Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has spoken out against what he sees as the left in France changing from being previously focused on class issues and class war, to racial issues and possible race-based war.
The former PM, who served under previous French President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016, said, “The class struggle disappears in favour of the confrontation of the war between ‘races,'” and went on to add, ” This war is terrible because it discriminates according to the skin color.”
He went on to note that much of the left, from the far-left France Insoumise led by Jean-Luc Melenchon to the fringes of the Socialist Party and even environmentalist activists, had embraced racial movements, Le Figaro reports. A 2018 report by the same newspaper commenting on the emergence of such trends, characterised as “indigenous movements” in reference to the indigenous people of former French colonies who moved to France in the 20th century, suggests this political change has been in progress for some time.
France has seen a series of protests in support of not only Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists in the United States following the death of George Floyd but also against alleged police brutality with France as well.
The family of Adama Traoré, a 24-yar-old black man who died in French police custody in 2016, were behind the initial protests earlier this month which descended into rioting and chaos in Paris, with a police station being attacked in the Paris suburb of Clichy and multiple police attacked by rioters.
Last weekend, another BLM protest was held in Paris and saw members of the anti-mass migration youth movement Generation Identitaire stage a counter-protest, unveiling a banner stating, “Justice for victims of anti-white crimes.”
Bizarrely, so-called “anti-racism” protesters yelled at the identitarians calling them “dirty Jews” as the banner was being unfurled.
Former PM Valls commented on the French protests saying, “I obviously draw a distinction between the organizers of (these) demonstrations and those who go there in good faith, who are indignant at racism and want to denounce it.”
The first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure reacted with criticism to Valls’ statement saying that he was “dismayed” and added, “His thesis is usually carried by the far right. I only know one race, it’s the human race.”
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com
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