The hunt for problematic symbols
In 1871, the Communards who distributed cans of oil to set fire to the flagship monuments of Paris, architectural jewels and testimonies of a brilliant past (Tuileries, Hôtel de Ville, Palais de Justice, Prefecture of Police, Ministry of Finance, Council of State), were compared to Erostratos, the arsonist of the temple of Artemis in 356 BC. This comparison finds a new relevance with the phenomenon of unbolting that we have been witnessing for several years.
Since 2020, there have been increasing calls to do away with certain markers of public space. Street names, statues, memorial markers, the hunt that began in the United States has easily crossed the Atlantic (first reaching England). In the absence of being able to act on the inequalities of the present, it is the past that is condemned, particularly the traces of a colonial past, de facto associated with a mortal sin, and which would be irremediably linked to racism and slavery. Of course, this only concerns Western leaders. Few calls have been made to rename squares in homage to Emir Abd-el-Kader (in the 5e arrondissement of Paris or the 7the from Lyon), a figure of the North African resistance to France, while he owned slaves in good conscience and the African and Islamic slave trade was still in full swing in the 19th century.e century.
The historical logic of erasure
The logic of the forum revolutionaries is to purge the public space of any "problematic" reference, a concept that the Black Lives Matter demonstrations have helped to amplify, even if it already existed. Thus, as early as 2017, the president of the Representative Council of Black Associations of France was indignant in Libération of the presence of a statue of Colbert in the National Assembly, on the grounds that he had written one of the versions of the Code Noir, a legal treaty regulating slavery in the Antilles – even though this Code aimed to grant rights to slaves vis-à-vis their owners. The list is long, from the vandalized statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais on July 26, 2020 in Martinique to the imprecations launched against that of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University. Every Western country should perform its act of contrition and purge its public space, even without having had colonies. Like Switzerland, “accomplice” of colonialism through its banking operations, as asserted by a decree of Monde, in an article dated October 23, 2024.
In the West, no one would be innocent; however, the aims of this hunt, all the more courageous since we have rarely seen a statue respond to a demonstration to unbolt it, raise questions. The practice is not new, since the damnatio memoriae Romans, quick to erase memories of the previous emperor, until the French Revolution. Indeed, the revolutionaries largely encouraged "vandalism" (the term was invented on occasion by the Abbé Grégoire), the destruction of statues of kings or the desecration of the tombs of sovereigns in Saint-Denis: it was necessary to end it, to break with the long French royalty... and above all to announce the other purges, very real, to come. According to Louis Prudhomme in Revolutions of Paris, "We erase from our walls and our currency the effigy of a crowned assassin, and the original is not yet erased from the book of the living. This is where we should have started[1]The disgrace of statues, 2022.. » The destruction of the symbols of Louis XVI in 1791 announced the republican victory and the decline of the royalists, driven from the realm of visual acceptability.
The challenges of contemporary moral judgment
Destroying the statue or renaming the street represents the mark of the winner, or of the one who is preparing to conquer power. He thus marks the public space with his imprint to show what is no longer acceptable, or what, on the contrary, is the new norm, in a sort of expiatory rite. In France, the conquest of North Africa carried out over several decades has left its share of statues and other tributes. The figure of Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud had sparked controversy during his lifetime, his memory is now condemned to the pillory. Conqueror of Algeria and declared enemy of the revolutionaries of the 19th centurye century, he alone embodied a beautiful convergence of struggles! On October 14, 2024, the Paris city hall renamed the avenue in his name, located in the 16the arrondissement. He was said to have been a "sinister character" according to the official website of the capital, in a text filled with historical errors. He did not order the massacre on Rue Transnonain in 1834 and it was his subordinates who carried out the Algerian smoke bombings, even if the general covered them up afterwards. The Parisian initiative was welcomed in Lyon, where voices have since been raised to rename the Rue Bugeaud at 6e district. The collective of "Algerians of France" already has the new name in mind: "rue du 17 octobre 1961" to pay tribute according to this collective "to the millions of victims of colonialism, of Franco-Algerians who were assassinated." In Paris, Bugeaud had already given way to Hubert Germain, companion of the Liberation, one soldier replacing the other... In Lyon, the intention is quite different: to mark the French Empire with the seal of infamy. Because Bugeaud is only the most visible part of a series of demands and targets to be brought down. In Lille, how many calls to rename the high school and the statue of General Faidherbe? Also in Lyon, the stele in homage to Sergeant Blandan has been "contextualized", his presence now being deemed inconvenient. Why is he suspect? His crime is to have encouraged his comrades to fight and to have sacrificed himself to save them. But it was in Constantine in 1842 facing North African fighters… No matter the rank, courage, grade or sacrifice: having set foot on African soil is enough to be erased. The statue of Faidherbe in Lille thanked above all the general of 1870-1871 who had preserved the North from Prussian occupation, he is now only the infamous craftsman of the Senegalese riflemen.
To speak of a “reconciliation”, an “appeasement” that would come through the elimination of these signs of memory is misleading. The requested erasure of these parts of the past could concern any figure in French history. After all, almost all French political leaders of the time – including the left – supported colonial expansion at one time or another, even with scruples, or else had the misfortune to rejoice in the success of the army in the conquest. As shown by the examination of conscience requested of the Swiss, having benefited, indirectly, from colonial products or financial assets drawn from colonial exploitation is a reason for being blacklisted…
The list is long, above all, because it is not intended to ever be finished.
Let us look at the Guide to decolonial Marseille, published in 2022 by Syllepse, citing 300 “problematic” places or monuments to denounce. Bugeaud is at the top of the list, followed by General Lamoricière, a French officer of the XNUMXth centurye century as an "executioner" in Algeria (because a French officer who had served on the front would by nature be an executioner), but also Léon Gambetta or even... Léon Blum. Gambetta had had the misfortune of being supported by financiers with interests in Algeria - among his millions of voters - while Blum had mentioned racial inequality in a public speech. A statement, an attitude or a "complicity" is therefore enough, in an endless purge.
To condemn, it is enough to pillory a line written several hundred years ago, in the light of the comfort of the 21st century.e century and to subject these characters to an implacable moral judgment, so "enlightened" and "awake" that it is capable of condemning centuries and millennia of history... The statue of Colbert in front of the Assembly would be an "apology for crimes against humanity" according to Frank Lollia, spokesperson for the "anti-negrophobia brigade", an association quick to denounce a "state racism" whose presence in the public space remains to be demonstrated...
The approach is clear: attack the national memory to subject it to the marks of shame and prepare the ground for its erasure.
The enemy is indeed the nation, and the weapon consists of stirring up hatred and divisions to better praise the clan and the ethnic, political, religious group, each claiming its own "safe space", although this seems to be imposed on all the others. Public space is denationalized and entirely rewritten for the desire of a minority of activists. At the trial of Lollia in May 2021, implicated after tagging the statue of Colbert, the historian Françoise Vergès - a self-proclaimed activist of the decolonial movements - calls for Colbert to be erased in the same way as... Pétain in 1944. A trial with more than dubious arguments, judging by the words of the activist's lawyer: "When a person suffers trauma, the DNA undergoes a modification, this is true for a woman who is a victim of rape for example and her granddaughter would see an aggravation, the logic is the same with the descendants of slaves[2]Marianne, May 11, 2021 ».
Who will be next? Winston Churchill was called every name under the sun during the BLM protests, his statues were tagged and calls to tear him down multiplied. A “racist”, “imperialist”, “colonialist”… without whom a good number of the protesters and crusaders of good conscience, and their parents, would probably no longer be here to reproach him for it.
Calls to unbolt, erase, “cancel” in the name of moral criteria of the 21st centurye century constitute an attack on both a common memory and the necessary nuance that history brings. These are in no way attempts to "create a common memory" as one might hear, but a clear desire to erase a French memory in order to make the clan triumph, break the common and rejoice in the division sown.
These activists are the Érostrum of our time, or rather, the Éwoke rostrum.
