{"id":79135,"date":"2024-06-23T04:12:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-23T04:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/23\/the-nation-resurgent-and-borders-too\/"},"modified":"2024-06-23T04:12:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-23T04:12:04","slug":"the-nation-resurgent-and-borders-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/23\/the-nation-resurgent-and-borders-too\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nation Resurgent, and Borders, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/21\/multimedia\/21france-immigration-01-hjwm\/21france-immigration-01-hjwm-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"The Nation Resurgent, and Borders, Too\" title=\"The Nation Resurgent, and Borders, Too\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the heart of the rapid rise of the nationalist right, with its view of immigrants as a direct threat to the essence of France, there appears to lie a growing feeling among many French people that they are no longer at home in their own country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That feeling, a vague but potent malaise, has many elements. They include a sense of dispossession, of neighborhoods transformed in dress and habits by the arrival of mainly Muslim immigrants from North Africa, and of lost identity in a fast-changing world. The National Rally, whose anti-immigrant position lies at the core of its fast-growing popularity, has benefited from all this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cNo French citizen would tolerate living in a house without doors or windows,\u201d <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/08\/world\/europe\/jordan-bardella-france-eu-elections.html\" title=\"\">Jordan Bardella, the smooth-talking 28-year-old symbol<\/a> of the National Rally\u2019s advance to the brink of power, told France 3 TV this past week. \u201cWell, it\u2019s the same thing with a country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In other words, nations need effective borders that can be sealed tight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This message, echoed by rising nationalist parties across Europe, and a central theme of Donald J. Trump\u2019s presidential campaign in the United States, has proved potent. In France, it propelled Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally to victory over President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s party in voting for the European Parliament this month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So rattled was Mr. Macron by the defeat that he threw open the country\u2019s political future with a risky bet. He called for legislative elections, the first round of which is June 30. France may have a nationalist far-right government with Mr. Bardella as prime minister before the Olympic Games begin in Paris on July 26.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The unthinkable has become thinkable. Almost a decade ago, Angela Merkel, then the German chancellor, immortalized the words \u201cWir schaffen das,\u201d<em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\"> <\/em>or \u201cwe can do<span class=\"css-8l6xbc evw5hdy0\">  <\/span>this,\u201d as she admitted more than one million Syrian refugees to Germany. Today, her embrace of immigration seems otherworldly, so completely have attitudes changed in Europe and the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A similar gesture of \u201cWilkommenskultur,\u201d or welcome culture, these days would sound the death knell of most Western politicians.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Once the core theme of the xenophobic right, the push to control or stop migrants has moved toward the center of the political spectrum. The view of immigrants as diluting national identity, freeloading on social safety nets and importing violence has spread, often fed by thinly veiled bigotry. The once absolute French taboo against the National Front, now the National Rally, has collapsed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Centrist leaders, including President Biden and Mr. Macron, have been obliged to shift from openness on immigration to a harder line to try to steal the thunder of nationalist movements. They have had to recognize that many conservatives, with nothing \u201cfar right\u201d about them, identify with Mr. Trump\u2019s words during a visit to Poland in 2017: \u201cDo we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Early this year, Mr. Macron\u2019s government passed an immigration bill that removed deportation protection for certain foreigners residing in France who engaged in a \u201cserious violation of the principles of the Republic.\u201d It imposed immediate expulsion for rejected asylum seekers. It attempted to revoke the automatic right to citizenship for children born in France to foreign parents, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/01\/25\/world\/europe\/france-immigration-ruling-macron.html?searchResultPosition=1\" title=\"\">before the Constitutional Council struck that down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If the intent of these and other measures was to dent the rise of the National Rally, the legislation backfired. For the left, it was a betrayal of French humanist values; for the right, it was too little, too late.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a similar way, citing a \u201cworldwide migrant crisis,\u201d Mr. Biden, for whom the United States as a nation of immigrants has been a consistent refrain, temporarily closed the southern border to most asylum seekers this month. It was a drastic reversal, and many Democrats accused him of embracing Mr. Trump\u2019s politics of fear. But Mr. Biden\u2019s decision reflected the fact that many Americans, like many in France, want tougher policies in the face of record numbers of migrants entering the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Why this shift? Western societies of ever greater inequality have left many people behind, fueling anger. In France, a social model that worked well for a long time has been unable to resolve the problems of lost hope and poor schools in suburban projects where many immigrants live. This feeds further frustration. Tensions flare regularly between Muslims and the police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe government always protects the police, a state within the state,\u201d Ahmed Djamai, 58, said last year during a protest. For him, to be Arab or Black, even with a French passport, was often to be made to feel second-class.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Immigration, in this context, easily becomes a dog-whistle theme. \u201cThis French sense of losing their country to immigrants is in many ways delusional,\u201d said Anne Muxel, the deputy director of the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po University in Paris. \u201cIt\u2019s tied to disorientation, lost control and life getting harder. The National Rally gets that in its DNA, whereas it\u2019s not in the DNA of Macron.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The cultures of the United States and France differ profoundly. One is a nation formed through immigration with a self-renewing core; the other, France, is a more rigid country where the integration of \u201cvisible minorities,\u201d a term mainly referring to Muslims, has challenged the nation\u2019s self-image.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Still, many people in each country, to some degree, fear a loss of identity, an anxiety on which leaders like Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Trump can play. In the United States, it is the specter of non-Hispanic white America becoming a minority by midcentury. Americans\u2019 sense of the sanctity of the law is offended by the illegal entry of millions of migrants. The French focus on a threat to their way of life, a feeling compounded by repeated acts of Islamist terrorism over the past decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The consensus that \u201cthe situation with Muslim immigrants has become insoluble\u201d is now so entrenched across the political spectrum that \u201cthere is no serious debate on immigration although it\u2019s at the center of the campaign,\u201d said Hakim El Karoui, a prominent consultant on immigration issues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Le Pen has worked hard for over a decade to normalize her father\u2019s fringe racist party. She expunged its antisemitism, reversed calls to exit the 27-nation European Union and adopted a generally moderate tone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Still, the party\u2019s core view that immigrants dilute the national body \u2014 held up as a glorious and mystical thing \u2014 endures. She has said that the party, if elected, will seek to ban use of the Muslim head scarf in public.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She and Mr. Bardella embrace the idea of \u201cnational preference\u201d \u2014 essentially systematic discrimination between foreigners and French citizens when it comes to access to jobs, subsidized housing, certain health benefits and other social assistance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Bardella said this past week that immigrants legally in France \u201cwho work, pay their taxes and respect the law have nothing to fear from my arrival at Matignon,\u201d the residence of the prime minister. This was intended to be a reassuring pitch for the top job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the unemployment rate in France is 7.5 percent, with 2.3 million people jobless. The rate is higher among immigrants, around 12 percent in 2021, according to a study last year by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. Many of them could be vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">About 140,000 migrants applied for asylum last year, according to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and the Stateless. That is double the number of a decade ago. G\u00e9rald Darmanin, the interior minister, estimated last year that there were 600,000 to 900,000 illegal immigrants in France.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAn assault on personal freedoms by Le Pen and Bardella is likely,\u201d said C\u00e9lia Belin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At a Bardella rally in Montbeliard, in eastern France, Laurent Nans\u00e9, 53, who runs a funeral home, said he had recently inherited a family house and had been looking through albums from his youth. \u201cThere were no veiled women, nobody from the Maghreb, no Africans,\u201d he said. \u201cNow at Ramadan, the supermarkets are full of advertising for that. I don\u2019t see any advertising for Lent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He said he believed that Mr. Bardella has what it takes to lead the country. \u201cI am so sick of Macron\u2019s little of this, little of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At a news conference last week, Mr. Macron seemed to grapple with his own failures. He linked the rise of the \u201cextreme right\u201d to \u201cdoubts about what we are becoming, existential anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In response, he said, it was essential to stand firm. He cited his immigration bill and called for \u201ccutting illegal immigration,\u201d but acknowledged that \u201cour efforts in this area have not been sufficiently seen, felt or understood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Tuesday, Mr. Macron accused the new left-wing New Popular Front alliance of Socialist, Green and far-left parties of being totally \u201cimmigrationiste\u201d \u2014 a word often used by Ms. Le Pen\u2019s party to describe politicians who encourage uncontrolled immigration. In the past, the National Rally has called Mr. Macron an \u201cimmigrationiste.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">All of this is clearly an attempt by Mr. Macron to stop the march of the National Rally to power by hardening on immigration and security. The problem is that just as Mr. Trump has occupied the anti-immigrant political terrain in the United States, that ground is taken in France by Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Bardella.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Macron has tried over seven years in office to hover in the middle of a virulent debate. Mr. Biden offset his closure of the border to asylum seekers by announcing soon after that he would protect 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens from being deported and provide them a path to citizenship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It is not clear that such carefully dosed navigation around an explosive issue will work. The atmosphere in France today is restive. \u201cWe tried everything,\u201d Ms. Muxel said. \u201cWe need to try something new \u2014 that is what\u2019s in the air.\u201d It was in the air in the United States in 2016.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Of course, it was precisely the measures taken to construct and preserve a homogeneous society that lay at the core of the most heinous crimes of the last century. A core postwar insight in Europe was that borders should be dismantled to save Europe from its repetitive wars. Ever-closer union meant ever-expanding peace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Those ideas, however, appear to have faded. This is a time of the nation resurgent, whatever the perils of that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A cartoon this past week on the front page of Le Canard Enchain\u00e9, the satirical newspaper, showed a Frenchman in his beret, with a baguette and a bottle of wine, pointing a large-caliber shotgun with \u201cNational Rally\u201d emblazoned on it at his head.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe\u2019ve never tried it!\u201d said the caption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/23\/world\/europe\/the-nation-resurgent-and-borders-too.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the heart of the rapid rise of the nationalist right, with its view of immigrants as a direct threat to the essence of France, there appears to lie a growing feeling among many French people that they are no longer at home in their own country. That feeling, a vague but potent malaise, has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/21\/multimedia\/21france-immigration-01-hjwm\/21france-immigration-01-hjwm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6079,5061,29250],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79137,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79135\/revisions\/79137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}