A new open letter has been published in France warning of the threat of civil war and claiming to have more than 130,000 signatures from the public.
The message, published in a right-wing magazine, accuses the French government of granting “concessions” to Islamism.
“It is about the survival of our country,” said the text, said to be issued anonymously by soldiers and appealing for public support.
The French government condemned it, as well as a similar letter last month.
Le Pen, whom opinion polls say is likely to face President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 presidential election final round vote, had tweeted the images after some French media carried comments comparing her National Front party – now renamed Rassemblement National – to Islamic State.
A group of retired generals has warned in an open letter that France is sliding toward a civil war due to the government’s failure to control mass migration and creeping Islamism in the country. The letter, which has broad public support, according to polls, also warns against cultural Marxism, runaway multiculturalism and the expansion of no-go zones in France.
The warning comes amid a wave of jihadist attacks — including the beheading of a schoolteacher — committed by young men, none of whom were previously known to French intelligence services. The letter also comes after widespread public indignation over a French justice system compromised by political correctness — as evidenced by the refusal to prosecute an African immigrant from Mali who, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”), killed an elderly Jewish woman by breaking into her home and pushing her off her balcony.
A French court has acquitted far-right leader Marine Le Pen and a party colleague of breaking hate speech laws by posting three images of Islamic State atrocities on Twitter.
The court in Nanterre in Paris found that while the pictures were violent they fell under political protest and the right to freedom of speech.
Ms Le Pen had originally condemned the trial as politically motivated.
She is seen as President Emmanuel Macron’s main rival for the presidency.
Today’s episode has taken the political authorities by surprise
On April 21, 1961 France’s most senior generals staged a putsch in French Algiers, still an integral part of France. The military coup was in reaction to the policies of the president of the Republic, General de Gaulle, and his belated decision to abandon Algeria to independence. The generals felt this betrayed their honor and that of their fallen comrades after seven years of a bloody war against Algerian ‘terrorists’ to keep Algeria French.
Fast forward 60 years to April 21, 2021. Twenty retired generals (some four-star) 100 mostly retired senior officers and 1,000 military personnel signed a chilling letter in the right-wing French weekly Valeurs actuelles addressed to the president of the Republic, the government and parliamentarians.
Although Prime Minister Jean Castex condemned the letter to President Emmanuel Macron this week and the signatories now face disciplinary sanctions, the LCI TV poll conducted by Harris Interactive suggests that French people are with the 20 retired generals. According to the survey, which was reported by Valeurs Actuelles magazine, 73% agreed with the assessment that the country is “disintegrating,” and 84% agreed that violence is increasing in French society.
Rachida Dati, mayor of the 7th arrondissement (district) of Paris, has expressed her agreement with the recent letter to the government by current and former members of the military and other security services about the dangers of violence and civil conflict caused France-hating ideologies, Islamism and “suburban hordes”.
“What is written in this letter is a reality,” Dati said, speaking to France Info on Thursday.
“When you have a country plagued by urban guerrilla warfare, when you have a constant and high terrorist threat, when you have increasingly glaring and flagrant inequalities, when some patriotic people are breaking away from society, we cannot say that the country is doing well,” the official suggested.
At the same time as President Emmanuel Macron wants to crack down on Islamic extremism, which he blames for a series of deadly terror attacks in France since 2015, the planned mosque in the eastern French city has found itself in the government’s crosshairs because it is backed by a leading Turkish Muslim group.
h/t Marvin
Last October, I reported here that French president Emmanuel Macron had just “delivered what, on the face of it, seemed to be a remarkable speech on Islam.” Having previously been wishy-washy on the topic, he now promised a new program “intended to defend French laïcité, or official secularism, from ‘Islamist separatism,’” which he explicitly characterized as an existential threat to the Republic. Acknowledging that “one reason why ‘Islamist separatism’ had been allowed to fester was the ‘cowardice’ of French authorities,” Macron proclaimed that a new day had dawned. In public services, in cultural and athletic associations, in schools and universities, and in other sectors of society, Islamic indoctrination would be officially, firmly, and comprehensively resisted, and Islam itself modernized into an “Islam of the Enlightenment.”
In France this week, 20 retired military generals, 80 officers, and 1,000 lower-ranking soldiers signed an open letter expressing concern over “mortal dangers” they say face the Republic. President Macron’s government has instructed the army chief of staff to discipline the signatories for inciting insurrection.
The letter bears close attention on several grounds. Although the signatories warn they wish to act only after the outbreak of civil conflict, Macron’s response shows the government understands the situation has already deteriorated to a point where a true coup or uprising—an event quite unlike the shambolic ordeal in Washington on January 6th—might erupt at the slightest provocation.
Fear, loathing and the French police
In the elegant commuter town of Rambouillet, south of Paris, last Friday, a Tunisian immigrant, identified as Jamel G, approached a uniformed, unarmed female police administrator from behind. She was returning to the police station after feeding the metre of her parked car. He trapped her in the entrance lobby, stabbed her in the abdomen and then sliced her throat, hollering ‘Allahu Akbar’. A policeman tried to unjam the door to stop him. When he was finally able to, he fired on the attacker after he refused to comply with an order to relinquish his weapon, killing him. For Stéphanie Monfermé, a mother of two, it was already too late. A tweet from President Macron, within hours, linked the attack to Islamist terrorism.
The latest cover of France’s world-famous satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo features a devastating cartoon about the case of Sarah Halimi — the Jewish woman beaten to death in her Paris apartment in April 2017 by Kobili Traore, an antisemitic intruder — alongside a headline that asks, “Should we decriminalize antisemitism?”
Twenty mostly retired generals from the French Armed Forces have called for France to be put under the military’s rule if the government led by President Emmanual Macron cannot get control of the threat posed to the country by political Islamism.
The letter the group of generals signed, written by Captain Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, described the threat as France “disintegrating with the Islamists of the hordes of the banlieue [suburbs] who are detaching large parts of the nation and turning them into territory subject to dogmas contrary to our constitution.” The letter was published in the French right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles.
Twenty retired generals have created a political storm in France with a call for a military takeover if President Macron fails to halt the “disintegration” of the country at the hands of Islamists.
The open letter, published in Valeurs Actuelles, a right-wing news magazine, has gained resonance after a Tunisian Islamist stabbed to death a 49-year-old woman who worked at a police station in Rambouillet, in the western Paris commuter belt, on Friday.
Macron’s government condemned the appeal, whose first signature was Christian Piquemal, a former head of the Foreign Legion, comparing it to the failed coup by generals against President de Gaulle 60 years ago this month.
Mark my words. France will cede territory to the Islamists in our lifetime.
Thousands of protesters have rallied in Paris and across France after the killer of a Jewish woman was declared unfit to stand trial because he was judged to have suffered a psychotic episode caused by cannabis use.
Kobili Traoré is accused of beating 65-year-old Lucie Attal – better known as Sarah Halimi – and throwing her from the balcony her Paris apartment in 2017.
French courts have recognised the killing as an antisemitic crime but declared that 32-year-old Traoré, currently in a psychiatric hospital, could not be tried as he was in the grip of a drug-induced “delusional fit” and not in control of his actions.
