President Emmanuel Macron complained to the American daily The New York Times the coverage by several English-language media of the recent jihadist attacks in France, accusing them of “legitimizing” the violence by their lack of understanding of the French context.
“When France was attacked five years ago, all the nations of the world supported us,” said Mr. Macron, quoted in the French version of an article published Sunday evening on the website of the New York Times.
“And when I see, in this context, many newspapers which I think come from countries which share our values, which write in a country which is the natural child of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution, and which legitimizes this violence, which say that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, I say: the fundamentals are lost, ”adds the French president.
In the same article, New York Times reporter Ben Smith writes that Mr. Macron accuses the English-speaking media, and the American media in particular, of seeking “to impose their own values on a different society”. He reproaches them, still according to Mr. Smith, for not understanding “laïcité à la française – an active separation of Church and State which dates from the beginning of the 20th century.e century ”.
France has suffered three jihadist attacks in recent weeks: a stabbing attack at the end of September which left two wounded near the former premises of the weekly Charlie Hebdo, the beheading on October 16 of the history and geography professor Samuel Paty who had worked with his students on the cartoons of the Prophen Muhammad published by Charlie Hebdo, and a knife attack that killed three people at the end of October in a basilica in Nice (south-east).
After the assassination of Mr. Paty, Emmanuel Macron had expressed his support for the freedom to caricature and his government had launched a series of legal and administrative proceedings against French Muslim associations suspected of appeasement to radical Islamism. As a result, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused him of defending blasphemy against Islam, and called on his fellow citizens to boycott French products.