• During the Reconquête summer school, Eric Zemmour used the term francocide to designate what he called the "misdeeds of diversity", in a process of politicizing news items that he compared to feminicides.

  • The magistrate Magali Lafourcade, the political scientist Françoise Vergès and the president of the Women's Foundation, Anne-Cécile Mailfert… These three personalities reject this word and denounce the misuse of the term feminicide for racist purposes.

  • “We are not in a manipulation of terminology to arouse fear, to create anxiety, underlines Anne-Cécile Mailfert.

    Femicide is a word posed on a phenomenon that exists, observed everywhere on the globe and which is the translation of the most extreme form of violence against women: their death.

    »

To continue to exist in the political field, Eric Zemmour wanted to make an impression by exposing the concept of "Francocide" during the summer school of Reconquest, on September 10 and 11, in the Var.

Inspired by "feminists", who "taught all of France the usefulness of such a process of politicization" with the term "feminicide", he wants to transform "into political fact" various facts that would target French people .

Although he explains that he contests femicide, he is inspired by it and sums it up this way: “When a man kills his wife, his mistress, we must no longer speak of a crime of passion, we must speak of femicide.

The assassin [..] kills out of hatred for women.

The murder of a woman by a man should no longer be a matter of the particular conditions of the crime, but of the ancestral relationship of domination by men over women, which goes as far as murder in the minds of feminists.

»

In comparison, the "misdeeds of diversity" would be a "francicide", that is to say, for Eric Zemmour "the beating, the rape, the murder, the attack with a knife of a Frenchman or a French by an immigrant”.

On Twitter, he also added thefts to the list of Francocides, taking up a statistic on thefts or violence in public transport in Ile-de-France, which are committed by 70% of foreigners, according to the Ministry of the Interior (without specifying that, outside Ile-de-France, 60% of thefts or violence in public transport are committed by French people).

FAKE OFF

We interviewed three experts who reject this word and denounce the misappropriation of the term feminicide: Magali Lafourcade, magistrate and secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), Françoise Vergès, political scientist and anti-racist feminist, and Anne -Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women's Foundation, committed to the fight against feminicide.

The definition of this term must first be clarified.

Femicide is not all murder of a woman by a man, as the polemicist suggests.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is the intentional homicide of one or more women because of their gender: they are killed because they are women.

The death of a woman during a burglary or in an accident will not necessarily be femicide.

While feminicides are generally committed by men, sometimes women are involved.

Four types of feminicides, according to the WHO

The WHO nomenclature, published in 2012, distinguishes four types of femicide in the world: intimate femicide, crimes committed in the name of honour, dowry-related femicide and non-intimate femicide.

Intimate feminicide is the murder of women committed by a partner or ex-partner: “It is the one we know the most in France, underlines Magali Lafourcade.

And this corresponds to approximately 35% of the murders of women in the world.

In France, in 2021, 122 women were killed by their partner or ex-partner, according to a census by the Ministry of the Interior (20 more than in 2020).

The dispute or the refusal of separation remain the main motive.

Family feminicide is committed in the name of honour.

“These crimes involve the murder of a girl or a woman by a member of her family because there would have been a sexual or behavioral transgression, in general, because she was raped”, continues the magistrate.

The WHO indicates that approximately 5,000 girls or women are killed each year for this reason, a figure "probably underestimated".

Over thirty years of research

Dowry-related femicide is a form of murder linked to cultural practices that involve young brides being murdered by members of their in-laws over dowry-related disputes, primarily in the Indian subcontinent.

Finally, non-intimate femicide is committed by a person who has no intimate or family connection with the victim.

These crimes can be committed randomly, but can also be systematic "and resemble mass crimes", adds Magali Lafourcade.

Well-known examples are those of the anti-feminist massacre at the Polytechnic School of Montreal in 1989 or, in Latin America, the hundreds of murders of women in the 1990s in Ciudad Juarez, on the border between the United States and Mexico.

They were judged by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (equivalent to the European Court of Human Rights) and documented by NGOs.

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“With this categorization, we understand what the murders of women cover with politics and what it says about the structure of patriarchy, supports the secretary general of the CNCDH.

This is where we see all the distance that we can take from a diagnostic point of view between the words of Eric Zemmour and feminicides.

For more than thirty years, the scientific field has been established, starting with the research of sociologist Jill Radford and criminologist Diana Russell, who made the term known in 1992 by publishing

Femicide, The Politics of Woman Killing

(Fémicide , the political aspect of the murder of women).

“A manipulation of terminology”

“We are not in a manipulation of terminology to arouse fear, to create anxiety, underlines Anne-Cécile Mailfert, of the Women's Foundation.

Femicide is a word posed on a phenomenon that exists, observed everywhere on the globe and which is the translation of the most extreme form of violence against women: their death.

It translates this reality of inequality between women and men.

»

Continuing her reasoning, the president of the Women's Foundation explains that there is "no long-term historical reality" of Francocide: "There is no scientific and sociological reality that shows a domination of foreigners over the French in France, which would cause them to be killed en masse.

There are crimes and murders against each other, but it is not a system of discrimination that leads to death.

»

"It makes no sense to talk about Francocide"

From a legal point of view, the qualification in francocide of these murders of French “would mean that they would have been targeted because of their nationality, which would be criminally very serious since it is a criterion of discrimination, details Magali Lafourcade.

This is the responsibility of terrorists who target French people.

But the problem with the crimes he mentions is that they are often committed by the French themselves.

»

She stresses that even if the terrorist phenomenon aims to terrorize a Nation and put pressure on the politicians who run it, it cannot be analyzed in terms of Francocides.

Because, if we look for example at the Islamist attacks in the world, their first victims, from a statistical point of view, are Muslims.

In 2021, the Fondapol foundation indicates that the vast majority of deaths caused by Islamist attacks (91.7%) were recorded in Muslim countries.

Regarding the assaults mentioned (theft, beating), the fact of having been assaulted when you are French, "in these cases, it makes no sense to speak of Francocide, because there is nothing to say that you are targeted because your French nationality and what France represents in the world,” she adds.

On the contrary, it is criminally possible to characterize the crime because of the gender: “This is an additional question to ask the Assize Court, she points out.

You have to characterize the intention and see if there is a dimension of hatred, of hostility linked to gender, such as when you work on racist or anti-Semitic crimes or of any other nature because of a particular character, real or supposed membership.

»

“There is no systemic attack at all against the French men and women”

Also in the political sense, the word "francocide", which had a brief existence in 2018 on the far-right site Riposte Laïque and had also been used against the anglicization of the French language, is rejected.

For Françoise Vergès, the term is “an abuse around a vocabulary”.

And, assimilating it to feminicides, "an insult to women who fought so that we hear the reality of this violence".

"There is no systemic violence at all against the French men and women because French people are not based on anything," she notes.

This term simply fuels racism.

What is implied is that the French, because they are white, would be threatened, but that the threat, totally vague, nevertheless has the face of an Arab or a black.

In the end, it feeds a paranoid feeling and racism.

»

To question a news item and see it as a political fact, “is to say that racist violence is not a news item, but the expression of systemic racism, she continues.

With the feminicides, it is to say the systemic assassination of the women in the world.

The political fact refers to a structure.

Immigrants who would organize to kill French people, it's a fantasy, nothing else.

»

Of the “totalitarian language”

To explain what the systemic nature is, she takes the example of the theft of a bag: “When you file a complaint for this theft, your testimony will be taken into account.

The problem around feminicide or racism is that it is drowned in impunity, that it is not taken seriously.

We are not at all in the same register.

Politically, it does not hold.

»

She emphasizes the risk of confusion: “Words have a meaning.

Genocide is distinguished from massacre for example, murder theft, accident premeditated blows.

“And remarks:” It is extremely important to specify what we are talking about, feminists and anti-racists have always known it.

While there, it is throwing a word to mobilize racism.

It is an example of a totalitarian, fascistic language where a word is mobilized to activate emotions, sow fear, justify hatred, ”she believes.

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