The scene is violent. In front of the show’s cameras Correspondent, Divine Kinkela, a black caregiver who has lived in France for around thirty years, is attacked by her neighbors, supporters of the National Rally (RN). “You get out! I left public housing because of people like you!” her neighbor shouts at her on the sidewalk in a residential area of Montargis (Loiret). Before hammering: “We’re at home, we do what we want. Go to the doghouse!” In the same tone, his partner accuses “the Mustapha, the whatever you want” of “not respecting the customs of France”. Since then, the caregiver – who also denounced the “monkey cries” and racist insults uttered by her neighbors off camera – indicated that she had filed a complaint for “public insults of a racial nature” and “moral harassment”.
Since the historic result of the RN in the European elections of June 9, confirmed this Sunday, June 30 by a score of 33.15% for the far-right party in the legislative elections, Divine Kinkela does not seem to be the only one to be the victim of a trivialization of racist discourse in the public space. In Calais, Catholic Relief denounced the throwing of bleach or “water bombs” filled with dirty liquid on migrants, while the walls of a former exile squat were covered with racist tags, bearing the inscription “Leave or burn”, according to the InfoMigrants website. In Avignon, a bakery whose apprentice is from Ivory Coast was set on fire and sprayed with insults on the night of June 25 to 26. At the same time, public figures or journalists, such as Karim Rissouli or Mohamed Bouhafsi, shared racist letters received online or at their homes on social networks.
Many associations fighting against racism and anti-Semitism, such as Licra, the Human Rights League or SOS Racisme, have also reported an increase in reports of racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic violence since the beginning of June. . Emmanuel Casajus, doctor in sociology and author of Style and violence in the radical far right (Editions du Cerf, 2023), analyzes for L’Express this “trigger” trivializing this violence.
L’Express: Since the RN’s score in the European elections, warnings from associations and personalities about “uninhibited” racism in the public space have multiplied. Do you think this violence goes hand in hand with the RN’s scores in the elections?
Emmanuel Casajus: It is in fact a vicious circle: the National Rally vote increases because there is a liberation of racist and identity-based discourses in the public, media and political space, which itself feeds on the theories disseminated by the extreme right everywhere in the territory. The “trigger point” that we have seen since the elections on the subject of racist violence is the result of many years of bludgeoning identity discourse, on all broadcast channels, starting with the Internet.
What role does the Internet play in trivializing this racist violence?
It is fundamental. This begins with the proliferation of racist and xenophobic “jokes” and remarks on social networks, a strategy implemented over the past ten years by far-right activists in order to free voters from their guilt about these ideologies and to free them from their complexes about how to express them. This strong presence of racist remarks on the web has accelerated significantly over the past three to five years, starting first with highly politicized identity groups, then expanding to anonymous accounts with false identities, or even “robots”, which have continued to multiply racist remarks, memes, and caricatures on forums and networks, then disseminated them massively and completely without complexes, to the point of trivializing them.
The ideologies retransmitted in these messages were gradually consolidated by discussion forums or identity sites, like FdeSouche for example, which played an enormous role in the trivialization of racist ideas, for example by resuming each news item with an interpretation racial.
Are social networks the only ones to have trivialized these racist speeches in your opinion?
No, we also see it through certain highly politicized media, and in particular CNews, which is an extremely biased channel – so much so that we can speak of a real “Foxnewsation” of politics. Cnews is a bit like the audiovisual heir to FdeSouche: we pick up news items, we give a racial interpretation behind them, we repeat it over and over again. The goal is to slowly introduce a certain vision of the world into the viewer’s brain, without ever explicitly making racist remarks. We sprinkle news items with anecdotes and opinions, which always go in the same direction.
It is also a strategy theorized by identity activists since the end of the 1990s, under the concept of “reinformation”: we model a political ideology on facts which would have been considered anecdotal before. The viewer will thus have the feeling that the approach comes from him, that he has understood something about the world that the “right-thinking” have not understood, that we must fight for these ideals.
How did this latent racism make its way from television screens or social networks to the public space?
During my first surveys with identity activists at Action Française, between 2015-2016, the groups I followed were already trying to reach the one they called “Madame Michu”. This was one of their goals: they had to convince “the housewife over 50” to adhere to their ideology.
“Positions that might have seemed corny or extreme a few years ago are now fully claimed and accepted.”
At the same time, there was therefore the work of certain media, of certain identity accounts on social networks, the development of an identity culture perceived as “cool”, with marketing, clothing and typographic codes which appealed to the youth – the typical example is far-right influencers, like Papacito or Baptiste Marchais. At the same time, far-right parties have ridden the wave of nostalgia: France “before”, its culture, its education, respect for institutions, gastronomy… So many codes and values which would be threatened by the same group: immigrants.
There is therefore a huge amount of work being done, across all generations and for years, to push for the trivialization of an identity ideology that, inevitably, is confirmed in the public space. This also involves the glorification of the “rebel” who doesn’t care about “political correctness”, and will dare to assume his ideologies in real life, with the idea that no one has to tell him how he should think or speak, that he is “at home” and that as such his remarks, even racist, homophobic or xenophobic, are understandable.
How has the RN’s score accelerated this trivialization of xenophobic violence in public spaces over the last three weeks?
The RN’s election score has strengthened some voters on this subject, by provoking a feeling of omnipotence, enthusiasm, and victory. We should not underestimate the power of the group effect, nor that of mimicry: if someone expresses such remarks on the Internet or on television, why not me? There is also a racism that has been built in opposition to more progressive values, with a certain form of reversal of social pressure. On social networks, and in certain layers of society, the person who is the victim of disapproving sighs is no longer the author of a racist joke, but the one who warns that the “joke” is not funny, for example. In the same way, positions that may have seemed old-fashioned or extreme a few years ago, in all areas, are today totally claimed and assumed. There is an official French culture that is considered to exist, and if you deviate from it, you are a traitor – which encourages extreme and racist discourse, and sometimes violent actions in public spaces.
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