On the 10th of March, the French Nationality, Identity, Citizenship (NCI) and the Bloc Identitaire organized in Paris a conference titled “France In Danger”. The delegates of the Right-Wing Conservative Alliance from Russia and Belarus – Anna Trigga and Sergey Lusch – on invitation of the event’s organizers attended the conference devoted to the problems of European identity, migration and nationalism.
Meetings and negotiations, which were carried out at the conference, revealed not only the existence of common challenges, but an acute necessity of bilateral exchange of experience as well.
The event consisted both of speeches and debates, in the course of which a critical situation with immigration was being discussed. In the reports Russia had been repeatedly mentioned as an example of country where the illegal immigration problem is daunting as well, although it hasn’t reached a critical point yet.
In private talks the Bloc Identitaire leaders pointed out that Russia’s example, where Russian citizenship and Russian nationality are not synonyms, should be a model for the whole Europe. Fighting for its identity, BI doesn’t act against anyone, but supports its nationality, roots, genuine French traditions and customs. Much attention was given to the idea that the most important thing in the organization’s activity is the result. Particularly, Dominique Lescure emphasized similarity of project activities carried out by Conservative Alliance, Rumol and Bloc Identitaire, - in which the goal is in concrete actions in a specific field, but not just external reflection of the problem.
Differences in political systems in Russia and France had also been discussed. In Europe it’s not necessary to go into power to have an effect on the society. The Bloc Identitaire is more focused on work with population, since it produces more tangible result than the mere representation in municipalities.
One of the vivid topics was a striking difference in average age of legal nationalists in Russia and France. In Europe just a small part of the youth is ready for dialogue and public activity. Sergey Lusch pointed out that this problem is acute for Russia as well, and the Conservative Alliance’s founders admitted that in case the youth isn’t involved in the politics now, in few years it might be too late.
The Bloc Identitaire actively supports its traditions. For the purpose to show the Russian guests a genuine France, the leaders invited the Alliance’s representatives to visit their camp in Bretagne, offering them an opportunity to learn France from inside. For its part, the Conservative Alliance proposed an exchange of delegations and organization of two analogous events in different countries in order to strengthen cooperation, acquaint activists with each other and discuss the further cooperation.
One of the dominant themes for discussion was the idea to create a common information space allowing the residents of different countries to get reliable information. Unfortunately, we know little about each other, because we receive the data in the light of the mass media, which frequently distorts the information and presents it in an absolutely opposite light. It turned out that this problem is very similar to the Russian one – French people don’t get a true picture. In the result, there was reached an agreement on permanent information exchanges through the organizations’ resources.
In the course of two days all the most acute themes had been discussed: Putin, elections, Le Pen, immigrants, Islam and many other things. At the beginning, we were under the impression that we knew little about each other. The main outcome of the meeting was the fact that we had become much closer to each other. Since the authorities don’t seek harmonization between our countries, it will be us, the conservatives, who will go in for it.
We would like to express our thanks to the Bloc Identitaire for warm reception and we hope that this trip will become the start of a long and fruitful cooperation between the European conservatives.
Anna Trigga