France’s national identity ennui

A senior Socialist deputy said the circumstances in which the debate was launched “shows that France is sick.”

“National identity is not up to us to establish as a norm for us to conform to. National identity just happens. In a big sense, it is outside our control. It’s not for any government to decide.” – Emmanuelle Saada, a sociologist and historian at Columbia University and France’s Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

“France does not have an identity problem,” said Youth & Solidarity Minister Martin Hirsch, calling it a “100-percent political debate.”

BTC – “Meh… Such is life.” Did you expect anything different?

c/o CNS News
Paris (AP) – The Great Debate gets under way Wednesday, led off with a grand question: “For you, what does it mean to be French?”

This is neither a pompous academic exercise in France’s elite schools nor a TV game show. It is the French government’s effort to clarify — with citizen participation — the nation’s values, increasingly fraught with tensions as customs brought in by immigrants, for instance, rub up against traditional French values.

France’s immigration minister, Eric Besson, launched the national soul-searching, dubbed the Great Debate, earlier this month with a Web site where citizens can write about what they think it means to be French. Up to 32,000 contributions were posted in the first two weeks, according to the ministry.

On Wednesday, the first of hundreds of local debates that are planned over the next two months will take place, this one among officials of Montargis, south of Paris, and business leaders, members of associations as well as teachers and parents of students. Exceptionally, it is being held at the Immigration Ministry.

Talking points for the debates include French history, culture, religion or language. Ultimately, they are meant to address a handful of proposals such as the meaning of national symbols like the flag or whether youths should be obliged to sing the national anthem at least once a year — and how to share values with immigrant citizens.

“France is a nation of tolerance and respect, but it also asks to be respected,” President Nicolas Sarkozy told farmers in southeastern France earlier this month. One cannot reap the advantages of living in France “without respecting any of its laws, any of its values, any of its principles.”

France is a nation of immigrants but, until recently, most newcomers hailed from other European countries. Now immigrants from elsewhere, notably Muslims from former French colonies, are part of the mix. With 5 million Muslims, France has western Europe’s largest Muslim population.

The initiative is contentious. Rival Socialists equate the national identity debate with a political stunt meant in part to garner votes of the anti-immigration far-right National Front ahead of March regional elections. Intellectuals and philosophers are divided, as are many citizens, contending it will fan xenophobia and stigmatize nonwhite French.

Comments on the ministry’s site reflect the diversity in viewpoints.

“When you see the number of racist ideas, full of resentment … one has the right to question the pertinence of this debate which pits one French against the other,” wrote someone identified as Hasard in a message posted Tuesday. “This debate is a formidable trigger for hate, jealousy, pretense.”

Francois, born in the Paris region of Seine-Saint-Denis, with a large population with origins in sub-Saharan and Muslim North Africa, fears that “we will end up like the American Indians, a minority in our own country.”

Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, appears to have a clear vision of France’s national identity — or what it is not. In his recent speech, he took new aim at the face-covering, all-enveloping Islamic robe worn by a very small minority of Muslim women, saying there is “no place for the subservience of women” in France.

Debating the national identity “is not dangerous. It’s necessary,” Sarkozy said.

Sarkozy had vowed to bolster France’s sense of national identity while campaigning for the presidency in 2007. He quickly created the Ministry of Immigration Ministry, Integration, National Identity and Co-Solidarity.

Some see the debate initiative as a reaction to a France whose citizens, and non-citizens, of immigrant origin are growing increasingly vocal, just as the singular French model of integration by which foreigners are expected to fully assimilate is weakening.

“I’m amazed at this debate. It’s a political event (and) doesn’t represent any deep need in society,” said Emmanuelle Saada, a sociologist and historian at Columbia University and France’s Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

“National identity is not up to us to establish as a norm for us to conform to,” she said in a telephone interview. “National identity just happens. … In a big sense, it is outside our control.” And, she adds, “It’s not for any government to decide.”

The question, she said, is why the issue resonates with the public.

Hicham Kochman, a rapper known as Axiom, says the national identity debate is a diversion.

Axiom made his mark with a song 2006 song, “Ma Lettre au President,” written to the tune of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem.

“I think this debate hijacks the real problems,” like unemployment and buying power, he said.

“The only values in France are liberty, equality, fraternity. … Each time injustice gains ground, the values are weakened. For me, France isn’t a country. It’s an idea.”

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visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
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contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Medvedev to Russia: "not to forget" Stalin-era citizen repressions

Russia’s search for an identity

By Masha Lipman for the Washington Post
Tuesday, November 3, 2009

BTC- Hindsight is 20/20. It also tends to mellow with age and develop an alluring golden aura where power is recalled in retrospect. Stalin era Russia, became the international example of totalitarian establishment which imperiled and murdered it’s citizens. These citizens had no civil liberty, privacy or identity separate from the State. Everyone and everything was property of the State.

MOSCOW- On Friday, as Russia recognized its annual commemoration of political prisoners, President Dmitry Medvedev published a videoblog in which he condemned Joseph Stalin’s crimes and called on the nation not to forget about past political repression or its victims. Medvedev called Stalin’s repression “one of the greatest tragedies in Russian history” and expressed concern that “even today it can be heard that these mass victims were justified by certain higher goals of the state.” He said that “no development of a country, none of its successes or ambitions can be reached at the price of human losses and grief.” His statement, which led the state-controlled television news, was sharply at odds with official rhetoric of the past decade.

Medvedev’s address may have sounded radical, but many here are skeptical that the president’s words will actually bring change. The number of alarming signals of Stalin’s rehabilitation is growing. And in general over the year and a half of his presidency, Medvedev’s often well-intended rhetoric has not been matched with policy.

But it would be wrong to dismiss the speech and conclude instead — as observers at home and abroad sometimes do — that Russia has made a definitive turn “back” toward the Soviet Union and an admiration of Stalin. In fact, perceptions of Stalin are conflicted, and this conflict reflects Russia’s attempts — very feeble, so far — to reinvent itself as a modern nation. In December, Stalin came in third in a TV station’s poll of greatest Russian historical figures. Contest organizers are rumored to have tinkered with the results after discovering that the man who masterminded the extermination of millions of his compatriots actually finished first.

Yet the peak of Stalin’s terror is also recognized for what it was. In 2007, 72 percent of respondents told the Levada polling agency that the repression of 1937-38 were “political crimes that can’t be justified.” The day of remembrance of political repression, officially introduced in 1991, is not marked by major national events, but on Thursday, just outside the infamous Lubyanka building, the KGB’s headquarters and prison, the names of Stalin’s victims were read for 12 straight hours by any who wanted to participate. Other commemorations were staged elsewhere in Russia.

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For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org