PARIS, October 10 — The French Senate is considering sharpening a new antiterrorist law passed by the National Assembly which, while ostensibly targeting “suspected terrorists” going abroad, can attack any of the nearly five million Muslims — Arab and black Africans — living in France as well as anyone at all who opposes French ruling-class policies. The measure would also re-establish a level of censorship not seen since the fall of Emperor Napoleon III in 1815.
Meanwhile, French troops in four African countries, as well as their widening imperialist interventions in the Middle East and as part of NATO in Eastern Europe, are engaged in far bigger terrorism. If these interventions lead to working-class protests, France’s rulers will assuredly use this antiterrorist law, and others, against any protesters, especially against communists, the deadliest enemies of the capitalist class because we want to eliminate the whole capitalist system. This law mirrors what the Nazis did in their occupation of France during World War II when communist Resistance fighters were branded as terrorists. If necessary, the bosses will act without “legal” excuses, although even fascists prefer a “legal” cover.
The law allows the police to stop a person leaving France if they “suspect” that he or she wants to commit terrorist acts abroad. The government can also summarily block internet sites. Finally, the law creates the new crime of an “individual terrorist undertaking” — which amounts to a one-person conspiracy!
This is fascism, plain and simple. While liberals moan about the erosion of individual liberties and the sapping of bourgeois democracy, they avoid discussing the three basic questions listed below.
Who does the law target?
A September 22 BFM (France’s main news station) television report quotes writer David Thomson saying that “the emirs of the Islamic State are certainly going to order their foreign combatants to return to their countries to conduct terrorist actions.” This could easily mean hunting down “terrorists” among the 4.7 million Muslims living in France (7.5 percent of the population). A Brookings Institute article “Being Muslim in France” reported: “Though France’s Muslims represent 123 different nationalities, nearly three-quarters are from the countries of the Maghreb: Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia.” Many of the others are of black African origin.
So essentially it’s an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-black law. Its racist nature is concealed by both its advocates and its liberal opponents because racism is integral to their capitalist society. On the one hand, capitalism requires a pool of super-exploited workers both to divide the working class as well as to depress working conditions for everyone (by saying, “if you don’t like your job, there’s a black/Arab/other waiting to take it”). On the other hand, the French Republic motto is “freedom, equality, brotherhood,” meaning it has to pretend to be anti-racist. That’s why the racist nature of the law is concealed by both the reactionary and the liberal wings of the French ruling class — and why communists emphasize its racism.
Why Join ISIS?
According to a March 11 article in the Observatoire des Inégalités, seven percent of the population lives in a “sensitive urban zone” — the official name for a ghetto. This “zone” disproportionately contains immigrants from non-EU countries, young people and unskilled workers.
Poverty and unemployment were always worse there, but the economic crisis triggered by the 2008 financial crisis hit this population the hardest. Between 2006 and 2011, their poverty rate shot up 7.5 times faster than those outside, unemployment five times faster and youth unemployment 1.7 times as fast; 36.5 percent live below the poverty line, almost three times higher than outside these “sensitive urban zones.” The unemployment rate is 24.2 percent, 2.4 times the rate in the surrounding city. Youth unemployment (age 15-24) is 45%, compared to 23.1% outside.
These conditions marginalize and alienate Arab and black youth, opening them to ISIS recruitment. But Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily their main motivation: most of those arrested recently by the French police charged with trying to join jihadist groups cannot speak Arabic, and some of the young women would-be jihadists thought “sura” (the term for a Koran verse) was the name of a fashionable singer! According to an October 5 Le Parisien newspaper article, a website close to the Islamic State says they promise free housing, food, medical care and monthly allowances.
Thus, the Islamic State promises Arab and black youth everything French society cannot. Whether they will deliver is questionable. Without a revolutionary communist party to explain that the Islamic State bosses are just like French bosses — out to maximize profit from the labor of the working class — the youth can be sucked in.  The French ruling class only offers a repressive antiterrorist law, which will only increase the marginalization and alienation of Arab and black youth.
Who does the law ultimately target?
While the law’s immediate targets are Arab and black youth, it can and will attack any dissident group in the ruling class’s sight. Already, the Green Party deputies in the National Assembly are worried that the law can describe popular and civic dissidence as terrorist, asking, “Will the ‘Big Useless Projects’ that threaten the quality of life and the environment now pass for ‘incitement to terrorism’? In Canada, the government is…considering ecological activism as a terrorist threat.”
The French ruling class has learned well from the Nazis how to combat opposition to its racist and fascist policies.