Un elected representative of the Republic was taken to task in the National Assembly during an incident which calls into question his skin color. This sentence should never have had to be written. It reports, unfortunately, the altercation with racist content which took place, Thursday, November 3, in this high place of the French democracy which is the enclosure of the Palais-Bourbon. In the middle of a session of questions to the government, while the deputy (LFI) of Val-d’Oise Carlos Martens Bilongo worried about the fate of migrants rescued by the NGO SOS Méditerranée off the coast of Libya, his colleague from the National Rally ( RN) Grégoire de Fournas, elected from Gironde, yelled: “Let him return to Africa!” »
Whether the far-right deputy designated the lifeboat, as he claims, or directly the elected representative of La France insoumise, as the context suggests, does not change anything in the case, which would not have had such a repercussion if the latter had not been born of African and black-skinned parents. In both cases, between xenophobia and racism, the invective constitutes a call to hatred against a category of human beings.
The elected official, Mr. Martens Bilongo, believes that he and ” The people who [lui] look alike “ were attacked. That’s right. But beyond that, it is the Republic itself and all its citizens who are attacked when universalism and the principle of equality, the foundations of the French message, are questioned. As for Mr. de Fournas, the elected aggressor, he cannot claim to use a simple political argument, he whose obsession with Africans and migrants is spread out over tweets. The extreme emotion aroused by his unworthy apostrophe is legitimate, as is the temporary exclusion pronounced against him on Friday afternoon by the Assembly.
A serious reminder
That such a shameful incident occurs on the eve of the appointment of Marine Le Pen’s successor as president of the far-right party, an appointment that is supposed to complete the process of normalization of the far-right party, is a serious reminder. Especially since Mr. de Fournas had been chosen by Jordan Bardella, probable replacement for Mr.me Le Pen, as its future spokesperson.
The care taken by the leaders of the RN and its 89 deputies to appear respectful of republican institutions, posed and thoughtful, should not deceive: Mme Le Pen and his friends defend a project of exclusion carrying threats of violence against all those who do not look like, in their eyes, “real French people”. A project whose keystone – “national preference” – is a principle contrary to the foundations of human rights which are the pride of France and on which our Constitution rests.
How can we forget that the National Rally is the heir of Jean-Marie Le Pen who, as a deputy, did not hesitate to display his anti-Semitism in full Assembly? “You crystallize on your character a certain number of patriotic and almost physical repulsions”, he had launched at the address of Pierre Mendès France, on February 11, 1958, at the Palais-Bourbon. The context of 2022 is very different, but the logic of hate is comparable. And Marine Le Pen’s efforts to “drive out the racist nature” of the extreme right can do nothing about it. Here he comes galloping back. All the more reason to redouble our vigilance, on the right as on the left, against all the strategies, postures and policies that could reinforce the trivialization of the unacceptable.