Emmanuel Macron has a problem and its name is not Elon Musk. It is interference of an altogether more dangerous nature, a brazen attempt to destabilise France.
On Thursday, while Thierry Breton – until recently France’s commissioner in Brussels – called on the EU ‘to investigate Musk’s practices’, a reference to the American’s regular commentary on European politics, the French government expelled an Algerian ‘influencer’ known as Doualemn.
He had his residence permit cancelled and was deported after posting messages to his 138,000 followers on social media that were anti-Semitic and an incitement to violence.
By Thursday evening, Doualemn was back in France after the Algerians put him on the first flight to Paris. He is now being held in a detention centre, one of thousands of Algerians in custody.
On Friday morning Bruno Retailleau, France’s minister of the Interior, expressed his ‘amazement’ at Algeria’s action, adding: ‘We have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria. Algeria is seeking to humiliate France.’
Of the 18,000 foreign nationals in French prisons, the biggest representation is Algerians, 4,000, twice the number of Moroccans. Deporting these criminals is, according to a French prefect last year, ‘always complicated’, because of Algeria’s unwillingness to cooperate.
Relations between Algeria and France are now more complicated than ever. Last July Emmanuel Macron declared his support for Morocco over the disputed territory of the Western Sahara. He then travelled to Morocco in October and told parliament the area should be ‘under Morocco’s sovereignty’.
Macron’s declaration enraged Algeria, which regards Morocco’s presence in the Western Sahara as an ‘illegal occupation’.
The following month, the celebrated Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal (who was granted French citizenship last year), was arrested on trumped-up charges as he got off a plane from Paris. Sansal is a noted champion of freedom of expression and a bold voice against Islamism. Sansal, who is 75 and in poor health, remains in prison and Macron has said that his arrest ‘dishonours’ Algeria.
Then in December, France’s ambassador to Algeria was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and informed that his country’s intelligence service was actively attempting to ‘destabilise’ Algeria using ‘repentant’ terrorists.
In reality, it is Algeria that is engaged on a campaign of subversion using some of the vast number of its people living in France.
Other social media ‘influencers’ of Algerian origin have been arrested in France in recent days because of inflammatory remarks, promoting one Algerian dissident, Chawki Benzehra, to claim in a television interview that there is ‘a desire to export something to French soil and that there is a real destabilization campaign against France’.
Benzehra also pointed a finger at the Grand Mosque of Paris – the most venerable mosque in France – and alleged it ‘hosts and finances influencers’ and is regular contact with Algeria’s hardline president Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who since he came to power in 2019 has stoked Francophobia.
In a subsequent statement, the rector of the Mosque angrily rejected the allegations, claiming they were part of a ‘far-right’ smear campaign against Muslims.
There are estimated to be between six and seven million people in France who are either Algerian or French-Algerian; about a tenth of the population.
A minority are in France to cause trouble; not just the few thousand in prison but also those in the inner cities who regard the French state as an enemy. This was evident in the summer of 2023 when police shot dead a French-Algerian man in a stolen car. For several days mobs run amok across France, burning, looting and destroying.
Algeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement demanding that France ensure the ‘peace and security our nationals should enjoy in their host country’. It was a remarkable but revealing statement, implying that seven million residents of France are Algerian first and French second.
It was perhaps fitting that Jean-Marie Le Pen died in the week when relations between France and Algeria have reached their lowest point for decades. In an interview on January 9 1984, Le Pen warned that immigration from North Africa ‘has already started to colonize real swathes of French territory and towns, and which, if we don’t take basic precautions, is bound to end up overwhelming France.’ He continued with his warnings in the years that followed, which partly explains why his National Front party grew so quickly, from 190,000 votes in the 1974 presidential election to 4.8 million in 2002.
Before the 2002 election (when Le Pen reached the second round) he claimed that the number of immigrants was now so great that ‘it is the host culture that risks being assimilated’. He named Algeria and condemned those ‘who incite immigrants to denigrate France’. As an example of what the future might hold for France, Le Pen pointed to the ‘distressing spectacle’ at the Stade de France.
He was talking about the international football match between France and Algeria, abandoned in the second half after Algerian fans invaded the pitch. The playing of the Marseillaise before kick-off had also been loudly booed. ‘The Algerian hymn was not booed, there was respect for Algeria,’ said French defender Lilian Thuram. ‘Why did these young people, most of whom were born in France, boo their country’s anthem?’
A number of Algerians have been brought up to hate France, a detestation that can be traced back to the war of independence in the late 1950s. Both sides committed atrocities, and among those implicated was Jean-Marie Le Pen, who served as a soldier in Algeria.
In a speech to the Algerian parliament a fortnight ago, president Tebboune accused France of genocide and said the war had left ‘Algeria in ruins’.
Bruno Retailleau has promised a response to this latest provocation by Algeria, saying the government will ‘study the means at their disposal’.
Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a senior figure in Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, appeared on television on Friday to outline what his party would do by way of retaliation: immediate suspension of all visas and developmental aid, and the freezing of assets of Algerian officials.
It will certainly require a bold response from Emmanuel Macron, who is perceived by the Algerian regime as weak. They’re testing him. Will the president stand up to them or will he stick to easier targets like Musk?
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