Anti-Semitism in France is a strange and elusive beast. It seems to shift and mutate, changing shape with each new generation. Today, you might find it lying just below the surface of José Bové’s otherwise legitimate struggle against cultural hegemony, beneath the worthy concern for France’s disenfranchised Arabs, or lurking behind the Parisian intellectual’s critique of American foreign policy. You might also discern it behind the widespread  and vociferous contempt for the current president.

Nicolas Sarkozy talks without difficulty about his father’s Hungarian origins, frequently referring to himself as the son of an immigrant. He never, on the other hand, invokes his mother’s Jewish roots, describing himself as Catholic “in culture, tradition and belief”(1), as if to do so in a society whose anti-Semitism is ever-present and unresolved were just too much for him. This avowed affiliation, however, is not universally respected. The politician, Georges Frêche (pictured right) – who was expelled from the socialist party in 2007 after a series of racist remarks (including a cracker about the number of blacks in the French squad) – chose to make a speech shortly after Sarkozy’s victory hailing the French nation for electing a Jew as president. During the campaign, Le Pen also frequently referred to Sarkozy’s soi-disant judaism in an attempt to stem the flow of National Front voters to his rival.

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