From : Commentary Magazine
Photo : www.nytimes.com
For the Soul of France:Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus
By Frederick Brown Knopf,
304 pages
What does it mean to be French? A simple enough question, and one that has exercised many minds over the centuries, but to ask it these days in Paris seems akin to drawing swords. Consider what happened to President Nicolas Sarkozy when at the end of 2009 he launched a nationwide series of “town hall” discussions on the issue of French identity. With France home to some five to six million Muslims—the most of any country in Western Europe—Sarkozy’s desire for an open exchange of views on the elusive quality of “Frenchness” touched a nerve. His aim, it appeared, was to siphon off support from the anti-immigration, far-Right National Front in the March regional elections (a failed aim, as it turned out). Still, the vehemence of the criticisms leveled at Sarkozy—himself the son of a Hungarian immigrant—verged on hysteria.
0 comments:
Post a Comment