“Reducing French colonization in Algeria to a love story completes the right-wing of Emmanuel Macron on the question of memory”

Emmanuel Macron visited Algeria for the second time, from August 25 to 27, as President of the French Republic, in order to “strengthening Franco-Algerian cooperation in the face of regional challenges” and of “continue the work of appeasement of memories”.

Make no mistake about it. The main challenge of this trip was to negotiate the supply of gas in the face of the threat of cuts in Russian gas pipelines. Of these negotiations, we will know nothing or very little. The question of memories, on the other hand, once again served as a showcase to simulate progress towards a “reconciliation”. But in five years, colonization will have gone, in the presidential verb, from a ” crime against humanity “ (2017) at “a love story that has its share of tragedy” (2022).

The 2017 declarations positioned the presidential candidate as a new man, capable of assuming the colonial past, effectively sending his competitors back to their own incapacity. Algeria became the left leg of the president of the ” at the same time “. Since then, the legalization of the French political landscape has led Emmanuel Macron to harden his line. Thus, in October 2021, he recycled the idea that France would have made Algeria, declaring: “Was there an Algerian nation before French colonization? That is the question. » In January 2022, he recognized the massacre “unforgivable for the Republic” of the victims of the rue d’Isly [à Alger, en 1962]supporters of the Secret Army Organization.

Predation, violence and enslavement

Whether pronounced spontaneously or not, the reduction of colonization to a ” love story “ completes Emmanuel Macron’s right-wing on the memorial question. It is part of the continuity of a colonial ideology which has never ceased to use euphemisms to mask social and political realities. These statements also constitute a major break with those of former French presidents visiting Algeria. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy declared that “the colonial system was inherently unjust” and that he “could not be experienced otherwise than as an enterprise of enslavement and exploitation”. On December 19, 2012, François Hollande admitted to Algerian parliamentarians “the suffering that colonization has inflicted on the Algerian people”.

Also read the column: Article reserved for our subscribers “The memories of the Algerian war have been taken hostage by the relentless of identity”

The announcement of the creation of a new commission of historians, this time Franco-Algerian, is also problematic. She suggests that the work of research and precision on the facts would not have been carried out. Fortunately, historians on both sides of the Mediterranean did not wait for the presidential word to work. From Charles-Robert Ageron to Raphaëlle Branche, passing of course by Benjamin Stora or Mohammed Harbi, three generations of historians have followed one another. In 2014, Abderrahmane Bouchene, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ouanassa Siari Tengour and Sylvie Thenault published History of Algeria during the colonial period, 1830-1962 (La Découverte), a collective work bringing together as many French and Algerian specialists. This work continues in the new generations.

You have 51.02% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.