Word: nationale
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Others are worried, though. Fleshing out how people view the concept of Frenchness today has sparked controversy, as one might expect. Detractors have loudly denounced the initiative as stealing the national-identity page from Le Pen's playbook - and casting suspicion on immigrants, naturalized citizens and French-born minorities as...
Critics also believe the idea is motivated by political opportunism. With regional elections looming next March, leftist politicians and pundits say the government is using the national-identity theme to appeal to the right-wing Le Pen voters who flocked to Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign once he began promising...
The discussions are to take place during hundreds of locally organized town-hall meetings involving education, union and cultural officials and ordinary people concerned about the state of French identity. Among the questions Besson has suggested for the debates: Should France implement "integration contracts," which would set minimal levels of...
Some fear that these types of questions - even the debates themselves - invite assumptions that generations of immigrants have already undermined France's identity and may provoke nationalist sentiments long championed by Le Pen. "When you put immigration and national identity side by side, it creates the notion that immigration poses...
But Trenet's song was meant to be an inspiration to his countrymen to withstand the brutal Nazi occupation of France. Some of Besson's critics say the national-identity debate, meanwhile, is rooted in modern-day xenophobia, not nostalgia. Perhaps a solution might be to inspire patriotism by asking...