, while campaigning for the French presidency, Mr. Macron called the colonization of Algeria a “crime against humanity,” infuriating Pied-Noir organizations. His words on Wednesday struck a very different tone.French troops in Algiers in 1956.Associated PressFrench paratroopers questioning a captive in Saint Eugene, Algeria, in 1957.Jacques Grevin/Agence France-Presse, via IntercontinentaleResponding to one of the main demands of the Pieds-Noirs, Mr. Macron officially recognized that French soldiers in March 1962 killed dozens of supporters of French Algeria. He also called for the mass killing of Pieds-Noirs by Algerian independence supporters to be “faced and recognized.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More