Deeply rooted in the far right, this current gained visibility after the historic score of the National Rally in the last legislative elections. Historians believe that its deputies could hinder legislative developments in favor of the settlement of the memorial dispute with Algeria.
Sixty years after the end of the war of independence, those nostalgic for French Algeria are asserting themselves more than ever in the ranks of the extreme right.
This current also made its way to the National Assembly on June 28, at the same time as 89 deputies from the Rassemblent national (RN), the majority opposition party in Parliament.
José Gonzalez, RN deputy in the Bouches-du-Rhône, asked as dean to ensure the inaugural speech of the new legislature, underlined his regretted past as a repatriated from Algeria.
“I left part of my France and a lot of friends there. I am a man who has seen his soul bruised forever, ”he declaimed, to applause from part of the hemicycle.
Shortly after, the 79-year-old parliamentarian told reporters that he was “not there to judge whether the OAS [Secret Armed Organization] had committed crimes” and that he knew little or nothing about what was that organization.
José Gonzalez also improvised as a lawyer for the French army, emphasizing that the latter had not committed any crimes in Algeria, “and even less crimes against humanity”.
“If I take you with me to Algeria […] in the Jebel [mountains], you will see many, many, many Algerians who have never known France and who say to us: ‘Sir, when will you come back ?” chained the deputy RN.
On the left, disgust
For Tramor Quemeneur, a historian specializing in colonization, José Gonzalez is lying by denying the role of the OAS.
“At the age, he was at the time of Algerian independence, he must have known what it was all about,” the historian explains to Middle East Eye.
The OAS, a clandestine politico-military organization, was founded by a group of generals in 1961 to defend the French colonial presence in Algeria.
Jean-Marie Le Pen would have, according to the French press, very much appreciated the coup de brilliance of the deputy Gonzalez on the perch and would have asked to meet him.
In particular, it has committed numerous attacks in Algeria and France, which have killed at least 2,000 people.
The small group even tried to assassinate the president at the time, Charles de Gaulle, guilty in his eyes of having recognized the results of the referendum of self-determination which led to the independence of Algeria.
Although the OAS is considered by France to be a terrorist organization, many of its members have never been brought to justice.
Some even became deputies when the National Front – the ascendant of the RN – first joined the National Assembly in 1986, under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of current RN president Marine Le Pen .
The former leader of the FN would have also, according to the French press , very much appreciated the coup de brilliance of the deputy Gonzalez on the perch and would have asked to meet him.
His daughter considered, for her part, that the parliamentarian had “not committed any slippage”.
“He made a very fine speech, a very dignified, very republican speech, which was moreover hailed almost unanimously by the loud applause of the National Assembly”, she commented.
Almost the whole assembly? Maybe not.
On the left, the words of José Gonzalez on the OAS rather raised an outcry.
“The de-demonization of the RN shattered from the first session. Let’s wait for the vote on abortion to see the true face of this group and let’s wait for the democratic arc”, quipped the ecologist deputy Sandrine Rousseau.
The president of the La France insoumise (LFI) group in the Assembly, Mathilde Panot, accused the RN of “apologizing for French Algeria and the crimes of colonization”, while her party colleague, Thomas Portes, expressed his disgust.
Compromise on the right
The first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure, not only found the speech of the RN deputy “embarrassing”, but he also said he was challenged by the reception he received.
“It’s curious that someone came to plead [at the National Assembly] his nostalgia for French Algeria and that a party applauded him,” he observed, adding that this is a sign added that “the Republican front is collapsing”.
By checking the information, the daily Liberation was able to identify the deputies who gave Gonzale z a standing ovation. All the RN, of course, but also parliamentarians from the right, from the center and from the macronists (the Renaissance party of President Macron) mainly.
“What is complicated today in France is that the supporters of a colonial system considered positive have left the shores of the traditional far right to move towards a more classic right”
– Benjamin Stora, historian
“What is complicated today in France is that the supporters of a colonial system considered positive have left the shores of the traditional far right to go to a more classic right”, analyzes historian Benjamin Stora in a letter to the Cercle algérianiste, an association that promotes the history of French Algeria.
“Gaullism maintained a boundary between the right and the extreme right. General de Gaulle was a figure of decolonization and it was difficult for supporters of the extreme right to approach him. Today, the border tends to fade away.”
At the end of June, the group based in Perpignan – a city led by the vice-president of the RN, Louis Aliot – mobilized to commemorate the exodus of the Pieds-noirs from Algeria in 1962 and at the same time celebrate the colonial past of France.
“We cannot be in the unilateral accusation of France. We must remember the contribution of France. Just look at the state of Algeria today. We can’t say it’s glorious,” said Marine Le Pen’s deputy.
This one wishes besides to give to a place of his city, the name of Pierre Sergent, a former deputy FN and member of the OAS, amnesty in 1968.
The RN mayor, who presents himself as the son and grandson of expatriates, had also commemorated in his own way the ceasefire agreements between France and the FLN in 1962, by organizing in the premises of the hotel town a temporary exhibition of photos to testify according to him ” tortures and massacres of pied-noirs and harkis”.
Perpignan also houses a documentation center inaugurated in 2012 on the history of the Pieds-noirs and a stele in memory of the members of the OAS, in the municipal cemetery.
In his book The Dangerous Memories published in 2016, Benjamin Stora evokes “a narcissistic wound of French nationalism”, maintained over time by far-right currents and relayed today by part of the Gaullist right.
“The independence of Algeria had opened a crisis of French nationalism built at the beginning of the 19th century largely on the notion of the colonial empire. Algeria, which was an integral part of the national territory, represents a very strong narcissistic rupture, which is difficult to accept,” he explains.
“Pursuing the policy of reconciliation of memories”
When his report on memory issues relating to colonization and the war in Algeria was published in 2021, the historian had come under criticism from RN officials.
Louis Aliot had called it an “ideological weapon with incalculable consequences”, while Marine Le Pen accused on Twitter Macron – who ordered it – of “continuing to send disastrous signals of repentance, division and hatred of self “.
Now that the RN has entered Parliament in force, will it go so far as to question the recommendations of the report and the measures that followed them to settle France’s colonial liabilities?
“There are always threats hanging over the writing of history, but it is up to the community of historians to mobilize as they did when there was a vote in 2005 for a law on positive aspects of colonization,” Benjamin Stora.
The latter nevertheless believes that “the process is too deeply engaged for us to go back”.
Tramor Quemeneur, who also anticipates the obstacles that the RN could pose, thinks for his part that “it is necessary to continue the policy of reconciliation of memories”.
Another danger linked to the power of the far right in France is the policy of blocking the policy of opening archives of the Algerian liberation war.
Pierre Mansat, president of the Association Maurice and Josette Audin (intended to maintain the memory of the communist militant and his wife, supporters of the independence of Algeria) fears that the deputies of the RN will freeze legislative developments which allow the access to archives.
“I don’t want to overestimate their weight in the Assembly, but at the same time, I am worried about these risks of deadlocks,” he told.
