Word: french
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...French newsweekly Marianne calls him "the most hated man in France." A Socialist legislator recently compared him to Pierre Laval -the wartime French official who most enthusiastically collaborated with the nation's Nazi occupiers. Such contempt isn't usually directed at someone in a rather anonymous cabinet role. But Eric Besson, the Minister for Immigration, Integration and National Identity, is different: he's currently overseeing a national debate on French identity that detractors on both the left and the right say stigmatizes minorities and immigrants. And yet, despite the fierce criticism and controversy, he's the cabinet member President Nicolas...
...conservative candidate. Since then, he's embraced his new right-wing faith with the zealousness of a convert, making many long-time conservatives uncomfortable. Chief among his more hard-line moves has been the decision to hold an ongoing series of town hall meetings across France to define the French national identity. Some say the forums are already being used by disgruntled right-wingers to blame crime, rising unemployment and other social ills on minorities and immigrants. Opponents also argue that they play into the hands of Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme-right National Front (FN) party. (See pictures...
...ahead of the March elections, just as he did in 2007 when his presidential campaign took up anti-immigration and law-and-order platforms to win over far-right voters. Plus, Besson has argued, if you steal FN voters, you will eventually kill the party. (See pictures of the French cracking down on migrants...
...Europeans have been far more welcoming to Muslims than their critics allow," he says. "The onus of these claims of discrimination always seem to go the same way: to show that Europeans are innately racist. Which is a gross insult." (Read "The Islamic Divide at Work: Advice for French Bosses...
...levels vary. The report says that Muslims may be better integrated in the U.K. than in other parts of the E.U.: an average 78% of Muslims identified themselves as British, compared with 49% of Muslims who consider themselves French and just 23% who feel German. (See more about European politics in "The March to the Far Right...