France is one of the world’s focal points of terrorism, having endured three major Islamic terror attacks in 18 months. I returned last week from a two-week visit to a country on the edge. Through conversation with many French nationals, it becomes clear that France is reeling, not only from fears of security threats, but also from the huge economic and tourism losses associated with these fears.
{mosads}The French are fed up, and more and more, express their disgust not only with the situation involving their immigrant population, but also with national leadership that is ill-equipped to keep them safe.
While Islamic terrorism is a problem in every corner of the globe, France has endured an unbearable frequency, owing to a complex convergence of factors. France’s colonial experience haunts it to this day. On top of the global rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), France has a particularly disgruntled and ill-integrated Muslim community that has become more voltatile as France’s economy declines.
Economic misery among this immigrant population has given rise to alarming radicalization on the streets of the largely Muslim banlieue suburbs and in teeming prisons where, according to Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, “60 percent of French prisoners are Muslims, compared with 8 percent of France’s total population.” And most alarming, as CNN reports, more than 1,200 French citizens have joined the ranks of ISIS, roughly double the recruits for the U.K.
The political response by France’s president, Socialist François Hollande, has been impotent, as occurrence after murderous occurrence has transpired. On the street, one hears a complete contempt of Hollande’s handling of the crisis. But a more effective leader is gaining steam and offers hope that France will not fall to the savagery of Islamic extremism: Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front Party (FN) and daughter of its well-known former leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
While the FN was once seen as distastefully extreme by many French, the current attacks, coupled with Marine Le Pen’s sound and more palatable approach, have led to the FN’s message resounding with the general populace in a way that her father’s did not. As more atrocities are being carried out in France in the name of Islam, Le Pen’s resolve to address the threat from radicalism rises above her rivals in the 2017 election, who include Hollande and former President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Indeed, all of these factors have resulted in a growing, broader and more mainstream base of support for the FN, including businesspeople and some minorities.
Le Pen is striking just the right chord with the populace as displayed by her stirring statement in response to the Nice atrocity:
“We must not see terror attacks come after another and count more deaths without taking action.
The war against the scourge of Islamist fundamentalism has not begun; it’s now urgent to declare it. We will truly engage in it by implementing a set of measures I have already detailed and which I’ll have the occasion to come back to, which will aim at tackling the roots of the phenomenon.”
Le Pen is absolutely right. Weak leadership in the U.S. under President Obama, in France under Hollande, and elsewhere in Europe has enabled and emboldened our enemies, and encouraged radicalization on our own shores.
The tides of public opinion and personal responsibility are shifting, not only in France, but in the U.K., as well, where in June the British people voted to take back their sovereign decision-making authority by exiting the bureaucratic and unelected European Union. Moreover, the U.K.’s new leader, Prime Minister Theresa May has expressed a zero-tolerance approach to terrorist adversaries:
“We will no longer tolerate your behaviour. We will expose your hateful beliefs for what they are. Where you seek to spread hate, we will disrupt you. Where you break the law, we will prosecute you. Where you seek to divide us, we will stand united. And together, we will defeat you.”
In our own country, disgust with Obama’s inability and lack of will to confront Islamic extremism has stoked the engines of the Trump Train. For France, and for every nation, only the resolve to recognize, name and combat the threat of radical Islam, as well as robust coordination of law enforcement, will protect citizens and preserve our way of life.
Cohen, head of the New York office of Off the Record Strategies and New York director of the Anglosphere Society, spent years advising the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Western European affairs, and was founding executive director of the House United Kingdom Caucus.
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