French far right urges fortress mentality
Radical National Front wants dangerous ‘foreigners’ expelled from the country
Once France has grieved and buried its dead, it must face the challenge of preventing future terrorist attacks, while confronting far-right political forces urging a fortress mentality that would threaten the borderless European continent — and penalize refugees.
President François Hollande was quick to declare a state of emergency and tightened France’s border controls temporarily following Friday’s ferocious attacks by Islamic State that left 129 people dead in Paris, and wounded more than 350 others.
The mood in France is still one of unity and national mourning, but Hollande is already being criticized by the hard-right National Front to reconsider the country’s commitment to the Schengen project of open borders.
Marine Le Pen, the party’s leader, called on Saturday for the country to annihilate Islamist fundamentalism, shut down mosques and expel dangerous “foreigners” and “il- legal migrants.”
“It’s too early to say how far the terror attacks will benefit the National Front, but they play into the party’s central narrative that France is no longer safe,” said Jim Shields, a professor of French politics at Aston University in the U.K. Le Pen’s party is growing in support, set to poll strongly in next month’s elections and tipped to win the first round of the 2017 presidential election.
So far, it appears the greater threat to France’s security comes from homegrown terrorist cells, rather than from foreign radicals trying to enter the visa-free EU, alongside the tsunami of desperate Syrians and Iraqis fleeing war and violence.
At least two of the seven attackers were French nationals living in Brussels (one of whom had allegedly fought with Islamic State), while another was a French man born in the Chartres region who had been known to authorities for radicalism.
The passport of a Syrian man who entered Europe through Greece last month was found next to a dead suicide bomber at France’s national stadium, raising questions about radicals posing as refugees, and fears that EU nations will erect even more border fences in an effort to keep hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers out of the Schengen zone.
“Until now, the main problem in France hasn’t been the migrants but the estimated 1,500 French fighters who have gone to Syria. They may return home radicalized, ready to carry out atrocities on their home soil,” Shields noted.
France has Europe’s largest Muslim community, about six million, and a high degree of anti-immigrant sentiment. Fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment in France could benefit Islamic State, by further polarizing French society, and radicalizing French Muslims.
A recent poll found that more than half of respondents believe France has “too many immigrants.” About 48 per cent said Muslims in France have “too many rights,” and 42 per cent say “they no longer feel really at home in France,” according to the 2015 TNS Sofres poll measuring agreement with the National Front’s ideas.
“The fact that polls can frame their questions in such crude terms is an eloquent commentary on the tone of public discussion of immigration in France,” Shields said.
Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, believes there is no need to revise the EU’s refugee policy, in light of the acts of terror. “Those who organized these attacks and those who carried them out are exactly those who the refugees are fleeing,” Juncker said Sunday at the G20 summit in Turkey.
Under the Schengen system, countries are still able to reimpose internal border controls temporarily. Germany and Austria have all reintroduced temporary border controls to try to regulate the chaotic flow of more than one million migrants who have entered Europe so far this year.