Police overreach and restrictions on civil liberties have been a hallmark of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. Even compared to previous French leaders, his administration has brought a surge in police violence against protest movements and residents of the banlieues. The authoritarian thrust was also visible in a lockdown regime considerably harsher than many other Western European countries, and official bans on government-critical civil-society groups, such as the environmental movement Earth Uprising and the anti-Islamophobia group Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), which provided legal support to Muslims facing discrimination.
Yet even in this context, the repression has got markedly worse since October 7, 2023. The French state, partly under pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups, has used the counterterrorism infrastructure built up in previous years to prosecute politicians and activists who stand in solidarity with Palestine.
As the pro-Palestine movement grew in France, many establishment figures decried another manifestation of “Islamo-leftism” (a moral panic famously encouraged by then universities minister Frédérique Vidal, though she admitted that the term had “no scientific definition”). Amid the backlash, several figures on the Left and among France’s Muslim population were summoned by counterterror police on suspicion of “apologia for terrorism.” They included Rima Hassan, now the first Franco-Palestinian member of the EU Parliament (at the time, she was running for France Insoumise in the European elections) and Mathilde Panot, the leader of this party’s group in the National Assembly.
Last April, the secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor union’s Lille branch was sentenced to…
Auteur: Olly Haynes
