“Algeria is reaching a milestone,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said after the failed expulsion of an Algerian influencer. Relations between France and Algeria are taking on proportions never seen in recent days. Guest of RTL, historian Benjamin Stora and author of the book Algerians in France (La Découverte) estimates that the current “critical threshold” has “never been reached before”.
Author of a report in 2021 on the memory of colonization and the Algerian war which he submitted to Emmanuel Macron, Benjamin Stora recalls that “never has a French president gone so far in reaching out to Algeria“. He adds that “there has been a multiplication of memorial gestures on the question of French colonization in particular”.
However, “the diplomatic question, that of France’s recognition of “the ‘Moroccanness’ of Western Sahara, came to impact these memorial initiatives”, suspending them, believes the historian. This cessation of memorial efforts led to “a situation critical threshold”.
An exploitation of lobbies
According to the historian, due to the 132 years of French presence in Algeria, “it is very difficult to achieve reconciliation through a single gesture.” We must be “extremely patient and tenacious” on one side or the other, because “there are lobbies who exploit history and prevent us from achieving a stable relationship and fraternal between the two peoples”, continues Benjamin Stora.
Between the French and the Algerians, “there are a lot of painful emotions and passions that continue to exist” today. And to this are added “those who blow on the embers (…) foreign powers“, denounces the historian. Benjamin Stora targets in particular China which is fighting “against the French presence in Africa”.
Asked whether the Algerian government influences influencers in France, Benjamin Stora refutes this idea, but believes that the general climate and “the tensions, the exacerbations of situations” are pushed by social networks and these same individuals.
“We are in a critical situation,” laments the historian. Reconciliation “is suspended for the momentwe are in a moment of very high intensity, which has never been reached before,” concludes Benjamin Stora.
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