PARIS -- "If I could get my hands on Sarkozy, I'd kill him." Thus begins author David Rieff's article in the New York Times Magazine last month on Nicolas Sarkozy's relation to the French "banlieues." Needless to say, it is not David Rieff himself, a fellow of the World Policy Institute in New York, who is proffering the threat. Rather he is quoting one "Mamadou", a young resident of the Les Bousquets housing project outside Paris. Evidently having succeeded in making an impression on the American visitor, Mamadou continued, "Then I'd go to prison. And when I got out, I'd be a hero." In fact, Mamadou might even be able to go to prison and be a hero right now, since under the French Penal Code, the making of death threats is itself a crime. Rieff goes on to ask a second young man, named "Ahmad", if he too "felt the same way." "I wouldn't kill him, no," Ahmad is supposed to have responded, "But I hate him. We all hate him."
All? Anyone reading Rieff's account or indeed virtually any of the English-language reports on the tensions in the poor, dilapidated suburbs on the outskirts of France's major urban centers would indeed be led to believe that "all" the residents of the French banlieues hate Nicolas Sarkozy. But the results of last Sunday's election tell a quite different story. Rieff points to Montfermeil, where Les Bousquets is located, as one of the typical "hard-up towns" with large immigrant populations where hostility to France in general and Sarkozy in particular is supposed to be the norm. He could hardly have chosen a worse example. As so happens, Montfermeil is a stronghold of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party and Sarkozy carried Montfermeil on Sunday with a comfortable 52.2 percent of the vote as against 47.8 percent his Socialist rival Ségolène Royal.
But let us allow that Montfermeil is not, after all, quite so typical of conditions in the banlieues as Rieff supposes. What, then, about Clichy-sous-Bois, the other Parisian suburb that he cites? Clichy-sous-Bois earned a certain notoriety in fall 2005 as the flash point from which riots would spread throughout the department of Seine-Saint-Denis at the east of Paris and then all across urban France. The rioting began after two local youngsters, Bouna Traore and Ziad Benna, were found electrocuted in a power station in which they had been hiding from the police. Rieff unquestioningly repeats the commonly made allegation that police "chased" the two boys into the power station. A third youngster who went with them, however, has reported that they in fact took off of their own accord when they saw the police coming. (See here from the French weekly L'Express.)
Be that as it may, in Clichy-sous-Bois at least surely almost everyone must "hate" Nicolas Sarkozy? Well, as judged by the election results, apparently not. Royal did indeed win handily in Clichy-sous-Bois: a small electoral district comprising some 9,000 registered voters. Nonetheless, Sarkozy received 38.3 percent of the vote. For comparison's sake, this is precisely the same score he obtained in the trendy and eminently comfortable 11th arrondissement in central Paris (where average real estate values currently top out at over 6,000 euro per square meter).
In Seine-Saint-Denis as a whole -- commonly known as the "93rd" for the first two numbers in its postal code -- Sarkozy pulled in some 43.5 percent of the vote. In Villeurbanne, the principal banlieue of Lyon with over 130,000 inhabitants, he obtained 49.1 percent, trailing Royal by barely 1000 votes. This score did not, however, prevent the local UMP headquarters from being set aflame by Molotov cocktails two days later. In "proletarian" Marseille, with its large population of North African origin and a per capita income almost half that of the capital Paris, Sarkozy trounced Royal by 56 percent to 44 percent.
Although one would be led to believe the opposite from the usual coverage in the media, the support enjoyed by Sarkozy in the banlieues and other troubled urban areas is in fact hardly surprising. One of the most remarkable facts about the 2005 riots, after all, was that the rioters were principally laying waste to their own neighborhoods. The burning cars that became the most enduring symbol of the riots were the cars of their neighbors. Moreover, the 2005 riots and the periodic outbursts of rioting in the banlieues since - including after Sunday's election - represent only the most spectacular aspect of the violence by which the banlieues are wracked. Having evolved, as a result of decades of governmental neglect, into areas largely beyond the reach of the law, the banlieues suffer from endemic criminality - including organized criminality - and gang warfare.
It was clearly this criminal element that Sarkozy had in mind when in June 2005 he famously vowed to "clean up" a particularly violent neighborhood following the fatal shooting in plain daylight of 11-year-old Sidi-Ahmed Hammache. The outrage with which much of the French media greeted the then Interior Minister's remarks, however, quickly made this context - and the boy's shocking death - fade into obscurity. Indeed, the hostility toward Sarkozy theatrically displayed by certain young "banlieusards" appears to have been artificially enflamed by parts of the French media whose hatred - or perhaps fear - of Sarkozy is evidently more profound. The second major episode supposedly "opposing" Sarkozy and the banlieues is yet another case in point.
Thus, on October 25, 2005, French television channels would broadcast a brief clip of Sarkozy being pelted by projectiles in a housing project in the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil and defiantly stating that one would "get rid" of what he called the "racaille": a common French term that means roughly "rabble." Rieff mistakenly places this episode after the outbreak of the riots. In fact, and perhaps not coincidentally, it occurred just two days before. Sarkozy's use of the term "racaille" was widely presented as a provocation. But as the investigations of French media critic Daniel Schneidermann would subsequently show, he was in fact merely responding to a remark by a resident of the housing project who had herself used the term. This context, however, was absent from the news reports. Nonetheless, even from the brief edited clip that was broadcast, it is obvious that Sarkozy is indeed responding to someone else's statement. "You want us to get rid of these rabble for you?" he asks looking up and off camera, "Well, okay, we'll get rid of them for you." (Rieff, incidentally, notes that young persons from the banlieues sometimes refer to themselves by the "inverted" slang version of racaille "caille-ra". He insists, however, that this usage is "rare." A simple search for "caillera" on google.fr shows that he is wrong about this as well.)
Moreover, as Schneidermann was likewise able to show, for the most part Sarkozy's visit to the housing project in Argenteuil was evidently well-received. Schneidermann's own camera crew had no trouble tracking down residents - including several youngsters - who eagerly recalled their discussions with the Interior Minister. "He was standing right in front of us, not even ten centimeters away!" one young man marveled, showing the distance with his hands. "It was completely different from what one saw on the television," a second pointed out. (For the video segment, extracted from Schneidermann's program "Arrêt sur images", see here.)
Belying the negative media hype - and to the obvious chagrin of his Socialist opponent - over the course of the electoral campaign, Sarkozy would garner the endorsement of some of the most well-known representatives of the popular culture of the "banlieues." The first to heed the call was none other than the native son of Clichy-sous-Bois Bruno Beausir, a star of French reggae and rap who performs under the colorful name "Doc Gyneco." Asked by the talk show host Marc Olivier Fogiel how he could have taken such a turn "to the Right," Beausir - seemingly quite stoned, but lucid enough to note the condescension implicit in Fogiel's question - shot back: "No, I'm from a poor neighborhood, but that doesn't mean I'm on the Left. I've never been on the Left." And indeed anyone familiar with Beausir's output could have already suspected that he is not "on the Left," even before he pronounced himself a fan of Nicolas Sarkozy and joined the UMP. Thus in 2005, he came out with a reggae ballad with the ironic title "Give Me a SMIC!" [Donne-Moi un SMIC]. The "Minimum Inter-professional Growth Salary" - or "SMIC" for short - is the ponderous administrative designation for France's guaranteed minimum wage. Poking fun at what American conservatives would call the "culture of dependence" created by French social programs, the video for "Donne-moi un SMIC" depicts an out-of-work Bruno paying a visit to the offices of the "Guaranteed Wage Cooperative," where he promptly falls asleep on an official's desk. (The video can be viewed here.)
In his Times article, Rieff quotes Lhaj Breze of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France saying of Sarkozy, "I'm afraid you won't find a single young French Muslim who will vote for him." Not a single one? Well, perhaps not among the fundamentalist followers of Breze's UIOF, which is widely regarded as a satellite organization of the Muslim Brotherhood (and not only by "the Right," as Rieff suggests). But what about the 28-year-old Faudel [Belloua], otherwise known as the "Little Prince of Raï"? Along with Cheb Khaled and Rachid Taha, Faudel is one of the three undisputed mega-stars of Franco-Algerian popular music. During the last weeks of the campaign, he could repeatedly be seen at Sarkozy's side. At the Sarkozy victory celebration at the Place de la Concorde Sunday night, Faudel would grab the microphone just after the singing of "the Marseillaise" in order to sing his own anthem to France "Mon Pays": "My Country". "Too many loves to forget that I was born here," runs the refrain, "Too many friends to forget that I was born here, that I was born here." (The video for "Mon Pays" can be viewed here.)
Sarkozy also benefited from the spirited defense of his policies by his longtime advisor for immigration questions and campaign spokesperson Rachida Dati. The daughter of a Moroccan father and an Algerian mother, Dati grew up in modest circumstances in a small town in the Burgundy region, before passing through France's National School of Magistracy and becoming a court official. At the age of just 41, it is widely assumed that she will be named a minister in the new government to be appointed after Sarkozy takes office May 16. There is some speculation that she might take over a new "Ministry of Immigration and National Identity" that Sarkozy proposed to create during the campaign. Despite the fact Sarkozy persistently made a point of emphasizing that French nationality has nothing to do with race or ethnicity (see, for instance, his campaign spot here), Rieff says that for "many French people" the idea represented a "horrifying echo of the racism of the fascist Vichy regime." If so, then "many French people" would presumably be relieved by Dati's appointment. But, in spite of her relative inexperience, her name has also come up in connection with more traditional and weightier posts like the Ministry of Justice.
(Note: The full district-by-district results of the French presidential elections are available here on the Web site of French Ministry of the Interior.)
John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic relations. His work has appeared in English, French and German in publications such as Policy Review, The Claremont Review of Books, The New York Sun, Les Temps Modernes, Le Figaro and Merkur.
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