The so-called Algerian “memorial rent”: a French imposture
Algeria has just celebrated the 70the anniversary of the Revolution of 1er November 1954 in a surge of national communion under the sign of fidelity and renewal. What could be more surprising when we know that the insurrection of 1er November 1954 was the founding act of the independent and sovereign Algerian Republic but also a glorious page in the history of the decolonization of the African continent in the 20th century.
Algerians have the right and the duty to celebrate the Revolution which allowed their country to achieve its national independence and its place in the concert of nations. They have a duty to remember their elders who sacrificed themselves so that their children could finally live in a country freed from colonial rule.
For its part, the Algerian State, sure of expressing a legitimate popular aspiration in this regard, has the right and the duty to demand from official France the recognition of its colonial crimes with the prospect of opening a new page, peaceful and forward-looking, in relations between the two countries.
Whether the Algerian state uses this issue in its negotiations with a view to a more balanced partnership with the former colonial power or whether the Algerian power uses the question of memory to establish its political legitimacy internally, has nothing to do with it. extraordinary. All states use the symbolic resources at their disposal both in domestic and foreign policy.
Memory, a guarantee of the future
“He who does not know where he comes from does not know where he is going” said the committed Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Summarizing the celebration of the great founding dates of national history by Algeria, State and society, and their quest for recognition to what French politicians and media (and their Makhzenian auxiliaries) slyly call the “memorial rent”, is quite simply a deception and an insult to humanity.
Indeed, the fact of denying the former colonized their duty of memory with regard to a past which they no longer wish to reproduce neither for themselves nor for others, can only be part of a sneaky desire to glorify posthumous title a colonial fact which was an infamy and an unsuspected degradation of humanity.
When in their quest for memory, Algerians speak of loyalty to the Revolution of November 1, 1954, they are not only aiming at the memory of the Mujahideen who gave their lives for Algeria. They also mark at the same time their loyalty to the spirit and principles of this Revolution.
The Declaration of 1er November 1954 masterfully set its objectives: “ An independent and sovereign Algerian state, modern, democratic and social, within the framework of Islamic principles “.
Like all the revolutions that have marked contemporary history (starting with the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution), the Algerian Revolution was not immune to contradictions or bureaucratic excesses and some of its initial objectives are still far from being achieved.
However and despite everything that remains to be accomplished, the Algerian State, born from a war of national and popular liberation (and not from a perfidious neocolonial compromise as in most cases in Africa and the Arab world), continues to maintain its dual sovereignist and social character with all the inconsistencies and imperfections generated by a bureaucratic system that the younger generations are busy gradually and patiently rectifying without having to deny the founding principles of the 1er november.
And this is what so disturbs the champions of neocolonialism and paternalism who cannot digest the fact that a southern nation seeks in difficulty and contradictions its own path towards sustainable development and social progress in the respect for its civilizational and cultural references.
Which does not prevent us from seeking a healthy convergence with the humanist and universal values proclaimed since the European Renaissance by men whose intellectual debt we too often forget to their illustrious Muslim predecessors like Avicenna and Averroes. .
Values betrayed and flouted, it must be remembered, by this fundamentally antihumanist adventure that was European colonial expansion and which will have to be taken up, defended and rebuilt by the young heroes of decolonization like Hocine Aït-Ahmed , Frantz Fanon and many others.
Nourished by the humanist values taught by the school of the Third French Republic, the latter understood very early the Kantian lesson according to which without the imperative of the universalization of freedom, it risks not only losing all its relevance but by dint of being recognized by some and denied by others, it simply becomes an unbearable moral and psychological prostitution.
A France focused on its colonial past
Those who have the nerve to criticize Algerians for their propensity for a so-called “memorial rent” are simply dishonest. Let us overlook the fact that those very people who invite Algerians to turn the page on the past do not hesitate to pelt our ears with the imprescriptible crimes of Nazi Germany on every occasion, and especially when it happens. aims to divert attention from the genocide that has been taking place for months in Gaza.
For one to be able to speak of “annuity”, the plaintiff must expect material and/or moral benefits from the defendant without any other significant consideration.
What does Algeria expect from France today without compensation? NOTHING. All Algerian expectations with regard to France have a tangible counterpart. Study visas, family reunification visas and others constitute a significant demand but the French State has never hesitated to make Algeria pay for them rubbish on the nail in the form of position rents on the Algerian market and within the framework of the policy of influence which involves in particular the training of elites who are at least expected to serve in one way or another the material and moral interests of France.
Moreover, what we call long-stay visas (two years) granted to Algerian officials and their children have no other function for France than to maintain the networks of “Françalgérie”. which are part of the broader networks of “Françafrique” currently losing momentum in the face of tough competition from new regional and international players.
What else does Algeria expect from France? Let it stop considering Algeria as a simple trading post and finally get down to proposing industrial development projects that involve direct investments and technology transfers.
In this, Algeria only reflects the legitimate aspiration of the peoples of the South for a balanced partnership with the countries of the North as part of their quest for sustainable development which involves in particular the local valorization of their raw materials in with a view to correcting the old division of labor and better integrating into the international value chain.
On the international level, France has sought for many years to secure Algerian collaboration (diplomatic and military) in the Sahel and Africa to reduce the budgetary burden and to better legitimize its neocolonial policy.
Attached to principles inherited from the Revolution of 1er November which prohibit it from interfering in the internal affairs of other States and which dictate it to seek the prevention and resolution of intra or inter-African conflicts through negotiation, Algeria refused to send its soldiers to fight in the Sahel as auxiliaries of the French army.
And this is where the hare lies. When French leaders and their deputies point the finger at the so-called “memorial rent” of the Algerians, it is not only out of submission to the prejudices of the extreme right and others nostalgic for “French Algeria”. What is at stake behind what is called “memorial rent” is not the past, it is the FUTURE.
When in its editorial, on the occasion of Macron’s visit to Morocco, the daily The World speaks of an Algeria “leaning on the past” while Morocco is supposedly “turned towards the future”, he is wrong and shows great bad faith.
The contours of the partnership proposed by France, which has all the appearance of a neocolonial partnership, is too reminiscent of the colonial past insofar as it seeks to redeploy the unequal relationship on another level and with new forms.
When Algeria proposes a new partnership based on the balance of interests, on the contrary, it looks towards the future to the extent that even if it is always upset by the new logics of exploitation, carried by the processes of neoliberal globalization In progress, the quest for equality and justice which so strongly motivates the peoples of the South is an irreversible trend that only dogmatic backward-looking people refuse to admit.
And the so-called partnership for the future that France holds out to Morocco, which continues to be part of an unequal regional division of labor, is therefore a matter of the past rather than the future. Moreover, it is not even certain that the overexploitation of Moroccan workers against a backdrop of social dumping contrary to the standards in force in Europe, is enough to make Morocco the workshop of industries seeking a profitable relocation outside the hexagon.
The auxiliaries of the Makhzen to the aid of French neocolonialism
It is no coincidence that among the adjuncts of French neocolonialism who reproach the Algerians for their so-called “memorial rent”, we find today an obsequious writer like Tahar Ben Jelloun, who has become the vile spokesperson for the Makhzen on the French trays.
When we have as our sole horizon a dynastic memory in defiance of the memory which is nourished by popular resistance to predatory dynasties which have taken and kept power and its privileges thanks to their collusion with the colonial empires since the 16th century, there is no It is not surprising to seek to bury its inferiority complex by attacking the “memorial income” of its Algerian neighbors.
The imposture becomes downright ridiculous when the same fanatics, to feed the chauvinism of their compatriots and their territorial and cultural annexationism, do not hesitate to invoke the mythical past of a so-called Moroccan empire which stretches from Tangier to Senegal (sic) which only exists in their delirious outbursts.
The decolonial memory that Algerians seek to cultivate and maintain is neither backward-looking nor tribal for the simple reason that it presents itself as a guarantee for a free future and a common legacy for all peoples loving freedom and dignity.
Algerians share this decolonial memory with all their African and Arab brothers and especially with their Moroccan brothers who refuse to confine their national memory within the temporal horizon of a dynasty whose material modernism cannot hide the moral and spiritual corruption.
In their quest for freedom and dignity, Moroccans who are tired of bowing down and kissing their hands will necessarily in turn encounter the memory of the glorious Republic of the Rif of Abdelkrim El Khattabi which was defeated by the collusion of the two French and Spanish colonialisms with, it should be remembered, the support of the Alawite family.
This family with a sinister past which, to save its throne and its privileges at all costs, is unfortunately, in the process of making makhzen, thanks to the underground work of proconsul André Azoulay and his followers, the new rear base of the colonialist state , racist and expansionist of Israel in North Africa.
