Tuesday, December 29, 2015

French president's determined attempt to legislate on the possible annulation of citizenship for terrorists

In a recent blog post [here], I expressed my shock at finding out that François Hollande imagines seriously that terrorists with dual nationality should be deprived of their French citizenship. This idea seems to go against the grain of the nation's sacred motto:

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.


But on second thoughts, the president's unexpected suggestion is nowhere near as bat-shit crazy as I first imagined. In a nutshell, it's surely Hollande's intricate plan to achieve three goals simultaneously:

1 — Make it clear to everybody (including terrorists) that France's Left will go to all imaginable ends to destroy our enemies, including methods that were recently unthinkable.

2 — Invent a trick to annihilate the Extreme Right of Marine Le Pen.

3 — Use that same trick to enable François Hollande to return to power.

When Hollande and his prime minister Manuel Vals first announced the déchéance theme (removal of citizenship), most people were caught unawares, because we weren't quite sure what it was all about. We now realize that this kind of action has already been used, on rare occasions, in French history... with no lasting negative effect upon the moral principles of the nation. We shall see exactly what the president has to say in the context of his televised New Year's speech. The chances are, I think, that he'll throw in a powerful formula, to justify his idea of déchéance :

« A situation exceptionnelle, mesures exceptionnelles »
(when faced with an exceptional situation, adopt an exceptional solution)

Why not? We all recall the terrible terrorists acts of last November, which shocked everybody immensely and meant that nothing would ever be quite the same again. We saw European citizens, some of whom were born in France, taking out weapons to kill young French citizens. And there are no limits to what we must do to combat this exceptional kind of evil.

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