French senator charged with crass racism after racist mockery of protesters

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The president of the Les Républicains au Sénat group, Bruno Retailleau, speaks to the press on July 3, 2023, amid continued unrest across France after a 17-year-old was killed by police in Nanterre. (File photo: AFP)

Posted: July 05, 2023: 4:33 PM GST Updated: July 05, 2023: 4:43 PM GST

One of the most prominent figures in France’s right-wing party was accused of crass racism on Wednesday after claiming people of immigrant background who took part in last week’s riots had suffered a regression to their ethnic roots.

Bruno Retailleau, who leads the Republican party in the Senate, was answering a question about who burned cars and clashed with police in the country’s worst riots since 2005.

Although many of them are black or of North African descent, prompting calls for tougher immigration restrictions, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told parliament on Tuesday that 90% of those arrested since last Tuesday were French citizens.

OK, they are French, but they are French in their official identity, and unfortunately for the second and third generations (of immigrants), there is a kind of regression towards their ethnic roots, Retailleau told Franceinfo radio .

He also criticized President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to speed up the flow of money to local authorities to help rebuild public buildings which he said were set on fire by savage people, a term fraught with racism.

It’s a double whammy for the French: they’ve already paid and now they’re going to have to rebuild because those savages set it on fire, he said.

The parliamentary leader of the far-left La France insoumise party, Mathilde Panot, denounced gross racism, while her fellow MP Clémentine Autain said that these people, oozing with racism, dare to give lessons in good republican behavior.

Comments by Retailleau, a conservative who has in the past sought his party’s presidential nomination, underscore the increasingly bitter debate over immigration and identity in France.

The Republicans party, which traces its roots to post-war hero Charles de Gaulle and provided presidents from Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy, has veered sharply to the right under its tough-talking new leader Eric Ciotti.

It has been overshadowed by France’s far-right for much of the past decade, with veteran anti-immigration leader Marine Le Pen reaching her highest ever tally in last year’s presidential elections.

The virulently anti-Islam media commentator Eric Zemmour, who likened the riots to an ethnic war, also emerged as a political contender.

The riots began last Tuesday after the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old of Algerian descent during a police traffic stop, reigniting long-standing complaints about police brutality and racism in deprived areas of the country. .

Darmanin, a right-wing member of Macron’s centrist cabinet, told parliament on Tuesday that we don’t want hate from the police or hate from foreigners.

At this terrible moment for our country, we must remember that the republic is a balance: Yes, order and firmness. Yes, the order that is right, but not the order alone.

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