Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The empty rhetoric of ‘je suis Samuel’

(Photo: Getty)

The mother of my daughter didn’t attend yesterday’s rally in Paris to honour the memory of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded in a street in the north-west of the French capital last Friday.

A teacher herself in a state school in Seine-Saint-Denis in the north of Paris, a district often cited as the most deprived in France, she was profoundly shocked by the death of Monsieur Paty. Naturally, she has nothing but sympathy for his family but she had no wish to stand shoulder to shoulder with politicians, intellectuals, the judiciary and members of an education authority who for years have offered her profession little or no support in their struggle against Islamic extremism.

Some of those present at the Place de la Republique brandished placards on which was written ‘Je Suis Samuel’, surely a grotesque new low in this age of infantile self-absorption. Many at yesterday’s rally shouting loudly in defence of freedom of expression were at another gathering in Paris last November: an anti-Islamophobe rally at which they were shouting loudly against freedom of expression.

My ex-wife teaches French literature to teenagers. In the three years she’s been teaching – she quit her well paid job in the fashion industry to do something more fulfilling – she’s never been threatened. If she was, however, she has little faith that anything would be done to support or protect her; on the contrary, she suspects she would be seen as the problem by the authorities. Indeed, there are allegations – denied by the education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer – that Samuel Paty had been reprimanded for discussing Charlie Hebdo in his class.

Many in France share her disillusionment. For decades successive governments have talked tough but done nothing. ‘They shall not pass!’ thundered Emmanuel Macron on Friday as he stood outside the gates of the college at which Samuel Paty taught.

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Gavin Mortimer
Written by
Gavin Mortimer

Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.

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