if we're going to talk about france and islam, it's imperative to understand that france is not the united states and that the french empire was not the british empire. cultural blinders created by applying american critical race theory to france are going to create more problems in an empirical analysis than a theory of a "christian europe", which i have been abundantly clear that i reject as a myth. these are both wrong ways to understand france and islam.
i'm going to do this from the top of my head.
this is a map of the french empire at it's maximum extent:
the lightest blue is the nation state of france, as cut out of the empire of charlemagne, when it was split up amongst his sons on his death in the 9th century, but which is also an area that is equivalent to the empire of clovis, who started the merovingian dynasty that the carolingians replaced, at the very dawn of the fall of the roman empire. france has existed more or less in it's current state since the barbarian invasions that led to the sack of rome in 476. in that sense, france as we see it today is one of the oldest nation states in the world - older than any other nation state in europe by a substantive margin and older than any country in the middle east, as it exists today. france is older than islam is, and is consequently older than the middle east, as we understand it, is. it's older than a concept of a united india. it's older than any existing west african national identity. it's older than turkey, it's older than iran, as iran exists today. it's older than russia. it's not as old as china, as japan or as ethiopia. you have to go a very far distance from france to find a country that is as old as it is.
the middle shade is the empire that napoleon sold to the americans, before he got defeated by one of the several historical examples of when the british aligned with the russians to advance their common interests in defeating a common enemy.
the darker shade was the empire rebuilt after the restoration of the monarchy and leading into the return of french democracy.
the british abandoned their empire after they won world war two. the french did not abandon their empire, after france was restored after the second world war. it's important to understand that the fact that the french collaborated with the nazis allowed mussolini to build a large franco-italian axis state in north africa. the french tried to hold this after the second world war, which led to a civil war in algeria and a handful of colonies in west africa that have retained an evolving relationship with paris to the present day. macron has been accused of neocolonialism in western africa.
the french also tried to hold syria/lebanon, outside of the british mandate for palestine, which split a region that had been administratively connected since the time of alexander, under the seleucids. they also tried to hold vietnam, which resulted in the vietnam war.
the french were highly unsuccessful in retaining their overseas provinces (as they would call them), but one may take a second to look at the map and notice something: france is very small in comparison to the size of western africa. it's something like a quarter of the size of algeria, which it tried to annex. the french had some self-awareness of this and tried to frame their empire not as one of colonial domination by paris but as one of cultural synthesis with it's conquered peoples. the annexation of algeria was, in theory, intended to merge france with algeria, rather than swallow it is an inferior state. the algerians were told the french saw them as equals, and they encouraged migration in both directions.
this didn't work out - the algerians revolted in the 1950s and secured independence in the 1960s, at roughly the same time that the vietnamese did. however, certain elements of the french elite have never given up on this, and have tried to continue to combine france with islamic countries in africa and the levant to create a new cultural synthesis, with memories of the roman empire that are not that different than hitler's concept of the first reich, or hitler's subsequent projection of a new reich to replace that first reich (degaulle could have been accused of trying to build a fourth reich and that gaullist strain remains in the french elite). macron is clearly aligned with these class interests and their subsequent social positions.
the laicite laws are not written in isolation of this history, either. laicitie was 1905. the french conquest of algeria - intended to reduce piracy and slave raiding in southern france by algerian corsairs aka barbary pirates - was in 1830. north and west african countries have indigenous populations that were colonized by arabs, too, who converted them to islam, by force. they have periodically sought secularizing movements to assert non-arab, indigenous identities. the dominant indigenous ethnic group in the region is not arab but berber, an ethnic group that is rather european looking, in phenotypes.
if you look at macron's policies carefully, you can see that he's been trying to build a third french empire since day one. this is not in contradiction to melenchon's "new france" narrative, but is rather a different manifestation of it. if le pen is tentatively the christian revisionist (in fact, i think the christian revisionists will be disappointed by le pen, who i think is actually a moderate), melenchon and macron present two different aspects of the projected gaullist synthesis between france and muslim africa, which is a creation of the french bourgeois elite and the basis for french empire. for that reason, the french banking institutions and higher elite are more likely to support the fake socialist melenchon over the isolationist le pen in the upcoming elections.
in the waning months of macron's presidency, he seems to even by trying to fill a power vacuum left by the americans' refusal to support the arabs against the iranians. you have to put this in the context of post-war france, of algeria, of vietnam and of syria/lebanon to get your head around it. macron actually cancelled a joint fighter plane project with the germans, and then went and signed an agreement to build a new fighter jet with qatar, instead. odd, right? what of european security? no. this is actually consistent with a return in the french elite to de gaulle's vision of a post-war france (due to american decline) as a new empire or a fourth reich, as a franco-muslim alliance, which failed then and will fail again now, and macron's desire to build a third french empire by aligning west african and middle eastern countries into a new francophonie and in the process merge france with the middle east into a new society, a new rome. that's consistent with melenchon's new france. in fact, the french bankers may even see melenchon's theory (which is not socialist. it's a type of fascist theory.) as helpful in projecting a new french empire into the region, to replace a vacuum opening up by the american withdrawal. the british do not seem interested in competing with the french over this opening power vacuum. the iranians, the russians and the turks are the direct competitors right now, with the perhaps unlikely outcome of chinese hegemony looming on the still distant horizon.
i think that history has shown that this is not likely to succeed. the error the french are making is basically that they're racist, and you can pull out your critical race theory, now. they expect the arabs and muslims to submit to french hegemony just because they're french, ie because they're white. it's more likely that they're going to return to the corsairs of the barbary pirates, to return to the piracy and slave raiding and plundering. the truth is that the arabs actually think the french are an inferior race, drawing on their own history of conquest and colonialism. they have their own goals and self-interest, in conquering france and converting it to islam. white liberals will accuse you of being racist for pointing that out, but it's in truth some kind of twisted doublethink. no, it's not racist to think the arabs want to conquer france; it is racist to think the arabs want to submit to french colonial dominance. the french liberal elite is horribly naive and ridiculously clueless about this, which we're seeing come out in the french riots. they don't understand why the immigrants don't want to be french. well, it's because they want to convert france to islam, because they have agency and self-interest and are independent actors. surprise, surprise for the racist white liberals - the arabs want to convert you. in dystopian france, muslim convert you! oops.
the result of this mess is that right-wing actors identified in an american cultural context as racist in projecting the collapse of american society due to too much immigration are actually closer to an empirical left in a french imperial context, in discussions of the same policies. muslim immigration to the united states has so far to go before it replaces the dominant culture that it's difficult to identify as a serious threat, in the face of other more pressing concerns. it's a more real issue in canada, with it's smaller population, than it is in the united states. but they're not far from it in france, after almost 200 years of it. this is a real threat to france, a very serious concern.
the actual french left, like the actual left in much of the world, no longer really exists. the socialists in their day would have been arguing for algerian independence, and it was partly to keep the algerians out of france. these fantasies of empire by macron and melenchon alike are not in the interests of the french working class, but they no longer have political representation. instead, france is seeing mass violence perpetuated by far right extremists (the unions failed to co-opt the violence. the yellow vests, a right-wing and crypto-fascist movement, has succeeded in co-opting it, instead.). melenchon's attempt to build socialism in france by organizing reactionary elements has instead put it on the brink of a fascist uprising, just as marx and engels would have predicted it would, and the elite is now trying to co-opt it, itself, by organizing marches against le pen (or russia), who has nothing to do with this.
expect macron to make attempts to put forward these gaullist (that is a confusing word because france was once called gaul. it means supporters of the geopolitical philosophy of charles de gaulle) positions in the upcoming weeks, as he tries to transfer power to melenchon, or tries to seize it for himself. but do not get confused by your american crt blinders, or try to understand the situation in americanized terms. the specific historical context of french colonialism in the arab world, combined with an attempt by the french elite to turn that colonialism into a cultural synthesis and which is based on a racist projection of the white french liberal as dominant over the inferior muslim arab and that the muslims have tried to turn on it's head in fighting to convert france to islam instead, is imperative to grasp in order to understand the situation properly.
for that reason, if macron will not resign, he should be removed from power by force, before he makes the situation worse than he already has.
france has no good options in the short run, other than to fight the fascist uprising in the streets before the bankers take control of it; then, we're going to end up talking about the spanish revolution, instead.
