#For context: As part of the propaganda for the new Empire under the FO expansion...

[incluctable]

On a comedic note, @fcalty once said Archex would crash Hux's wedding by literally crashing a Starhawk into it. I just want to state, Finn will help for free.

[nightwatcherspunk]

Contextual elements

Before presenting the lyrics of this new record, we wanted to write the following text as a clarification, in order to explain our intention and to put words into context.

All the present lyrics deal with the abuses and acts of violence perpetrated by the French State within three of its Colonial Empires and territories: Indochina (1887-1954), Algeria (1830-1962) and Cameroon (1916-1960). These lyrics are adaptations of excerpts taken from two books: “Les crimes de l’armée française : Algérie 1954-1962” by Pierre Vidal-Naquet (2001), and “La guerre du Cameroun : l’invention de la Françafrique, 1948-1971,” by Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa (2016). The choice of focusing on these three specific territories is not insignificant. Indeed, we decided to follow the logical continuity caused by the succession of these three-armed conflicts.

The lyrics were written with the objective of raising awareness about the reality of the occupation and colonial violence that were systematically perpetrated throughout all French colonial territories during several centuries, and this, officially, until 1962.

They also reflect the organization and philosophy of the colonial system. They highlight a side of French History that sometimes remains unknown, poorly known, or even denied. As in 2009, when Prime Minister François Fillon during an official trip in Yaoundé – capital city of Cameroon – declared that the involvement of the French army in the Cameroon War was nothing but “pure fabrication.” Beyond the fact that this war did actually happen, it laid the groundwork for French neo-colonialism through the invention and creation of the Françafrican1 system.

Can we understand the present French society without taking into account its connections with the old colonial Empire? In 1976, Michel Foucault underlined that colonization “also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. [...] And the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.” Colonization was the experimental field of power systems that would end up by profoundly transforming European modern societies. 

Beyond the apparatuses of power that are insuring the republican governance, the present time connects with this History through a double movement.

 The first movement identified by Bancel and Blanchard is the existing continuity in terms of social representations made by “native-born French people” towards populations with an “immigrant background” and coming from old colonized territories. Indeed, representations of the “typical indigenous person” are still deeply rooted in some people’s minds. They resurge regularly to the hazards of current events. The rise of a post-Arab Spring radical Islamism or the European migrant crisis are popular topics for a part of the conservative right and the conservative left.In 1954, the Algerian War brought back in mainland France the negative stereotypes towards Arabs: “Cruelty, treachery, dissimulation, fanaticism, barbarism, etc. We find these images and stereotypes on the posters and leaflets published by the French army in Algeria and in France, but also, in magazines, such as Paris-Match or Radar. It is a real shock for part of the French population to realize that despite all ‘our’ efforts, ‘they’ refuse to become civilized and continue to display their differences. Eight decades of colonial propaganda have deluded the public opinion with multiple colonial myths that end up being discordant with the politico-military situation at the time: active cooperation of local populations, modernization in constant progression, increasing hygiene and education rates. Aside from the denunciation of the eternal communist plot, we postulate on the feudal conceptions of ‘fellaghas2’, and their atavistic obscurantism. In short, we identify them as partisans of a step backwards that would wipe out all the generous efforts made by mainland France. Ultimately, shouldn’t we acknowledge that the independence in countries like Algeria or even Guinea and Indochina, is the actual image of countries aiming for disaster and going back to their tribal demons, to barbarism, and, in short, to their pre-colonial ages... in the heart of darkness?” (Blanchard, 2014) Isn’t the “coffee shops war3”, which brought into conflict partisans of the FLN and the MNA in the suburbs of Lille or Paris, from 1954 and up until the end of the Algerian War, another proof of their barbarism? Isn’t the gratuitous violence during juvenile riots against police forces and French institutions that burst regularly since the 1980s another proof of their ungratefulness and refusal to be integrated? The several urban policies that target, via theirs “anti-hot summer” plans (ed. read “anti-riot and anti-discontent summer” plans), young boys with colonial immigration backgrounds have for objectives “the civic moralization of pre-delinquents – their compliance with republican values.” (Bonnemaison, 1990) “The objective is indeed to assimilate these imperfect French children, to first locate them, define them, separate them from their parents, and transform them far away.” (Jablonka, 2013)

The second movement is the existing continuity in terms of social representations made by French people with immigrant and colonial backgrounds towards law enforcement agencies and the French State. After the “riots” of 2005, Malika Mansouri identified and analyzed these “cysts” specific to the French colonial history. “Cysts” that nowadays continue to structure both the relation to the past, via the family’s history, and the relation to the present time, via the transposition through space and time of some young inhabitants with “foreign origins.” (2013) The relationships they have with the police, the world of work and school feed feelings of inferiority, disrespect, injustice, lack of recognition, as well as academic and professional discriminations. The racist behaviors and acts of violence that their relatives suffer from, the general disillusion towards political promises and tirades about Equality and Fraternity are elements that are passed on from generation to generation and that shape the conflicting relationship with France. 

“Tarik is currently in his third year of Psychology Studies. […] The school system and the police are omnipresent in his discourse. He describes the middle schools located in ‘Priority Education Zones’ as machines made to ‘disorient’ young people by pushing them almost systematically towards short studies. He suspects that this specific orientation choice from teachers is probably ‘unconscious,’ but that the consequence is nevertheless really serious as it results in demotivating a large majority of young people who finally end up being in school failure. […] Tarik doesn’t tolerate the conflation made between delinquents and foreigners or assimilated foreigners. He is himself systematically the victim of such conflations. Tarik continues by reaffirming that ‘immigrants’ are ‘confined’ in ‘prison-like districts,’ which is convenient for the State, as it wants to keep these populations under its control. […] For his mother who has kept her ‘hatred for the settlers,’ the police would have been the first French colonizer that came to ‘tarnish’ her ‘land.’ Therefore, the younger generations would feel a ‘hatred of cops,’ feeling that have its source in the ‘collective unconsciousness,’ and that would result in the assimilation of the picture of yesterday’s colonizer with today’s police forces.” (Mansouri, 2013, pp. 81-83).

The colonial heritage is then present “on both sides.” If the post-colonial theories certainly can’t be sufficient in order to explain the issues that animate the relationship between the French State and its citizens originally coming from old colonies, excluding these issues and proclaiming that we are “all equal” is nothing else than burying our heads in the sand. We are not all equal. 

Colonial history is anchored in the violence created by power dynamics and patterns of domination/submission. Such violence is the result of a civilization that, for a really long time, has considered itself as morally and culturally superior to others. Thus, such civilization ended up classifying and hierarchizing foreign people according to their value. The Enlightenment spirit that was contributing to and influencing the French Revolution could have, or, as one might think, should have put an end to the French colonial system and its expansion. Paradoxically, the latter was strengthened. The values of the Republic and its belief in the universal aspect of its principles have justified the use of the worst methods in the name of peace and progress. Is it the paradox of an unfinished revolution? “Peace to our neighbors! Anathema to the French name! Eternal hatred of France! Let this be our cry!” proclaimed in 1804 the declaration of independence of the Haitian Republic. All subjects of the colonial Empire are considered at equal distance from the point of reference: the white republican man of mainland France. “We attribute to the populations of the Empire some common paradigms. Those paradigms do not completely iron out the differences that exist between these different populations, but distinguish them from the role models of the white man, the mainlander, the conqueror. […] All the official iconography tends to demonstrate that an assimilation policy would not transform the colonized populations into ‘little French people’ before centuries. […] In other words, assimilation is applicable for lands, not for people, except of course for an elite described as ‘educated’ that can occupy some high and important functions in mainland France, such as Biaise Diagne (first African deputy who represented Senegal in the French Parliament in 1914), or later, Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Minister during the Fourth Republic). The promotion of this elite becomes the tangible proof of the validity of the system. System that is capable of perfectly assimilating the most ‘brilliant’ indigenous people” (Blanchard, 2014).

You might think that all this is old story and that people have actually changed their minds and evolved regarding those issues. But in 2005, a project for a Memorial Act promoted by minister of the Armed Forces Michèle Alliot-Marie was stating that "school courses should recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in North Africa, and treat the history and the sacrifices of veterans of the French army originating from these territories in a properly appreciative way.” In 2018, some polemists have no problem to publicly show their support for old actors of French Algeria who “died for France,” and to state that: “this Mr. Audin4 […] I think that he would have deserved to be executed by receiving 12 bullets.”

The Algerian War and colonization are still taboo subjects in France. They generate strong polemics and divide the French population. Kept in the dark, these topics deserve that we take the time to go back in detail on some facts: on what France did within its colonies; on the ideological foundations of colonial violence; on the nature of the relation between the French colonial Empire and indigenous populations. While reading these narratives and testimonies of old conscripts, everyone will be able to judge the validity and legitimacy of France’s intentions, as well as the fundamental principles of the French republican model of integration. 

Our first two records were focusing on law enforcement practices, in the broad sense of the term: polis. It is important to understand that what you have here is nothing less than a logical continuation. These lyrics allow us to discern preventive and coercive logics – specific to the colonial system – that have not completely disappeared within law enforcement, educational and social French institutions, as well as among the practices of their representatives. Such logics still structure part of the relationship maintained between the State and the inhabitants of popular districts from colonial immigration descent, or assimilated.    

What we name Françafrique is the french postcolonial presence and influence in Africa.

Members of the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale : liberation front during the Algerian war)

Partisans of the FLN and of the MNA (Mouvement National Algérien, the other main algerian liberation front) were also at war during that period. The conflict extended to mainland France, where they both used to attack their enemies on the café terraces.

Maurice Audin was a member of the Algerian Communist Party. He was arrested by the French army during the Battle of Algiers on June 11, 1957 and died during his captivity, murdered.