The Climate Crisis in Mayotte, Fascist Facebook Groups and Macron's "Mamadou" Moment

This week in crazy French immigration news. Part 5.

French overseas territory Mayotte. Photo: Mamoudzou/Wikimedia Commons

All summer and into the fall, France has been crisis hopping. A dissolved assembly. Snap elections. A deposed Prime Minister.

Now, this week, the country found itself confronted with another kind of crisis: a climatic one.

The French overseas territory of Mayotte — an Indian Ocean archipelago just off the coast of Madagascar — is the poorest French department by a long shot. In Mayotte, more than three in four people live below the poverty line, according to the Observatory on Inequalities — roughly five times the level of poverty in the Hexagon, or mainland France.

It was here, in this situation of intense baseline duress, that this past week, a ferocious storm called Cyclone Chido brought 220 kilometer winds to the islands. While early estimates were of 31 deaths, at least one humanitarian organization on the ground feared, in a since deleted tweet, that as many as 60,000 people may had been killed in the storm. If true, that would have made the tragedy the worst natural disaster to ever befall France. While the 60,000-person estimate is almost certainly exaggerated, the situation on the ground is critical and thousands remain missing.

• When the climate crisis becomes a migratory one

Of course, French politicians from former Interior Minister Bruno Rétailleau to President Emmanuel Macron were quick to politicize the situation.

In my recent conversation with French journalist Louis Witter, Mayotte came up as one of two “laboratories” where the French state is testing its repressive policies on migration and citizenship, along with Calais in the north of France.

The last time Mayotte made national news, it was as former French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin unleashed the French military police on the shantytowns with high populations of undocumented Comoran migrants in what became known as Operation Wuambushu.

In the past, various politicians, including another former Interior Minister — Bruno Rétailleau — have called for the end to birthright citizenship in Mayotte. It didn’t take long for Rétailleau to turn this week’s climatic crisis into a migratory one.

“We can’t begin to rebuild Mayotte without discussing the migratory problem,” he tweeted in the days after the storm hit, losing no time on politicizing an issue he’d already harped upon.

He later doubled down in an interview with the French TV station BFMTV, saying that immigrants from the neighboring Comoros islands while not quite engaging in a “hybrid war” against the French state by setting up camp in Mayotte, were in the very least participating in a “clandestine occupation” of French territory.

In the days after the storm, French president Emmanuel Macron visited Mayotte and promised a spectacular reparation on par with that of the Notre Dame cathedral. Of course, when asked about what those repairs might concretely look like and pressed on the question of how a French overseas territory could become so underdeveloped, Macron turned to his favorite political tactic: indignation and disdain.

“You’re happy to be in France ... If it wasn’t France, you’d be 10,000 times more screwed!” he yelled at upset Mahorais who had just lost their homes.

Not exactly the best way to begin to repair a broken relationship.

• “Hitler chose the wrong ethnicity to exterminate” and other gems from the RN’s Direction 2027 Facebook group

It’s well-known that Marine Le Pen, the president and future 2027 candidate of the French far-right party National Rally (unless she’s banned from running), has for years been working to “un-devil,” or soften the image of, her party, which in its decades in French politics has rightly earned its reputation as a xenophobic, anti-semitic and reactionary political force. From smiling photos ops with her youthful protégé Jordan Bardella to interviews where she opens up about her four cats, Le Pen has more or less succeeded in this mainstreaming.

Until every so often, shocking new revelations reveal the true face of the movement. This week, the magazine Les Jours reported on the existence of a private Facebook group called “National Rally: Direction 2027,” whose membership includes at least 15 assemblymembers and whose content includes dog-whistles, calls to arms and generally vile right-wing blather.

Here are some of the worst messages from that group:

“Les chasseurs aiment tuer ? Qu’ils aillent faire des battues dans les cités !” - “Hunters like to kill? Let them go and shoot in the public housing estates!”

“Vous appelez ça un être humain ? Même mon chien se comporte mieux. Ils sont vraiment nuisibles, ces Noirs” - “You call that a human being? Even my dog behaves better. They're a real nuisance, these blacks.”

And, lastly, under a photo of a woman wearing a hijab.

“Français quand cela les arrange. Hitler s’est trompé d’ethnie à exterminer.” - “French when it suits them. Hitler chose the wrong ethnic group to exterminate.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, which would go on to become today’s National Rally, was himself an adept at this type of rhetoric. He has previously called the gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps a “detail of history” and suggested that the Ebola virus could “deal with” population growth.

The OG Le Pen, who at 96-years-old SOMEHOW STILL HASN’T DIED, was one of the leaders in popularizing the idea that a swell in immigration would lead to a takeover of France by minorities, as I wrote this past week in New Lines Magazine.

His daughter might have four cats, but she is still a fascist and so are many members of her party.

• Macron thinks “Mamadous” are ruining the healthcare system

It’s hard to overstate the insane read that is Le Monde’s four-part series on the increasing delusions of French President Emmanuel Macron: “The Duality of Emmanuel Macron.” In episode two of that series, the authors recount Macron’s shift from an (alleged) member of the Socialist Party to a right-winger who hangs out at a far-right theme park called Le Puy-du-Fou and spouts utter nonsense of France’s immigrant population, which makes up about 15 percent of the country.

In one particularly unhinged moment, Macron told his former Health Minister that France’s urgent care system was being ruined by “Mamadous,” a not-so-subtle and highly racist dig at African immigrants.

In the same breath, almost, Macron also referred to left-wing female politicians Lucie Castets and Marine Tondelier as “cocottes,” or, condescendingly, “sweeties,” and Arabs as “rabzouz,” a slang term that could be roughly translated as “hustlers.” This of course, came out as he sipped on Scottish whiskey in his presidential jet with far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

Going back to the Mamadou comment, one internet user correctly pointed out that Macron might not quite have understood who the “Mamadous” he was referring to actually were: “They’re the ones wearing white scrubs and healing patients.”