A French Front Against Pied Noirs’ Coalition And Le Pen’s Party

It has become impressionable among many Algerians that the Pied Noirs are all of the same sect, and that they are either supporters of the terrorist Secret Army Organization (OAS) or members of it, or dreamers of a “French Algeria”, which is the perception that French activists today seek to remove from the imagination of Algerians by stressing that there were French who supported the liberation revolution and sacrificed their lives for Algerian independence.

Among these French, there are intellectuals and associations, such as the “Association of the Progressist Pied Noirs and Their Friends,” which is tirelessly active in the strongholds of extremist “French Algeria” parties in southwestern France, specifically in the city of Perpignan, which is governed by the extreme right led by Marine Le Pen’s RN party, which strives to restore the dignity of the terrorists of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), which shed a lot of blood of Algerians and even the French who did not go along with their plans in the Burned Land Policy after March 19, 1962.

Starting from Friday, October 13, 2023, the city of Perpignan witnessed the holding of a general assembly of the “Association of the Progressist Pied Noirs and Their Friends,” with the participation of several historians, including Alain Rousseau and Eric Savarese.

The forum aims to confront the danger of the growth of extremist right-wing theses that glorify French colonialism, promoted by circles close to the extreme right, which still cling to the “dream of a French Algeria.”

In this regard, the well-known journalist, Jacques Pradel, wrote an article entitled “The Echo of Colonialism and the Algerian War in France Today,” which stopped at the issue of the Europeans of Algeria, noting that the pressure exerted by this group of French fleeing Algeria since they first set foot in the French soil in 1962 was “arousing nostalgia for French Algeria as much as it aimed to defend material interests, represented by residence and compensation for what they left behind.”

The same situation continued until “Amnesty for the Algerian War” (1964, 1966 and 1968) was created and the historical leaders of the terrorist Secret Army Organization (OAS) were acquitted and their associations were created by the leaders of this organisation.

General Jouhaud founded “The National Front for the Repatriates” and General Salan founded the “Association for the Defense of the Moral and Material Interests of Former Prisoners in French Algeria,” which for a while was called ADIMAD-OAS. Extremism of these associations reached the point of assassinating anyone who abandoned their idea, as what happened in 1993 when they eliminated one of their men, Jacques Roseau.

Jacques Pradel spoke of the emergence of another faction of the “Pieds-noirs,” who reject nostalgia for “French Algeria,” and “avoid talking about glorifying colonialism, praising the struggles of the Algerian people to gain independence, and working to strengthen friendship between the peoples of the two shores, and solidarity with Algerian immigrants, dual nationals, and French nationals of Algerian origin, and combating racism in all its forms, including anti-Arab racism disguised as Islamophobia.”

The author of the article explained the tendency of the symbols of the terrorist Secret Army Organization (OAS) to extremism and praise for the crimes of French colonialism in Algeria, by creating memorials to some of the symbols of this terrorist organization among the missing for the sake of French Algeria, with the complicity of the representatives of the extremist French National Front, contributed to the emergence of a counter-position expressed by counter-protests, or by protesting against the indolence of political authority towards them and this was called for by the “Association of Progressist PiedsNoirs and Their Friends.”

Among the most prominent demands raised by the anti-French Algeria movement against the authorities of their country was to “reveal the truth about the history of France in Algeria, 132 years of colonialism and war,” as well as to mobilize the French on a large scale to combat fascism, and to work “for A Factual French-Algerian history,” which is one of the issues they consider “essential in the war against the extreme right in France today.”