0:00:20 > 0:00:22No strings of onions.
0:00:24 > 0:00:26No Dordogne.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29No art of living in Provence.
0:00:29 > 0:00:31No dream homes.
0:00:31 > 0:00:32No Piaf.
0:00:32 > 0:00:35No "ooh la la".
0:00:35 > 0:00:37No Gallic shrugs.
0:00:37 > 0:00:39No checked tablecloths.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54What makes French architecture French?
0:00:54 > 0:00:56Pyramids.
0:00:56 > 0:00:58Domes.
0:00:58 > 0:01:00Mammarial centrefold domes.
0:01:00 > 0:01:02Domes shrivelled as an old sow's dugs.
0:01:02 > 0:01:05Domes swollen as a fat glans.
0:01:05 > 0:01:08Ovoid domes. Shallow domes.
0:01:08 > 0:01:10What else?
0:01:10 > 0:01:11Steeples.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15Emphatic verticality. Sheer slopes. Turrets. Cones.
0:01:15 > 0:01:16Spires. Wedges.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19Crenellations like a junkie's dentition.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23Hothouse asphyxiation. Exhilarating perversity -
0:01:23 > 0:01:26this is the country which supplies the "S" in S&M.
0:01:28 > 0:01:34A refusal to confuse beauty with prettiness.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40Materials hewn against the grain.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43Materials that don't weather.
0:01:43 > 0:01:47Parasitical elements, like a rose self-grafted to an apple tree,
0:01:47 > 0:01:52like a conjoined twin that grows out of its sibling's belly.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55The aggregate of these more or less grotesque devices
0:01:55 > 0:01:59is a freak show in the sky - it exploits the sky,
0:01:59 > 0:02:03it's a nightmare reliant on heaven's brilliance.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06This is where French architecture excels -
0:02:06 > 0:02:09in the exaggeratedly ornamental roof line.
0:02:10 > 0:02:15This is where French architecture is at its most distinctively,
0:02:15 > 0:02:19most essentially, most perversely French.
0:02:33 > 0:02:37The only person to have had a roof named after him was French,
0:02:37 > 0:02:40the 17th century architect Francois Mansart.
0:02:40 > 0:02:42"Le Toit a la Mansart."
0:02:42 > 0:02:44The Mansart Roof.
0:02:50 > 0:02:52Chambord.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55There is no silhouette to match that of Chambord -
0:02:55 > 0:02:57most fantastical of French roof lines,
0:02:57 > 0:03:00thus of European roof lines.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03This is the most immodest of hunting lodges.
0:03:03 > 0:03:09Around it, the Sologne - heath and birch, gorse and broom,
0:03:09 > 0:03:13ponds full of pike, woods full of boar, elk, deer
0:03:13 > 0:03:16whose tines are as extravagant as its roof line.
0:03:20 > 0:03:22Early on, during the long period when classicism,
0:03:22 > 0:03:26in one form or another, was the pan-European fashion,
0:03:26 > 0:03:29France developed its own unorthodox classicism,
0:03:29 > 0:03:36a classicism with roofs that were hangovers from the Gothic past,
0:03:36 > 0:03:39roofs that were entirely unrelated to the buildings they sat on.
0:03:44 > 0:03:48Imagine a figure dressed in austere, quasi-monastic garb
0:03:48 > 0:03:52and the dazzlingly farouche perruque of a Restoration comedy.
0:03:55 > 0:04:00The fashion for this curious hybrid architecture did not last.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03French buildings ceased to make play with the sky.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11Invention and extravagance were reserved for interiors.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18The late 17th, the 18th and the early 19th centuries
0:04:18 > 0:04:21were the period of France's global pre-eminence.
0:04:22 > 0:04:24Yet throughout this period,
0:04:24 > 0:04:28its architecture was not quintessentially French.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32France took its cue from the grand architecture of the rest of Europe.
0:04:32 > 0:04:36But without the conviction that informs palaces
0:04:36 > 0:04:39in Mecklenburg or Franconia, St Petersburg or Piedmont.
0:04:39 > 0:04:42They did these things better there.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49Versailles has problems.
0:04:49 > 0:04:50Identity problems.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52Pomp problems.
0:04:52 > 0:04:54Size problems.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59Size.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02It isn't big enough, really.
0:05:02 > 0:05:05It may be vast, but it's also paltry.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08The architectural imagination seems puny
0:05:08 > 0:05:11in comparison with the extent of the building.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17The garden front isn't tall enough in relation to its length
0:05:17 > 0:05:19or to the garden itself.
0:05:19 > 0:05:23It's without articulation, without variety, without relief.
0:05:23 > 0:05:26There's a crucial lack of energy.
0:05:33 > 0:05:35Identity.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39Versailles is inhibited. It's shackled by good taste.
0:05:41 > 0:05:42Pomp.
0:05:42 > 0:05:44It isn't pompous enough.
0:05:44 > 0:05:49Absolutism demands to be represented by a lack of restraint,
0:05:49 > 0:05:51not by timidity on an epic scale.
0:05:55 > 0:06:01Almost 200 years of timidity came to an end in the middle years of the 19th century.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04With the rebuilding of the medieval town of Carcassone,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07French architecture became French once more,
0:06:07 > 0:06:11with roof lines that were romantically medieval.
0:06:11 > 0:06:15Carcassonne was a fantasy of the Middle Ages.
0:06:15 > 0:06:17The 19th century's Middle Ages
0:06:17 > 0:06:20were an improvement on the Middle Ages' Middle Ages.
0:06:20 > 0:06:25Here were the Middle Ages with the benefit of hindsight.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29Alfred de Musset, romantic poet, romantic alcoholic,
0:06:29 > 0:06:31romantic early death,
0:06:31 > 0:06:36described literary romanticism as "the abuse of adjectives".
0:06:36 > 0:06:40This was a description which also applies to architectural romanticism
0:06:40 > 0:06:42which is characterised by -
0:06:42 > 0:06:45the abuse of ornament,
0:06:45 > 0:06:47the piling up of decorative effects,
0:06:47 > 0:06:50the accretion of extraneous gewgaws,
0:06:50 > 0:06:52the incorporation of screaming additions,
0:06:52 > 0:06:56the suturing of superfluous bling,
0:06:56 > 0:06:58the impasting of ornamental whorls,
0:06:58 > 0:07:01the exponential swell of increments.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07They do tend to take over.
0:07:07 > 0:07:09They bury the armature to which they're appended.
0:07:09 > 0:07:11They mask the structure.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15Digression becomes the very core.
0:07:15 > 0:07:19Gustave Flaubert's prescription of "nothing outside the story" -
0:07:19 > 0:07:21not, actually, a prescription he obeyed -
0:07:21 > 0:07:23might come from a different world.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28It has only rarely been applicable to French architecture.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30Indeed, the new architecture,
0:07:30 > 0:07:33the new old architecture, that Flaubert and de Musset witnessed
0:07:33 > 0:07:37being made around them from about 1850,
0:07:37 > 0:07:41manifested a bourgeois concept of romanticism,
0:07:41 > 0:07:44a sumptuously bogus and self-conscious Frenchness,
0:07:44 > 0:07:47a farrago of pseudo-chivalric devices
0:07:47 > 0:07:50that recalled a distant, pre-revolutionary France.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54Here was an architecture that evoked the field of the cloth of gold,
0:07:54 > 0:07:56the courtly France of books of hours,
0:07:56 > 0:08:01and le Chanson de Roland - a call to arms against Muslim invaders.
0:08:06 > 0:08:08The France that built this convincing fiction
0:08:08 > 0:08:12in the third quarter of the 19th century was untroubled by revolution
0:08:12 > 0:08:17and anti-clericism, and sutured together by monarchical certainties
0:08:17 > 0:08:21which resembled those of l'ancienne regime.
0:08:21 > 0:08:23And it went on building this fiction,
0:08:23 > 0:08:25even after the humiliation of the siege of Paris
0:08:25 > 0:08:28in the Franco-Prussian war.
0:08:28 > 0:08:32This was the Franco-French architecture that France exported
0:08:32 > 0:08:36to wherever the beneficiaries of the Industrial Revolution
0:08:36 > 0:08:38wished to show off their wealth.
0:08:39 > 0:08:42It became the global nouveau riche style.
0:08:42 > 0:08:46It was privately adopted by iron founders, paper millers,
0:08:46 > 0:08:50cloth magnates, mine owners, bankers, oil bandits,
0:08:50 > 0:08:53newspaper barons, brewers, guano tycoons
0:08:53 > 0:08:55and Jay Gatsby, whose house was
0:08:55 > 0:08:59"a factual imitation of some hotel de ville in Normandy".
0:08:59 > 0:09:02It is to be found in the Ruhr, Bucharest,
0:09:02 > 0:09:06Glasgow, Philadelphia, Cairo, Montevideo,
0:09:06 > 0:09:09Buenos Aires and Istanbul.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12It was enthusiastically espoused in England,
0:09:12 > 0:09:16specifically at Waddesdon and Halton, by the Rothschilds
0:09:16 > 0:09:19and consequently by lesser Jewish dynasties.
0:09:20 > 0:09:25For such dynasties, it was a style that despite its flashy grandeur,
0:09:25 > 0:09:27was bereft of presumption.
0:09:27 > 0:09:31For it did not claim Anglo-Saxon heritage.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35It announced a racial and cultural separateness.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43In France, the public adoption of this style
0:09:43 > 0:09:46was yet more politically charged.
0:09:53 > 0:09:58The same architecture represented the then all-powerful church,
0:09:58 > 0:10:02which was, until 1905, effectively an instrument of the state.
0:10:05 > 0:10:10Paris's tentacles stretched to awkward provincial dioceses.
0:10:13 > 0:10:17The architecture in question was, of course, the bewildering,
0:10:17 > 0:10:22exhilarating, overpowering salmagundi of Byzantine revival,
0:10:22 > 0:10:27with lavish splashes of baroque, a healthy soupcon of Renaissance,
0:10:27 > 0:10:31and, needless to say, a catastrophic pile-up of colliding roofs.
0:10:34 > 0:10:41The thin-lipped piety and dismal churchiness of the English Gothic revival is entirely absent.
0:10:41 > 0:10:44This is not the architecture of cold showers
0:10:44 > 0:10:46and muscular Christian torment.
0:10:49 > 0:10:52It's opulent, soft, luxuriant,
0:10:52 > 0:10:54sybaritic, indulgent.
0:10:55 > 0:11:00It's a barely Christian architecture for concupiscent popes
0:11:00 > 0:11:02with chancels full of nephews,
0:11:02 > 0:11:07it's an architecture of the fallen, of the imperfect.
0:11:07 > 0:11:12It reeks of scented hammams, loukoum, and seraglio.
0:11:16 > 0:11:19Architecture is one of the glues that binds the state,
0:11:19 > 0:11:22and it's capable of binding those parts of the state
0:11:22 > 0:11:26that don't want to be bound, without their noticing.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32France pretended to unity. It enforced unity.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35The same bureaucracy affected Gascony as it did Flanders.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38The same syllabus was taught in schools
0:11:38 > 0:11:40all over the Hexagone and the dom-toms.
0:12:06 > 0:12:07From about 1870 onwards,
0:12:07 > 0:12:13the purpose of the French Empire in Indo-China, north and west Africa,
0:12:13 > 0:12:17in North America, and so on, was in contrast to both its earlier empire
0:12:17 > 0:12:21and to the British and Belgian empires.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24The purpose henceforth was not the pursuit of trade,
0:12:24 > 0:12:30not the plunder of mineral riches, not agricultural opportunism.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33It was no longer founded in martial strategy.
0:12:33 > 0:12:36It belonged, tardily, to the Enlightenment.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44France's later imperial scheme was at once grandiose, naive,
0:12:44 > 0:12:48idealistic, utopian, self-congratulatory.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51It was to use empire in order to expand France
0:12:51 > 0:12:55by creating replicas of France in far-distant places,
0:12:55 > 0:12:59and by creating French citizens, replica French citizens.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03French colonial cities were not, then,
0:13:03 > 0:13:07as Evelyn Waugh's Brigadier Ritchie-Hook had it,
0:13:07 > 0:13:09"all boulevards and brothels".
0:13:09 > 0:13:13They were schools, institutes of instruction,
0:13:13 > 0:13:16oblique pedagogic instruments.
0:13:16 > 0:13:21They were founded in the notion of urbanistic determinism.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27That is, in the belief that a particular disposition of streets,
0:13:27 > 0:13:31street names, public places, public amenities, parks
0:13:31 > 0:13:35and a particular gamut of stylistic tics could play their part
0:13:35 > 0:13:40in moulding people, in nothing less than manufacturing citizens.
0:13:44 > 0:13:47Colonial France had an exceptional, quasi-Jesuit faith
0:13:47 > 0:13:50in the potency of environmental conditioning,
0:13:50 > 0:13:55in the efficacy of nurture, in the force of example,
0:13:55 > 0:13:58in the acquisition of traits through imitation,
0:13:58 > 0:14:00in a sort of cultural osmosis.
0:14:06 > 0:14:09Faith is, of course, a euphemism for gullibility.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12It positions itself beyond proof.
0:14:12 > 0:14:15Faith causes the existence of god and miracles,
0:14:15 > 0:14:19and the predictive conjugation of magpies.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24It was faith that caused colonial France to believe
0:14:24 > 0:14:28that the peoples of countries it had annexed or invaded
0:14:28 > 0:14:30could be rendered French,
0:14:30 > 0:14:35and could have the privilege of being French thrust upon them.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39Metropolitan France trains all its children to be French,
0:14:39 > 0:14:44just as it trains its young adults to be doctors, electricians,
0:14:44 > 0:14:46chefs, mycologists.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51There is no country on earth with a greater fetish for qualifications.
0:14:53 > 0:14:57France proselytised on behalf of Frenchness
0:14:57 > 0:15:01as though Frenchness was a religion seeking converts.
0:15:02 > 0:15:07The improvement of mankind could be achieved by making mankind French.
0:15:07 > 0:15:11The colonies were factories supplementing the supply of French citizens.
0:15:13 > 0:15:20Southeast Asian children, West African children, Maghrebian children were brainwashed.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24Nicely brainwashed, with the finest scented brain soap,
0:15:24 > 0:15:28which squeaky-cleaned their synapses and left them feeling French.
0:15:32 > 0:15:38The British Empire was less presumptuous. It did not assume that a Gujarati dirt-farmer
0:15:38 > 0:15:43could think of nothing better than becoming a civil servant in Bexleyheath.
0:15:43 > 0:15:49But the British Empire was also less generous.
0:15:49 > 0:15:51It rarely afforded such opportunities to its subjects,
0:15:51 > 0:15:58whom it was happy to introduce to opium in order to open up a market.
0:15:58 > 0:16:00It encouraged a sort of stasis.
0:16:00 > 0:16:04It believed above all that its subjects should not aspire to Britishness.
0:16:04 > 0:16:08How could they when their colour was not noon-day beetroot?
0:16:08 > 0:16:12They should stick to their caste, their tribe, their quaint clothes,
0:16:12 > 0:16:14their extravagant belief systems.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18To do otherwise was getting above themselves.
0:16:19 > 0:16:24Britain sought to preserve cultural, religious and racial purity.
0:16:26 > 0:16:31France's ambitions for its citizens, who were not subjects, could not have been more different.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35Citizenship was a surprisingly concrete goal,
0:16:35 > 0:16:41that might be strived for and attained through the acquisition, in no particular order,
0:16:41 > 0:16:45of language and culture, dress, mores, deportment.
0:16:45 > 0:16:48And through learning by rote.
0:16:50 > 0:16:54The route to Frenchness was paved with departmental numbers
0:16:54 > 0:16:57that had to be inscribed in the memory.
0:16:57 > 0:16:5912 - Aveyron.
0:16:59 > 0:17:0413 - Bouches-du-Rhone. 14 - Calvados, a drink.
0:17:04 > 0:17:0715 - Cantal, a cheese.
0:17:07 > 0:17:1316 - Charente, a melon. 17 - Charente-Maritime. 18 - Cher.
0:17:13 > 0:17:19- 19 - Correze. 20 - Corsica. Cote d'Amor. Cote d'Or.- Creuse...
0:17:19 > 0:17:21SNORING
0:17:30 > 0:17:33Departmental numbers are just the ticket when you're growing up
0:17:33 > 0:17:39in a Saigon suburb or in a bidonville on the outskirts of Dakar.
0:17:41 > 0:17:47A child many thousand miles south of metropolitan France, in a sub-Saharan school,
0:17:47 > 0:17:51studies pluviometrie, the comparative rainfall of, say,
0:17:51 > 0:17:55Grenoble, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, Rennes and Bordeaux...
0:17:55 > 0:17:59a city which Alfred de Vigny,
0:17:59 > 0:18:04poet, translator of Shakespeare, cognac distiller,
0:18:04 > 0:18:09described as "as hot as Seville and as wet as Nantes".
0:18:09 > 0:18:11MUSIC: "Nantes" by Barbara
0:18:11 > 0:18:14# Il pleut sur Nantes
0:18:14 > 0:18:19# Donne-moi la main... #
0:18:19 > 0:18:24The child does not know what Nantes is - a kind of root vegetable?
0:18:24 > 0:18:31The child has not heard a radio, does not know Barbara's song. The child has never seen rain.
0:18:38 > 0:18:43The child does, however, know the words of the Marseillaise
0:18:43 > 0:18:46and of such folkloric songs as Aux Marches du Palais.
0:18:52 > 0:18:58The child knows the volume of water displaced by the transatlantic liner called La France.
0:18:58 > 0:19:01The child knows the average annual sugar cane production of Martinique
0:19:01 > 0:19:07and the names of dead generals and bearded statesmen.
0:19:07 > 0:19:09Subjection, voluntary subjection,
0:19:09 > 0:19:14to all this was a step towards becoming French.
0:19:14 > 0:19:17What was being learnt was nothing less than a civil catechism,
0:19:17 > 0:19:21the rules of the faith, the litany of belonging.
0:19:28 > 0:19:33The French state has since 1905 been founded in laicite...
0:19:33 > 0:19:36which is close to, but not quite the same as secularism,
0:19:36 > 0:19:40which is how it is habitually mistranslated.
0:19:48 > 0:19:50Religion plays no part in the offices of state.
0:19:50 > 0:19:54A church wedding has no legal validity.
0:19:54 > 0:19:59No god is invoked on July 14th or during the ceremony
0:19:59 > 0:20:01to commemorate the dead on Armistice Day.
0:20:10 > 0:20:14Laicite is not opposed to religious observance.
0:20:14 > 0:20:18It is, rather, a means of treating all religions equally
0:20:18 > 0:20:23without granting the favours that their wretched special pleading and whining demands.
0:20:27 > 0:20:30There is no more reason to submit to a preposterous solicitation
0:20:30 > 0:20:32because it is born of faith -
0:20:32 > 0:20:34that is, of irreason -
0:20:34 > 0:20:38than if it is born of astigmatism or greed or inebriation.
0:20:43 > 0:20:45I entirely lack the credulous gene.
0:20:47 > 0:20:52The idea that gods and prophets are more than low-level human inventions seems so frail and so preposterous
0:20:52 > 0:20:56that they are not worth considering as parts of a belief system.
0:20:57 > 0:21:02But as a psychopathology worthy of infinite investigation,
0:21:02 > 0:21:05there is nothing quite like them.
0:21:08 > 0:21:13France's approach has been that devotees of ancient programmes of superstition
0:21:13 > 0:21:16should not enjoy more rights than bee keepers,
0:21:16 > 0:21:19window dressers or monocyclists.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23The French ideal is that religious practice, belief, observance
0:21:23 > 0:21:26and so on is a private pursuit.
0:21:27 > 0:21:32There is no demand on the individual to respect another individual's beliefs.
0:21:32 > 0:21:34Tolerate them, certainly.
0:21:40 > 0:21:44The Roman Catholic Church was the most prevalent and engrained
0:21:44 > 0:21:49ancient programme of superstition when such determined men as Jules Ferry,
0:21:49 > 0:21:53Emile Combes, and Aristide Briand began to militate for the separation
0:21:53 > 0:21:56of the state and education from religious congregations.
0:21:59 > 0:22:04The law of 1905 decreed that Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism
0:22:04 > 0:22:08were all compatible with Frenchness.
0:22:08 > 0:22:11The matter was determined not by the individual's conscience -
0:22:11 > 0:22:13what a quaintly Protestant idea! -
0:22:13 > 0:22:17but by the state itself in all its peculiar impartiality.
0:22:17 > 0:22:22Belief systems and superstitions that were, on the face of it,
0:22:22 > 0:22:29no more or less ludicrous than those which were sanctioned, were stigmatised and suppressed.
0:22:35 > 0:22:39A succession of lavishly funded interior ministry agencies -
0:22:39 > 0:22:42the current one bears the lollipop acronym MIVILUDES -
0:22:42 > 0:22:48have determined the status of the different products in the marketplace of irreason.
0:22:48 > 0:22:53Miviludes may be highly active but it's frivolous and toothless.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57It addresses fringe charlatans, minor fraudsters, crazed apocalyptics
0:22:57 > 0:23:02and ludicrous theologies such as the Tree of Flowing Jade and Hyper-Penitentism.
0:23:07 > 0:23:10Miviludes pursues unbalanced cults such as Raelism,
0:23:10 > 0:23:17founded after he met some extraterrestrials by a sometime Jacques Brel imitator
0:23:17 > 0:23:21and sometime racing driver with a taste for sci-fi clothes - no collars, of course.
0:23:29 > 0:23:33It prosecutes unpleasant sects such as Instinctotherapie,
0:23:33 > 0:23:36whose leader is serving 15 years for the rape of children,
0:23:36 > 0:23:42Garum, Khnoum, and Neo-Phare, whose leader believes he is Jesus.
0:23:42 > 0:23:44He's planning a trip to Venus.
0:23:49 > 0:23:53One of the statues built by the Aumist cult in the Alps
0:23:53 > 0:23:58was dynamited by departmental authorities in 2001.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02This, however, was nothing to do with outlawing a dodgy organisation.
0:24:02 > 0:24:07It was, rather, because the ashram had neglected to apply for planning permission
0:24:07 > 0:24:09and the neighbours complained.
0:24:09 > 0:24:13The Cosmoplanetary Mandarom was 40 metres tall.
0:24:13 > 0:24:18It was no more or less offensive than much other religious statuary.
0:24:18 > 0:24:21Few denominations disavow kitsch.
0:24:21 > 0:24:27All theologies are ludicrous. Some are more ludicrous than others.
0:24:27 > 0:24:30Miviludes takes these millenarian fruitcakes seriously.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33It justifies its existence by exaggerating
0:24:33 > 0:24:38the threat of harmless nutters and by its uncanny ability
0:24:38 > 0:24:42to discover a dangerously psychopathic cult in every backwoods village.
0:24:44 > 0:24:49It has gone native to the point where it seems to entertain
0:24:49 > 0:24:51the possibility that the world will,
0:24:51 > 0:24:56as predicted by the cosmic-class apocalypse and haruspication operatives
0:24:56 > 0:25:02of The Infinite Solar of Solar Solar, end on December 21st 2012.
0:25:07 > 0:25:09This does not apply just to France.
0:25:09 > 0:25:11Put it in your diary.
0:25:11 > 0:25:15Miviludes' competence does not extend to monitoring
0:25:15 > 0:25:16the elephant in the street...
0:25:16 > 0:25:21demonstrative Islam. That falls to the Interior Ministry.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25The practice of public prayers in, for instance,
0:25:25 > 0:25:28the 18th arrondissement of Paris, is divisive.
0:25:28 > 0:25:34The Ministry sees it as anti-republican provocation posing as piety.
0:25:34 > 0:25:39The participants claim that it's a necessary response to the lack of mosques.
0:25:39 > 0:25:45The interior Minister, Claude Gueant, has responded by arranging the rental of disused barracks
0:25:45 > 0:25:51as a place for prayer and has banned any further street prayers in Paris.
0:25:51 > 0:25:55The Western humanist tradition derives, just as the 1905 law does,
0:25:55 > 0:26:00from the gradual self-secularisation that overtook Western Europe
0:26:00 > 0:26:05in the schismatic centuries after Luther, after the Reformation.
0:26:05 > 0:26:08Centuries when Europe cast off the Church's yoke...
0:26:08 > 0:26:11individually and publicly.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15Islam has not enjoyed a similar self-secularisation.
0:26:24 > 0:26:29In Britain, what is recklessly celebrated as cultural diversity -
0:26:29 > 0:26:32vibrant cultural diversity -
0:26:32 > 0:26:34is actually a form of apartheid,
0:26:34 > 0:26:38which starts early, at sectarian schools and faith schools.
0:26:38 > 0:26:44People are defined by the religious or ethnic or linguistic group they are born into.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48Identity is determined by community rather than by the individual.
0:26:55 > 0:26:59Cultural diversity inhibits social mobility,
0:26:59 > 0:27:04it stalls economic improvement, it fractures society.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07It's a barrier to self-invention.
0:27:07 > 0:27:12It sets the status quo in stone. You know your place.
0:27:12 > 0:27:16You are conscious of your roots, your precious roots.
0:27:16 > 0:27:18But roots are for vegetables.
0:27:21 > 0:27:28The British seem unable to understand that a human's roots are actually a human's shackles.
0:27:28 > 0:27:30They bear you back into the past.
0:27:30 > 0:27:34There is no escape from your ancestors. Their mores are yours.
0:27:34 > 0:27:37Their rites and superstitions are yours.
0:27:37 > 0:27:42This kind of separate development that confines people to their communitarian pigeonhole
0:27:42 > 0:27:46has been a fetish of Anglo-Saxon liberal policy for half a century...
0:27:46 > 0:27:49even though it is patently illiberal.
0:27:51 > 0:27:56Multiculturalism doesn't leave much room for aspiration.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00The mutation that is allowed to the caterpillar is denied to British humans.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04It militates against individual equality
0:28:04 > 0:28:09by granting paramouncy to community rather than to the person.
0:28:12 > 0:28:16In contrast, the French approach to immigrants is, in theory,
0:28:16 > 0:28:20positive, optimistic, welcoming, even cosseting.
0:28:20 > 0:28:26The individual, of no matter what ethnicity, can grow,
0:28:26 > 0:28:31can improve intellectually, ethically, economically,
0:28:31 > 0:28:34by subscribing to Frenchness.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37It does sound suspiciously like a cult.
0:28:48 > 0:28:53Throughout "les trente glorieuses", the 30 or so years after the war,
0:28:53 > 0:28:56a vast programme of social housing was undertaken,
0:28:56 > 0:28:59most of it on the peripheries of towns and cities.
0:28:59 > 0:29:03These satellites would house the rural diaspora,
0:29:03 > 0:29:09baby boomers and an ever-expanding and ever more fractured immigrant population.
0:29:14 > 0:29:17Projects were characteristically massive in scale,
0:29:17 > 0:29:24self-proclaimingly futuristic in form, self-consciously republican in aspiration.
0:29:24 > 0:29:29Many of the buildings were so weird they might have belonged to a cult.
0:29:29 > 0:29:33A benign cult in which every citizen is granted the same opportunity.
0:29:33 > 0:29:35The French idea of citizenship
0:29:35 > 0:29:38and of the citizen's quasi-sacred link to the state
0:29:38 > 0:29:42derives from the Enlightenment, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
0:29:42 > 0:29:46from the Jacobins' revolutionary utopianism which he fomented.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53A tainted utopianism to say the least,
0:29:53 > 0:29:57since the Jacobins were the instigators of state terror.
0:29:59 > 0:30:04Equally they entertained a belief in the attainment of human perfection.
0:30:05 > 0:30:09A preposterous belief, the bloody failure of whose countless
0:30:09 > 0:30:12manifestations has, self-evidently, never discouraged
0:30:12 > 0:30:17the next generation of tyrannical dreamers from embracing it.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20And has never dissuaded the French republic from it.
0:30:25 > 0:30:30Freedom, equality and brotherhood is much more than a slogan.
0:30:31 > 0:30:33It is a secular faith.
0:30:33 > 0:30:37Subscribed to and believed in, despite evidence of these
0:30:37 > 0:30:39qualities being difficult to come by.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43So difficult that one wonders if they actually exist.
0:30:43 > 0:30:47Of course they exist! Faith demands no proof.
0:30:48 > 0:30:52They are the nation's collective lie to itself.
0:30:52 > 0:30:55They are a mental amulet. A good luck charm without physical form.
0:30:55 > 0:31:00They are a testament to hope... for everyone.
0:31:00 > 0:31:01Nearly everyone.
0:31:05 > 0:31:08French citizenship is a social contract.
0:31:08 > 0:31:11It is not conditional on ethnicity or religion.
0:31:11 > 0:31:15Though on the one side, the Front National would like to make
0:31:15 > 0:31:18Frenchness a matter of nature rather than nurture,
0:31:18 > 0:31:22of being born to it rather than behaviourally conditioned.
0:31:34 > 0:31:39It dreams of a France whose citizens are francais de souche,
0:31:39 > 0:31:43that is, with a stump, or root, like as I say, vegetables.
0:31:52 > 0:31:56This dream is increasingly shared by a large section of the population
0:31:56 > 0:31:58bent on turning the clock back.
0:31:58 > 0:32:02Marine Le Pen has succeeded her father
0:32:02 > 0:32:05and toned down the party's rhetoric,
0:32:05 > 0:32:07the hard right has softened. The result?
0:32:07 > 0:32:11One in six citizens admits to intending to vote for her.
0:32:17 > 0:32:20On the other side, there is a significant constituency
0:32:20 > 0:32:22of second and third generation
0:32:22 > 0:32:24Magrebian and west African immigrants who are resistant
0:32:24 > 0:32:30to the assimilation which the French social contract demands or offers.
0:32:30 > 0:32:34In other words, they reject the idea of Frenchness as determined
0:32:34 > 0:32:38by the state and insouciantly mimic the British model -
0:32:38 > 0:32:42cultural separation, ethnic identification,
0:32:42 > 0:32:44communitarian stasis.
0:32:46 > 0:32:49France was not made for this.
0:32:49 > 0:32:52It lacks the constitutional apparatus
0:32:52 > 0:32:57to deal with the minoritarian will towards auto-segregation.
0:32:59 > 0:33:02The constitution is based in consensus.
0:33:02 > 0:33:06The point is not one of mere incompatibility.
0:33:06 > 0:33:12It is rather that there is no possibility of a meeting point.
0:33:12 > 0:33:14No possibility of compromise.
0:33:30 > 0:33:32The state is currently in a trap of its own making.
0:33:33 > 0:33:38The principle of laicite considers religion to be a private matter.
0:33:38 > 0:33:43French censuses do not include questions about religion or ethnicity.
0:33:43 > 0:33:48If a government body such as the National Institute of Economic and Statistical Studies
0:33:48 > 0:33:50is researching any social problems,
0:33:50 > 0:33:56it cannot allow itself to recognise or consider race or creed.
0:33:56 > 0:34:00Vital characteristics, but ones that the state
0:34:00 > 0:34:03officially declines to acknowledge in its citizens.
0:34:10 > 0:34:15The proposition is upheld that citizens, all equal, all free,
0:34:15 > 0:34:21do not belong to an ethnic group or a religious congregation,
0:34:21 > 0:34:23they're French, and that's all there is to it.
0:34:26 > 0:34:28Immigrants' ethnicity, which they are stuck with,
0:34:28 > 0:34:31is not a pressing problem in a country with a long tradition,
0:34:31 > 0:34:34and current practice, of colour-blindness
0:34:34 > 0:34:37towards those who are willing to assimilate to become French.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41Hence the ascent to high political office
0:34:41 > 0:34:45of Fadela Amara, Rama Yade and Rachida Dati.
0:34:45 > 0:34:49Their ascent has nothing to do with tokenistic patronage,
0:34:49 > 0:34:53the paradoxical proof of that is the subsequent descent
0:34:53 > 0:34:54of Yade and Dati.
0:35:01 > 0:35:06Assimilation demands the eschewal of practices that do not accord
0:35:06 > 0:35:09with those of a nation forged in the Enlightenment.
0:35:09 > 0:35:12Minoritarian practices which do not conform to the laws of the republic.
0:35:12 > 0:35:16Polygamy, endogamy, forced marriages,
0:35:16 > 0:35:20female genital mutilation and so on.
0:35:20 > 0:35:24And practices which force the republic to create new laws,
0:35:24 > 0:35:28most obviously the proscription of the niqab and the burqa which are
0:35:28 > 0:35:34deemed by France to be demeaning to the wearer, sartorial manifestations
0:35:34 > 0:35:38of a refusal to assimilate, and an affront to laicite.
0:35:39 > 0:35:42The overwhelming problems derive, not from ethnicity,
0:35:42 > 0:35:48but from religion, and specifically from the culture attached to Islam.
0:35:48 > 0:35:50But it's not indissolubly attached.
0:35:50 > 0:35:54It's a human's right to be able to abandon a religion,
0:35:54 > 0:35:59to dump a culture, to shun obscurantism.
0:36:01 > 0:36:06Assimilation also demands the acquisition of new characteristics.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10The French mentality is both perplexed and insulted
0:36:10 > 0:36:14by potential citizens who are reluctant to acquire them.
0:36:14 > 0:36:18The French mentality can conceive of nothing better than being French.
0:36:22 > 0:36:27Immigration has changed qualitatively as well as numerically.
0:36:27 > 0:36:30What France has witnessed since decolonisation
0:36:30 > 0:36:32is successive waves of immigrants
0:36:32 > 0:36:36who do not share a total commitment to France and to Frenchness,
0:36:36 > 0:36:42yet yearn for a qualified Frenchness where French is a suffix.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46Senegalese French, Ivorian French, Algerian French.
0:36:47 > 0:36:51There's a curious combination of circumstances at work here.
0:36:51 > 0:36:56One of which is the unquestionable success of the post-colonial programme
0:36:56 > 0:36:58called francophonie.
0:36:58 > 0:37:02Founded as the Cultural and Technical Co-operation Agency,
0:37:02 > 0:37:04which has a nicely Soviet ring to it.
0:37:04 > 0:37:08That was in 1970, the early years of decolonisation.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42Many of its critics and indeed some of its supporters, consider it
0:37:42 > 0:37:48to be little more than a dilute continuation of colonial control
0:37:48 > 0:37:52achieved by massive aid, cultural imperialism
0:37:52 > 0:37:55and the propagation of the French language's primacy.
0:37:57 > 0:38:00France presides over its former colonies
0:38:00 > 0:38:04like a benevolently despotic godfather, or soft god.
0:38:16 > 0:38:21Francophonie's stated aims include peace, democracy,
0:38:21 > 0:38:24human rights, sustainable development, sexual equality,
0:38:24 > 0:38:28(WEARILY) street theatre, multilateral cooperation,
0:38:28 > 0:38:33understanding, digital culture, universal values,
0:38:33 > 0:38:35arts hubs, solidarity, dance...
0:38:36 > 0:38:39It's the nightmarish litany of a Miss World contestant.
0:38:39 > 0:38:44And it provides only the thinnest veil for the self-evidently main business of Francophie,
0:38:44 > 0:38:49the promotion of the French language and France's global standing.
0:38:49 > 0:38:52It was devised as a means by which newly independent states could
0:38:52 > 0:38:58go back to the teat of the good Mother Marianne without losing face.
0:38:58 > 0:39:01And, of course, as a means by which the good mother
0:39:01 > 0:39:06could enjoy the benefits of colonial power without the responsibility,
0:39:06 > 0:39:08on the sly.
0:39:12 > 0:39:16France's post-colonial empire has farcical aspects.
0:39:21 > 0:39:24Because about a quarter of Canada's citizens speak French,
0:39:24 > 0:39:28it's a national preoccupation,
0:39:28 > 0:39:31watched over with proprietorial patronage.
0:39:37 > 0:39:39France has never forgotten that De Gaulle,
0:39:39 > 0:39:43seen here mincing towards glory, famously fuelled
0:39:43 > 0:39:46the separatist aspirations of francophone Canadians.
0:39:49 > 0:39:51"Vive le Quebec libre,
0:39:51 > 0:39:54"vive le Canada francais."
0:39:57 > 0:40:01It has forgotten the riposte of the Canadian prime minister,
0:40:01 > 0:40:06Lester Pearson to the old fool, "The people of Canada ARE free.
0:40:06 > 0:40:09"Canadians do not need to be liberated.
0:40:09 > 0:40:13"Indeed, many thousands of Canadians gave their lives in two world wars
0:40:13 > 0:40:16"in the liberation of France."
0:40:18 > 0:40:21Canada, however, is a mere sideshow.
0:40:24 > 0:40:29Alongside Francophonie, which is visible, more or less transparent,
0:40:29 > 0:40:34legitimate, accountable and so on, there exists an occluded French apparatus, a covert network
0:40:34 > 0:40:38whose quasi-imperial tentacles stretch throughout Africa.
0:40:39 > 0:40:41This is the world of Francafrique.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57Hello, sir. Welcome to Dictatours.
0:40:59 > 0:41:05We are showing you, there is an understanding, from the other time of French colonies in Africa.
0:41:07 > 0:41:10They are showing their gratitude to motherland,
0:41:10 > 0:41:14by buying houses in some of the most expensive areas in Paris prestige.
0:41:16 > 0:41:21Why shouldn't the dictators of these African nations buy property in Paris?
0:41:21 > 0:41:24After all, their countries are still de facto French colonies,
0:41:24 > 0:41:28semi-detached, partially dependent nations whose citizens
0:41:28 > 0:41:31are also semi-detached and partially dependent...
0:41:31 > 0:41:34Hence the ambiguity about national identity,
0:41:34 > 0:41:37hence the opposing pulls of an imaginary Africa
0:41:37 > 0:41:41that can't be left behind and a too real France.
0:41:48 > 0:41:50Now, Monsieur, we are at Avenue Foch.
0:41:52 > 0:41:58The President of Gabon has five properties here out of 39 total in France.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02He's a very nice man. He loves expanding his waistline,
0:42:02 > 0:42:04he loves elections that he wins.
0:42:04 > 0:42:06He loves... He loves supercars...
0:42:06 > 0:42:08CARS HOOT THEIR HORNS
0:42:08 > 0:42:11..Jacques Chirac, Barack Obama.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15He loves Nicolas Sarkozy, little Nicolas Sarkozy.
0:42:15 > 0:42:17And bossa nova music, as I recall.
0:42:23 > 0:42:27Francafrique has been a boon to conspiracy theorists.
0:42:27 > 0:42:33It comprises a supposedly ubiquitous web, a shadowy web, of course,
0:42:33 > 0:42:39of backhanders, back scratching, backstairs diplomacy, aid,
0:42:39 > 0:42:44clientelism, gun-toting tyrants, bent elections,
0:42:44 > 0:42:49arms contracts, infrastructure contracts, digital contracts,
0:42:49 > 0:42:54torture, secret treaties, blind eyes.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58Avenue Foch is very popular with dictators. Very popular.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03There. There is property of Blaise Compaore.
0:43:03 > 0:43:05He is president of Burkina Faso.
0:43:06 > 0:43:11Blaise Compaore enjoys elections, he enjoys his people,
0:43:11 > 0:43:13and the nation.
0:43:13 > 0:43:17He enjoys guiding his people's resources, he enjoys using his
0:43:17 > 0:43:21people's resources to administer his people.
0:43:21 > 0:43:24And he enjoys meeting Barack Obama very much.
0:43:26 > 0:43:30Several careers have been founded on berating successive
0:43:30 > 0:43:33French governments' responsibility for child soldiers, genocides,
0:43:33 > 0:43:38famines, dictators' palaces, dictators' menageries.
0:43:38 > 0:43:40And of course, on exaggerating French complicity.
0:43:40 > 0:43:44Exaggeration is the lifeblood of conspiracy theory,
0:43:44 > 0:43:48it justifies the paranoiac's very existence.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that France had begun meddling
0:43:51 > 0:43:55in the affairs of its 14 former African colonies
0:43:55 > 0:43:58before the ink was dry on the treaties of independence.
0:44:02 > 0:44:04Denis Sassou-Nguesso, President of Congo,
0:44:04 > 0:44:07has a wonderful apartment here.
0:44:07 > 0:44:10He loves his people and the African nations.
0:44:10 > 0:44:14He loves making money out of oil, he loves art deco.
0:44:14 > 0:44:17He loves spending the money he makes out of oil.
0:44:17 > 0:44:21He loves big drinks...
0:44:21 > 0:44:26You know, President Sassou-Nguesso has many, many academy competencies.
0:44:26 > 0:44:30- And his family have?- 112 bank accounts in France alone.
0:44:30 > 0:44:35Meddling in Africa on the sly demanded and still demands,
0:44:35 > 0:44:38stealth, secrecy, and suitcases.
0:44:39 > 0:44:43De Gaulle's chief fixer, who would serve a further four presidents,
0:44:43 > 0:44:50was Jacques Foccart, a man who made octopuses look under-tentacled.
0:44:50 > 0:44:55Every coup, every mercenary force, every armour-plated car,
0:44:55 > 0:44:58every special advisor, every assassination,
0:44:58 > 0:45:00every Croesus-size peculation,
0:45:00 > 0:45:03every training programme, every disappearance
0:45:03 > 0:45:08seems to have led back to this protean operator,
0:45:08 > 0:45:12who counted as a personal friend, Mobutu Sese Seko,
0:45:12 > 0:45:15the kleptocrat's kleptocrat.
0:45:16 > 0:45:19Even though Zaire had formerly been a Belgian colony,
0:45:19 > 0:45:22Mobutu was paid by France throughout the Cold War
0:45:22 > 0:45:24to resist Soviet incursion.
0:45:26 > 0:45:30And he was paid so well that his property portfolio was fatter
0:45:30 > 0:45:35than that of any other dictator which is manifestly unfair.
0:45:35 > 0:45:38His crimes, and those of numerous other tyrants,
0:45:38 > 0:45:43some of them severely underhoused, were indulged.
0:45:43 > 0:45:47For these were not any tyrants. These were France's tyrants.
0:45:47 > 0:45:49The West's tyrants.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53And their crimes, genocide, looting their country,
0:45:53 > 0:45:58were, according to the dictates of realpolitik, puny.
0:45:58 > 0:46:01They were the price to pay for loyalty.
0:46:01 > 0:46:05Loyalty is granted to the highest bidder. France outbid Moscow.
0:46:06 > 0:46:11Foccart operated in a crepuscular world of great brutality,
0:46:11 > 0:46:13greater omerta and fluid certainties.
0:46:13 > 0:46:18What he did and what he didn't do is unknowable.
0:46:25 > 0:46:28Still, he never denied having ordered the murder by rat poison
0:46:28 > 0:46:31of a Camerounais opposition leader.
0:46:31 > 0:46:34Equally, there can be no doubt that at the very moment
0:46:34 > 0:46:38when his ruthless counsel was most needed he was out of favour.
0:46:47 > 0:46:51France is clearly a generous host to despots and deposed despots
0:46:51 > 0:46:55and to despots-in-waiting.
0:46:55 > 0:46:59When Ayatollah Khomeini was expelled from his Iraqi exile in 1978,
0:46:59 > 0:47:01he applied for asylum in Kuwait.
0:47:01 > 0:47:03Refused.
0:47:03 > 0:47:06Khomeini was allowed to take refuge in France.
0:47:06 > 0:47:09A decision which the president, Valery Giscard,
0:47:09 > 0:47:11has announced that he has never regretted.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14This pompous combover has learnt nothing.
0:47:14 > 0:47:18To this day, he regards Khomeini as a great statesman.
0:47:18 > 0:47:21He ignored the warnings of the counter-terrorist agency,
0:47:21 > 0:47:24which proceeded to watch helplessly as a procession of known
0:47:24 > 0:47:29terrorists and their immeasurably wealthy backers visited Khomeini
0:47:29 > 0:47:34at his house at Neauphle-le-Chateau near the Grand Marnier distillery.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39If only the twisted old tyrant had developed a taste for the stuff
0:47:39 > 0:47:42the world might have been a better place today.
0:47:42 > 0:47:43But he didn't.
0:47:43 > 0:47:47Instead he called for Jihad and launched a theocratic revolution.
0:47:48 > 0:47:52A revolution which began almost as soon as he landed back
0:47:52 > 0:47:56on Iranian soil in a chartered Air France 747.
0:47:56 > 0:48:01A plane which would become the Islamic hijacker's aircraft of choice.
0:48:01 > 0:48:05The establishment of theocracy in Iran demonstrated that
0:48:05 > 0:48:08bigoted backwardness could rule an entire country.
0:48:08 > 0:48:11It incited other Islamic fundamentalists
0:48:11 > 0:48:14to drastically and disastrously increase the scope
0:48:14 > 0:48:16of their Jihadist ambitions.
0:48:16 > 0:48:20Iran thus became the first in a toxic procession.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah.
0:48:23 > 0:48:27Extremist regimes and freelance self-exploders,
0:48:27 > 0:48:31misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, oxidentaphobes,
0:48:31 > 0:48:32lapidation operatives.
0:48:32 > 0:48:35Khomeini repaid France's hospitality
0:48:35 > 0:48:40with a series of bomb attacks in Paris in the mid '80s.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46The sidelined Foccart and the secret service
0:48:46 > 0:48:48foresaw the holy havoc that Khomeini would wreak.
0:48:48 > 0:48:52They believed that he should be assassinated.
0:48:52 > 0:48:54Giscard however sought the Shah's opinion
0:48:54 > 0:48:59and the Shah's opinion was that Khomeini should be allowed to live.
0:48:59 > 0:49:03It gave squeamish Giscard a way to avoid sanctioning judicial murder.
0:49:03 > 0:49:09Even though judicial murder was and remains a great French tradition.
0:49:09 > 0:49:12Along with political assassination.
0:49:12 > 0:49:16On 25th June 1894, Sadi Carnot, president of the republic,
0:49:16 > 0:49:22was stabbed to death in Lyon by the Italian anarchist Sante Caserio.
0:49:25 > 0:49:27On May 6th 1932,
0:49:27 > 0:49:31Paul Doumer, president of the republic, was murdered
0:49:31 > 0:49:34as he left this Rothschild mansion where he had opened a charity fair.
0:49:34 > 0:49:39The idea that his assassin might be our old friend, the troubled loner,
0:49:39 > 0:49:42was far too straightforward to merit consideration.
0:49:42 > 0:49:45There must have been a plot.
0:49:45 > 0:49:49Was the assassin, Paul Golgolov, a Soviet agent?
0:49:49 > 0:49:52Was he a Nazi agent?
0:49:52 > 0:49:55Had he been primed by White Russian fanatics?
0:49:55 > 0:49:59Had he been a backstreet abortionist? A Chekist torturer?
0:49:59 > 0:50:02Was he in the pay of Jews and masons,
0:50:02 > 0:50:05bent on, yes, world domination?
0:50:07 > 0:50:09What the proponents of these
0:50:09 > 0:50:11and countless other conflicting rumours shared
0:50:11 > 0:50:14was the assumption that the murderer of the president
0:50:14 > 0:50:17must be a professional killer.
0:50:17 > 0:50:20A contract killer. A specialist.
0:50:22 > 0:50:26On July 31st 1914, three days after the assassination in Sarajevo
0:50:26 > 0:50:30of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Jean Jaures, socialist,
0:50:30 > 0:50:35was shot as he was dining here by Raoul Villain, nationalist.
0:50:38 > 0:50:40On Christmas Eve 1976,
0:50:40 > 0:50:43Prince Jean de Broglie, the treasurer of Giscard's party,
0:50:43 > 0:50:46was shot in the street as he left a colleague's apartment
0:50:46 > 0:50:49in Rue Dardanelle, Paris 17.
0:50:51 > 0:50:55On February 1st, 1980, shortly after midnight, Joseph Fontanet,
0:50:55 > 0:50:57former minister of education,
0:50:57 > 0:51:00was shot dead from a car in front of his home.
0:51:00 > 0:51:04The bullet entered by the shoulder and exited by the thorax.
0:51:06 > 0:51:08On March 4th 1982, Rene Lucet,
0:51:08 > 0:51:15a lawyer working against organised crime and corrupt socialists in Nice and Marseilles, committed suicide.
0:51:18 > 0:51:22On May 1st 1993, the former prime minister, Pierre Beregovoy,
0:51:22 > 0:51:25also committed suicide.
0:51:27 > 0:51:33Lucet and Beregovoy succeeded in firing TWO shots into their brains.
0:51:36 > 0:51:42On 29th October 1979, at a pond in the forests of Rambouillet,
0:51:42 > 0:51:44Robert Boulin, a former minister,
0:51:44 > 0:51:49drowned himself in several inches of water
0:51:49 > 0:51:51having severely beaten himself up.
0:51:55 > 0:52:00There is no doubt that many of these murders were carried out by contract killers.
0:52:05 > 0:52:09The contract killer is a stock character of French cinema.
0:52:09 > 0:52:13Alain Delon, Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura.
0:52:13 > 0:52:18But the contract killer is also a stock character of the French collective imagination.
0:52:21 > 0:52:25Even when the evidence points the other way, in the case, for instance,
0:52:25 > 0:52:28of Pavel Gorgulov's assassination of Paul Doumer,
0:52:28 > 0:52:32which was several murders back, even in those circumstances
0:52:32 > 0:52:35there is a will to believe that a professional was involved.
0:52:46 > 0:52:50This derives from a fearful suspicion that plots are omnipresent,
0:52:50 > 0:52:54that the country's many forms of police are unregulated
0:52:54 > 0:52:56and above the law.
0:53:01 > 0:53:03But it also derives from
0:53:03 > 0:53:06a more general element of French thought and behaviour.
0:53:06 > 0:53:09That is the idea that any profession, craft,
0:53:09 > 0:53:13skill or trade has to be learnt.
0:53:13 > 0:53:19Dentistry, marquetry, plumbing, agronomy, cartography,
0:53:19 > 0:53:21they all have to be learnt.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24And assassination is no exception.
0:53:24 > 0:53:29The idea of an amateur assassin is inconceivable.
0:53:32 > 0:53:36There is no country more preoccupied with paper qualifications.
0:53:38 > 0:53:42No country more mystified by the self-taught
0:53:42 > 0:53:44or contemptuous of the self-taught.
0:53:44 > 0:53:49The human is a programmable machine who starts out knowing nothing.
0:53:49 > 0:53:54Any profession, any craft, can be grasped, in theory,
0:53:54 > 0:53:57by application and by learning,
0:53:57 > 0:54:00which is not quite the same as understanding.
0:54:00 > 0:54:04The craft of assassination is learnt through study and training
0:54:04 > 0:54:07in the OAS, the CRS, the DCRI,
0:54:07 > 0:54:14the BRGE, the DPSD, the SCSSI,
0:54:14 > 0:54:20in any one of the countless national agencies, training, formation.
0:54:20 > 0:54:23Formation - the word is telling.
0:54:23 > 0:54:25No-one can do anything
0:54:25 > 0:54:30unless they have been shown how to do it over and again.
0:54:30 > 0:54:34All it takes is time and effort and pedagogic susceptibility.
0:54:37 > 0:54:39The same process that can turn
0:54:39 > 0:54:42a north African girl into a French woman,
0:54:42 > 0:54:45can transform the doggedly plodding hay seed
0:54:45 > 0:54:48into a smooth Parisian lawyer.
0:54:53 > 0:54:56In accord with the wishful dictates of the Enlightenment,
0:54:56 > 0:55:01French education has little to do with innate ability.
0:55:01 > 0:55:07Rather, it crams the blank brain with information of a sort.
0:55:07 > 0:55:10Conditioning and shaping are again what count.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13The resolve to have a subject by rote.
0:55:13 > 0:55:17Diversion from a syllabus is unthinkable.
0:55:17 > 0:55:20Thinking for oneself is unthought of.
0:55:23 > 0:55:27Further education is aimed at the production of specialists
0:55:27 > 0:55:31with exceptionally narrow fields of expertise.
0:55:31 > 0:55:34The toe doctor, the ankle doctor,
0:55:34 > 0:55:38the calf doctor, the knee doctor.
0:55:39 > 0:55:43France's specialists are everywhere. France depends on them.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46The French in general can no more cook
0:55:46 > 0:55:48than they can perform tracheotomies.
0:55:48 > 0:55:50They don't need to cook.
0:55:50 > 0:55:54They have a cast of professionals, specialists to do it for them.
0:55:54 > 0:56:00Restaurant chefs, charcutiers, bakers, patissiers, traiteurs.
0:56:00 > 0:56:03They don't need to think.
0:56:03 > 0:56:06A crack squad of philosophers, economists,
0:56:06 > 0:56:09free-range intellectuals and critics does their thinking for them
0:56:09 > 0:56:14out loud on telly and radio, in papers and magazines,
0:56:14 > 0:56:18at a level that mainstream British media would consider inaccessible.
0:56:18 > 0:56:21And its high priests, famously wage a constant battle
0:56:21 > 0:56:25of centralisation against lapses into regional dialects,
0:56:25 > 0:56:30and worse, illegal immigrants from Anglophonia.
0:56:30 > 0:56:34Incursions that debase the purity of the language.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37In fact, most of these immigrant words assimilate.
0:56:37 > 0:56:39Uprooted, they go native.
0:56:39 > 0:56:43So native that they are unrecognisable to the Anglophone.
0:56:45 > 0:56:48Un pressing - dry cleaning.
0:56:48 > 0:56:52Un relooking - a makeover.
0:56:52 > 0:56:54Un brushing - a blow dry.
0:56:54 > 0:56:58Un self - the self-service store.
0:56:58 > 0:57:01Un balltrap - a clay pigeon shoot.
0:57:01 > 0:57:04Standing - luxurious.
0:57:04 > 0:57:09Une residence de standing - a luxurious apartment block.
0:57:10 > 0:57:14Faire un forcing - putting yourself out.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19Fooding - a halfwit's idea of a witty name for a food guide.
0:57:21 > 0:57:23They may be ugly and mangled,
0:57:23 > 0:57:27but they're funny in the way that slapstick pratfalls are.
0:57:27 > 0:57:29And they're uncontrollable.
0:57:29 > 0:57:33What is so touching of this country and its institutions
0:57:33 > 0:57:36is the very idea that language can be controlled.
0:57:36 > 0:57:40That usage can be codified.
0:57:40 > 0:57:44This is another touchingly pointless example of Canutism.
0:57:44 > 0:57:49Another essay in unachievable utopianism.
0:57:49 > 0:57:53Another Cartesian dream of taming Caliban.
0:57:53 > 0:57:57Everyone knows that such attempts are doomed to failure,
0:57:57 > 0:58:01but if you have faith in France they have to be made.
0:58:01 > 0:58:05Trying to keep France French and failing to do so,
0:58:05 > 0:58:09is the most characteristically French of endeavours.
0:58:09 > 0:58:11GUN SHOT FIRES
0:58:33 > 0:58:35Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:35 > 0:58:38E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk