Editorial. Algiers, a box of sorrows

It's all about symbolism. For the first time, with the help of the right wing, the National Rally has managed to get one of its bills passed in the National Assembly. And not just any bill, since it denounces the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968, signed with great difficulty six years after the end of the Algerian War.

By aligning themselves with the National Rally vote, the heirs of Gaullism have thus thrown de Gaulle's decolonial legacy to the wind. Who remembers his speech of June 1960, where he tried to prepare the French for the loss of their colonies? "It is perfectly natural to feel nostalgia for what was the Empire, just as one can miss the warmth of oil lamps, the splendor of the sailing navy […] But what of it?! There is no worthwhile policy outside of reality."

Of course, this 1968 agreement is a bit outdated. It was the era of the repatriation of the Pied-Noirs and the first Algerian workers. But it didn't lead to a surge in Algerian immigration, comparable to that of Moroccans, who don't benefit from a similar agreement.

The victory of the National Rally, which dismantled what remained of the cordon sanitaire, is a victory for the alliance of the broad right-wing family (and its soft underbelly, Horizons) on the volatile issue of immigration. And what better trophy than Algeria, "the box of sorrows," to borrow another of de Gaulle's phrases? This box he wanted to close, everyone is now struggling to reopen. Both Algeria and France are exploiting their historical legacy. The former imprisons a French writer and journalist, refuses to rescind its deportation orders, like the man who killed a passerby in Mulhouse… all in the name of the colonizer's supposed eternal debt. Meanwhile, in France, some still haven't come to terms with the lost territories of the "Empire." Sixty-five years after de Gaulle's speech, the nostalgia for oil lamps hasn't disappeared.