‘Marine Le Pen’s French Presidential campaign has been boosted after socialist rival Emmanuel Macron cause fury by calling French colonialism a “crime against humanity”.
The 38-year-old, who is married to his former high school teacher, spoke about France’s control of Algeria this week but his remarks have backfired spectacularly and he’s been forced to apologise.
Now he’s all but certainly handed Front National candidate Marine Le Pen an electoral gift as the pair go head to head in the France presidential election in April and May.
The independent En Marche! candidate was in Algeria when he made the comments which were immediately slammed back home.’
The Crimes of French Imperialism
‘The story was the same in Algeria. Before the French invasion in 1830, there was a high rate of literacy. By the time of independence, it had been reduced to a mere 10 percent.
The virulently racist French settlers, numbering 1 million by the 1950s, lived a luxury lifestyle. But for the 6 million Arabs and Berbers, French colonialism was a disaster that they resisted by any means necessary.
Violence wasn’t the terrain chosen by the independence movement. It was given. The crushing of a rising in Setif in eastern Algeria in 1945 paints a picture of a “pitiless war”. At least 15,000 were killed by French troops and settler death squads.’
