WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #344 - Anti-racism, 1990-2010: The MIB and the colonial counter-revolution (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In the 1990s, the Immigration and Suburbs Movement (MIB), with its

experience of recovery and clientelism in previous years, established
itself as a voice of autonomy. The questions he puts forward will cause
a wave of panic in the colonial camp on both the right and the left.
---- The 1990s began with the riots in Vénissieux and Mante-la-Jolie,
which reminded France that working-class neighborhoods were still there.
Under the new globalized neoliberal capitalism and triumphant Western
imperialism, undocumented immigrants are exploited, children of
colonization are discriminated against, subjected to mass unemployment
and made precarious. The left then speaks of a "threshold of tolerance"
being exceeded in terms of immigration, asserts that we "cannot
accommodate all the misery in the world", and Chirac complains of "the
noise and the smell".

Islamophobia begins to flourish in France with the first bans on the
veil at school (Bayrou circular of 1994) with, in the background, the
years of lead in Algeria which will have an ideological impact on
society: the affair of those expelled from Folembray in 1994[1]and
attacks of 1995.

The MIB "Justice in the suburbs"
The activist generation born from the period of marches is trying to
reinvent itself, through a series of initiatives (such as neighborhood
caravans to recreate networks). Taking stock that a good part of their
struggles no longer interest the left, which, moreover, patronizes local
actors in the cities, activists created the Immigration and Suburbs
Movement (MIB) in 1995. .

They will lead a certain number of important struggles: against double
punishment which will be abolished in 2003; involvement during the
Dammarie-les-Lys revolts in 1997 and 2001 with the Bouge qui Bouge
association following police crimes; movement for the memory of October
17, 1961; mobilization for Palestine during the Second Intifada; or the
"justice in the suburbs" campaign bringing together multiple demands...
The MIB is also a theoretical contribution: it is it which will first
highlight the colonial continuity of racism and state practices.

The years 1995-2002 also saw significant mobilizations such as the
occupation of the Saint Bernard Church which will be the public birth
certificate of the figure of the undocumented migrant, or the important
march for the commemoration of slavery and the question of reparations.

The colonial symbolic order is shaken and begins to be named. In 2002
the book La Fracture coloniale was published[2].

The reactions will not be long in coming: as during the "beur-mania"
which followed the march of 1983, the PS and the Shiraquia will try to
ride the "black-white-beur" fashion which will follow the victory of the
French men's football team during the World Cup in 1998. It is the
return of "moral anti-racism".

The colonial divide - Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Sandrine Lemaire
- Éditions La Découverte.
Colonial counter-revolution
Then, with September 11, 2001, the face-to-face campaign of 2002 focused
on the question of insecurity which saw Jean-Marie Le Pen reach the
second round, we witnessed a conservative turn on the right... as on the
left: the accusation of "Islamo-leftism" appears from the pen of Pierre
Andrée Taguief; under Val, Charlie Hebdo took an Atlanticist and
Islamophobic turn; Mouloud Aounit, spokesperson for MRAP, will be
violently attacked for having denounced the existence of Islamophobia.
Finally, with the "veil affair" and the 2004 law, the State is
"whistling the end of recess".

The MIB will be at the initiative, with others, of the "A school for
all" mobilization against the 2004 law, boycotted by the overwhelming
majority of the left 3. Following these mobilizations and in reaction to
the law of 2005 on the positive role of colonization, activists launched
the appeal of the "natives of the republic" which will have a
significant impact, with striking slogans like "if we are here it is
because you were there- low" and "go get integrated".

With the revolts in the suburbs, the year 2005 will be the culmination
of the colonial question which therefore becomes unavoidable. Security
Sarkozyism will respond between a voluntarism of visibility via the
promotion of "diversity" and a poisonous debate on national identity.

Today, the French colonial counter-revolution must now face the global
decolonial revolution. The MIB will thus have paved the way for a new
generation born from these struggles. The years that followed would see
the first strikes of undocumented immigrants in 2008, and the creation
of the FUIQP (United Front of Immigration and Popular Neighborhoods) in
2011 in Créteil which would be part of its continuity.

The actors and actresses of the MIB, after initiating the FSQP (Social
Forums of working-class neighborhoods) between 2007 and 2011, will
attempt to transmit experience and memories to the "truth and justice"
committees, and will be active around the Adama committee.

Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Anti-Racist Commission)

The mixtape Justice in the suburbs, they went underground for the MIP,
Eska Prod, 2021
Artistic resistance, "Loudspeakers" of cities and struggles
In the immigration struggles, artistic approaches will be both a tool
and a battlefield, vacillating between recovery and demonization.

Following the murder of Kader in Vitry-sur-Seine in 1980, a musical
collective "Rock against the Police"[3]was created which toured
Île-de-France, creating networks between young people from struggling
cities. These will be self-organized concerts near living spaces
highlighting the objective of reclaiming the space of cities,
particularly from police occupation. It was at this time that the slogan
"cops outside the cities" appeared. With the aim of artistic and
political autonomy, Beur FM radio was then launched in the wake of free
radios.

Groups like Carte de Séjour with Rachid Taha emerged in those years and
were traveling companions in the struggles of the walkers. But the media
"Beur-mania" will attempt to recover these artistic dynamics by
highlighting depoliticizing paths to success.

In the 1980s, more informal resistance emerged in countercultural
circles and the streets, between antifa groups, punks, gangs like the
Requins Vicious and the first actors of the hip-hop movement. They will
help drive out Nazi skins from Parisian neighborhoods like Les Halles
and reduce racist attacks. At the same time freeing up spaces for
artistic expression: between tag trips in the Paris metro and hip-hop
parties organized in the vacant lots of La Chapelle.

These approaches are part of less recognized but very concrete forms of
resistance. In 1997, 19 rappers came together to compose the song "11.30
against racist laws", the funds from which were donated to the MIB[4].

Radio Skyrock (where Malek Boutih, former spokesperson for SOS Racisme,
will be director of institutional relations!), wanting to ride the
"black blanc beur" fashion, will be accused in a fanzine of the rap
group La Rumeur of making a commercial and depoliticizing takeover of
hip hop. The radio will file a complaint, without follow-up, but the
Fanzine will curiously find itself on Sarkozy's desk who will face a
10-year-long legal procedure for the article "Insecurity under the pen
of a barbarian"[5].

The group will win in 2010. Many other trials against rappers will take
place. Just like the recent controversy against Medina, it is about the
construction of the scarecrow and the staging of the demand for loyalty,
what Abdelmalek Sayad called "the injunction to silence made to
immigrants": injunction to invisibility, apoliticism and politeness.
Suicide to artists who don't respect it!

To validate

[1]19 Algerians suspected without proof of association with the FIS -
Islamic Salvation Front - are expelled to... Burkina Faso!

[2]The colonial divide - Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Sandrine
Lemaire - Éditions La Découverte.

[3]About Rock against the police, see the documentary series dedicated
to it on rapdocsonores.org. The name is a tribute to the marches and the
Rock Against Racism festival, organized in London in April 1978 with the
support of the Anti-Nazi League, which brought together more than
100,000 participants. Punk and reggae groups such as The Clash,
Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, The Ruts and Sham 69 were the headliners.

[4]"Classics of subversion: 11:30 against racist laws", Alternative
Libertaire, n°186, July-August 2009

[5]Hamé, "Insecurity under the pen of a barbare", lmsi.net, May 18,
2016. The article denounces "the hundreds of our brothers killed by the
police forces without any of the assassins having been worry ".

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?1990-2010-Le-MIB-et-la-contre-revolution-coloniale
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