Thursday’s deadly attack in France places further strain on a beleaguered nation being tested by a variety of social and political tensions, including how its countrymen and women will react to the third high-profile attack in just over a year and a half.
It also underscores the deep social divides in a country wrestling with unemployment, alienated communities of minorities and a move to the political right pushed by anxieties over national identity on a European continent divided over how to receive refugees and immigrants.
The attack in Nice has left France torn by the tensions of two competing forces, says Dan Hamilton, executive director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University: “The ideal of a free and open secular state versus the reality of pockets of isolation, of parallel societies existing within the country.”
The attack in the southern seaside resort city claimed at least 84 lives when a man drove a large truck through a crowd of spectators celebrating Bastille Day — the French independence day and the country’s most important holiday. Video broadcast on television and social media websites showed people at first puzzled and then screaming in terror as the truck plowed through crowds before police shot and killed the driver.
It was the third major attack in the country in about 19 months. In January of 2015, an attack on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo left 12 people dead. Last November, a series of coordinated attacks in Paris and a northern suburb claimed at least 130 lives.
French police identified the attacker as a 31-year-old man, and news media reported that the man was born in Tunisia and was a resident of Nice. He was not known to hold radical Islamist ideas, but French President François Hollande and other government officials labeled the attack as an act of terrorism.
“It is the whole of France under threat by Islamist terrorism,” Hollande said Friday on nationally broadcast television. The French public, living under a state of emergency since last November, is now facing an extension of the tight security guiding their daily lives.
The identification of the truck driver also put renewed attention on the position of the country’s immigrant and Muslim populations, as well as the deep social divides in the country. France, a close U.S. ally, international symbol of liberal democracy and easily accessible from the Middle East and North Africa, is home to Europe’s second-highest number of Muslims in the European Union.
The French public, as in other European nations, has been moving to the political right, a move that has intensified since the November attacks. Immigration is a contentious issue, particularly after the people who carried out the Paris attacks posed as refugees.
Accurate estimates of the country’s Muslim population are difficult to obtain, but most estimates place the community at 7 percent to 10 percent of the country’s population. A French law dating to the 19 th century that underscores the country’s secular stance forbids census-takers to ask about religious beliefs. A Pew report places the country’s Muslim population at 4.7 million, or 7.5 percent of the overall population. A Brookings Institution report placed the number of Muslims in France to be at 5 million, and as much as half of the population is under 24 years of age.
The terror attacks have influenced French public opinion about Muslims and immigrants. Polls last year showed public attitudes toward the religion and migrants worsening. Additionally, a 2014 online poll by Ipsos Mori found the average person in France overstated the Muslim presence in the country, believing that Muslims made up 31 percent of the French population.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right political party the National Front, seized on these hardening views to successfully record election gains at the end of last year. Le Pen’s National Front has positioned itself as being skeptical of the European Union, as well as voicing concern that immigrants and the country’s Muslim population endangers French national identity.
Immigrants arriving in France today typically come from northern Africa and other parts of Europe. It is that population that concerns social observers of France. The country is facing rising unemployment, particularly among its youth and young adults. The economic challenges are especially striking in “les banlieues,” the suburbs, where many immigrants and Muslims settle.
The unemployment issue had led to French minorities being disproportionately represented in society; media reports routinely state that more than half of the country’s prison population is Muslim. Many Arab and Muslim communities feel excluded from French society, feeding a sense of alienation, says Frank Foley, a lecturer of international studies at King’s College in London.
Speaking on France 24 television on Friday, Foley said France should confront acts of terrorism, but “the question for France is not only how it reacts to terror acts today, but to moderate its actions. That is a long-term project.”
Nice, the center of Thursday’s attack, represents the tensions at play in France, says Hamilton of Johns Hopkins. Portrayed as an idyllic seaside resort city, it is a center of radical Islamist activity. “You have a huge pool of potential radicals within the country.”
The country now finds itself at the center of two competing forces, says Hamilton: to increase cooperation with European governments in intelligence sharing and improve EU-wide border controls versus a growing mood within the country to distance itself from European institutions.
“It’s this feeling of, ‘We’re in an extreme situation. The Brexit has enhanced this notion that the EU isn’t the solution and that we have to take care of ourselves’,” Hamilton says, referring to the British vote to exit the European Union.
Hollande is expected to seek a second five-year term as president in next year’s elections. The president is unpopular, however, and questions remain whether pressure from within his party will prevent a re-election bid.
On Friday, the backlash had begun. Expected challengers to Hollande criticized the government for not adequately protecting the public. On RTL radio, Alain Juppé, a former prime minister, openly challenged the security measures the government has taken. In addition to Juppé, Le Pen and former president Nicolas Sarkozy are expected to run for president next year.
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