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‘Francocide’: new French far-right term enters language battle

When an Algerian woman with mental health problems killed a 12-year-old child in Paris last year, far-right idealogue Eric Zemmour wasted no time in labelling the crime a "francocide".

'Francocide': new French far-right term enters language battle
France's far-right party "Reconquete!" leader Eric Zemmour in December 2022 (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)

After a Syrian refugee stabbed four children and two adults at a lake-side park in the Alps last week, he repeated the term — which he coined himself in a speech last September that referred to the “violent colonisation” of France by foreigners.

Other supposed victims of “francocide” — all white French people — include a secondary school teacher whose beheading by a radicalised Chechen refugee shook France in 2020.

Having contributed to making the “great replacement theory” mainstream in France, the 64-year-old best-selling author has introduced a new racially charged term to the political lexicon.

It prompted the head of the UN High Commission for Refugees to condemn it on Wednesday for demonising migrants or refugees as French-hating murderers.

“I have read the word ‘Francocide’, so killers of French. This is hate speech and I hope nobody will use it,” Filippo Grandi told  reporters in Geneva.

The remark sparked fresh media attention in France and may have helped inadvertently to spread the word further — just as Zemmour hopes.

An analysis of public Facebook posts shows references to the neologism have been liked or shared 266,000 times since September while the #francocide hashtag was retweeted 60,000 times on a single day in October after the killing of 12-year-old Lola.

READ MORE: ‘We cannot continue to label France’s far-right fascists – we must debate them instead’

Analysts say past decades have demonstrated how once marginal far-right words and themes have slowly entered the mainstream in France where politics has turned rightwards amid concern about migration.

Echoes

Philippe Corcuff, a left-leaning political scientist at Sciences Po university in Lyon, cites the example of the “great replacement theory”, which posits that white Christian French people are being deliberately replaced by mostly Muslim immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

Once a fringe idea in radical far-right circles, Zemmour put it at the heart of his campaign for the presidency last year which saw him win 2.5 million votes or seven percent of the electorate in the first round.

The conspiracy theory ended up being endorsed by the now-head of the mainstream centre-right Republicans party, Eric Ciotti, and referenced by the party’s candidate, Valerie Pecresse.

“The term ‘francocide’ is directly linked to the theory of the ‘great replacement’, that the French population is being replaced by another of African origin, often Muslim,” Corcuff said.

It deliberately echoes the word “genocide” to evoke “the possible disappearance of the French people,” he said, as well as mimicking the word “femicide” to denote murders of women or “ecocide” to describe crimes against the environment.

“In the same way that ‘femicide’ has contributed to politicising violence against women, Zemmour is aiming to politicise everyday crimes involving immigrants,” wrote commentator Pascal Riche in the leftwing L’Obs magazine.

Zemmour’s far-right rival, the figurehead of the National Rally (RN) party Marine Le Pen and her party colleagues have however steered clear of using the term.

Macron’s mimicry?

President Emmanuel Macron and some of his ministers have also been accused by opponents of borrowing words commonly associated with the anti-immigration far-right, which has been dominated by Jean-Marie Le Pen and then his daughter Marine since the 1970s.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin spoke in 2020 about France “turning savage” (“ensauvagement” in French), while Macron was accused of borrowing from the far-right lexicon at a cabinet meeting in May when he said there was a “process of de-civilisation” underway in the country.

“De-civilisation means barbarism. Emmanuel Macron has once again .. approved of our assessment of things,” Marine Le Pen told the Cnews channel in response.

Corcuff says the term is racially loaded and implies “a sense of barbarism threatening France that comes from Islam and Africa”.

Zemmour, a best-selling author and amateur historian, is well aware of the importance of words in politics, as he stated during his speech introducing the concept of “francocide”.

“Lenin got it right when he used to say: make them use the word and they will swallow the idea,” Zemmour said.

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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