France’s retired generals threaten a takeover if Macron fails to get tough on Islamists

When Britain’s retired top brass get together in their clubs to harrumph about something, the something is nearly always the current state of the armed forces, which they invariably deplore. In France, they go further. They call for the rebirth of the nation and the purging of its enemies, real and imagined. 

Last week, the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, which can usually be relied upon to air the concerns of the far right in France, published a letter by 20 retired generals, a hundred or so high-ranking officers still in uniform and “more than a thousand” other officers from all sections of the armed forces that denounces the imminent “disintegration” of La Patrie and proclaims their willingness to support policies necessary to ensure national salvation. 

The letter’s signatories are unsparing in their condemnation of Islamism and what they call “the hordes of the banlieues,” by which they mean the Muslim population that lives principally in the outer suburbs of France’s big cities. They maintain that extremists and their supporters within the Muslim community despise France, its traditions and culture and wish to cancel its centuries-old military and civilian glories. 

The letter, addressed principally to President Macron, blames the ”authorities” for ignoring the “despair” felt by ordinary protesters, such as the gilets-jaunes, while allowing “undercover agents and hooded individuals” to ransack businesses and assault the police. 

Chillingly, the letter concludes: “If nothing is done, permissiveness will continue to spread inexorably in society, leading ultimately to an explosion and the intervention of our active comrades in a perilous mission of protecting our civilizational values and safeguarding our compatriots … There is no time to lose. If nothing is done, civil war tomorrow will put an end to the growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will bear responsibility, will number in the thousands.” 

Though cloaked in the style of Zola’s J’Accuse, with its call for a restoration of honour at a time of national peril, the letter brings to mind more the generals who, having suffered catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870, went on to suppress the Paris Commune with a savagery that surprised even supporters of the nascent Third Republic. It also revives memories of the failed coup d’état in 1961 in which a group of retired generals tried to prevent President de Gaulle from granting independence to Algeria. 

It is thought unlikely that anything lasting will come out of the threat and bombast contained in the generals’ call to arms – though, of course, it is hard to be certain. The French are certainly outraged by the continuing spate of Islamist attacks that have taken place in every corner of the country, most recently the murder of a policewoman by a knife-wielding Tunisian subsequently shot dead by her comrades. They are, in addition, less than impressed by the government’s record on handling the coronavirus crisis. But just about no one is hoping for a military takeover. For one thing, the Army’s record in the Second World War, Vietnam and Algeria, never mind the Commune, does not exactly inspire confidence. 

The irony is that Macron has worked hard on the problem of Islamism almost from his first day in office – so much so that he has been denounced by President Erdogan of Turkey and Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, as an anti-Muslim extremist. Legislation was passed just this month that requires French Muslims to accept the concept of secularism – laîcité – in public life, meaning that they are expected to confine religious observance to the home and the mosque. Congregations can no longer hire foreign imams, who typically have issued calls to the faithful to return to fundamentalist principles. Foreign governments have been banned from paying for the construction of new mosques.

At the same time, Macron has increased police numbers and given officers virtual carte blanche to deal with extremists engaged in murder with what the American military likes to call extreme prejudice. 

The President does not have to apologise for the strong line he has taken, which is in line with majority opinion, even within the Muslim population. He does, however, have to worry about the boost in confidence the superannuated generals (and more importantly those still on active service) could give to France’s far right. 

Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, whose star is once again on the rise as next year’s presidential elections draw closer, has expressed her total solidarity with the generals, whose driving force, General Christian Piquemal, formerly the head of the Foreign Legion, was arrested in 2016 and stripped of his privileges as a retired officer for speaking at an anti-immigration rally attended by members of the anti-Muslim Pegida movement.

Le Pen has softened her anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant stance in the four years since she lost the last election to Macron. But it is hard not to feel that her reconstruction, and that of her party, is only superficial and that any perceived wave of support for the generals could reignite her more extreme sentiments. 

The government, meanwhile, has made clear that it will not tolerate such outbursts in future and that any serving officers found to have added their names to the generals’ letter will find themselves in serious trouble. Florence Parly, the minister for the armed forces, has said that their actions were “unacceptable” and that consequences will follow. It will be interesting to see how many of the 1,100 still in uniform will be willing to put their heads above the parapet in the coming days.