The mobilization of the notion of civil war in the public debate is a very old French passion. The taste for politics and that of controversy, which go hand in hand, contribute to fueling it. But the history of France, from the Revolution to the agitation of May 1968, passing through the rapid changes of regimes in the 19e century and the divisions during the Second World War or the Algerian War, also promotes a national imagination where the country is perceived as naturally multiple, undisciplined, divided and regularly subject to bouts of violence. The famous little phrase attributed to de Gaulle: ” How do you want to govern a country where there are 246 varieties of cheese? is a humorous expression.
Most of the time, however, references to the civil war in public debate in recent decades have been made metaphorically, mobilizing an image that we knew was only an image. Since 2015, things have been different. The theme of the civil war is mobilized in the literal mode, for several main reasons. The first relates to the attacks committed in the name of Al-Qaeda or ISIS, sometimes by individuals of French nationality, and the idea that their ultimate objective is to impose on French Muslims the conceptions of Islam. terrorist organizations as well as creating antagonism between them and the rest of the population, eventually blossoming into civil war. In 2016, political scientist specializing in Islam Gilles Kepel published the book The dividein the form of a “cry of alarm before the civil war” in an attempt to convey the extent of the dangers linked to Islamism in France, in particular to the candidates for the presidential election of the following year (1). An Algerian author like Boualem Sansal believes that the situation in France is comparable to that of pre-civil war Algeria in the 1990s and urges radical action against Islamism. France would not understand that it is not facing terrorism, but an Islamist guerrilla warfare destined to assume the proportions of a total civil war (2).
Conversely, a political figure like Jean-Luc Mélenchon mobilizes on the same subject the theme of the civil war in reference to the wars of religion in the history of France and tends to conclude that it is necessary at all costs to seek the appeasement and conciliation with the French Muslims, whom he regularly confuses with the Islamists. The theme of the civil war can thus be mobilized according to different methods, more or less analytical or political, in a cold way or carried away by fear, and lead to varied positions in the public debate. Lately, it is above all the officers’ forum published in Current values which brought the theme of the civil war back to the heart of the public discussions, followed by the remarks of the candidate Éric Zemmour. Terrorism, separatism and Islamist communitarianism are mixed in with considerations of delinquency and criminality, but these are not the only subjects in favor of which the notion of civil war has been deployed. The so-called “Yellow Vests” crisis, and in particular its violent episodes, also participated, referring this time not to the idea of a cultural and ideological explosion of the country, but to that, more classic in France, of the social injustice and the “class struggle”.
This importance of the theme of the civil war in the public debate, and above all its shift from a metaphorical use to a use perceived as realistic, are likely to be analyzed from several angles. We will choose to treat them from the point of view of the transition from civil war as a virtuality to civil war as an effective phenomenon. And we will notice first of all that it is rare for those who mobilize the notion of civil war to give a definition of it beforehand. The most generic is that of an armed collective conflict opposing human groups organized within a political unit, for the definition of the social order and/or the conquest of political power. Civil war is likely to be conceived and embodied in different ways depending on cultural areas and times, depending on the forms and representations of what a political unit is, but the distinction between civil war and foreign war seems to be a constant. in universal history. ” In most societies, a distinction has probably been made between wars which are more or less legitimate because they take place between groups which it is natural that they can become enemies, and those which are scandalous because they set adversaries against each other who should act towards each other as friends or brothers. The way in which this distinction is made depends on the conception of political communities that prevails in each era.. (3)” In modern times, it is within nation-states – at least theoretically – that civil wars most often take place, and the state is generally one actor among others. .
It is also possible to extract from history types of civil wars according to various criteria. That of the nature of the conflict makes it possible to distinguish wars motivated by partisan conflicts (between groups defined by their politico-ideological choices), identity conflicts (between groups defined by physical or cultural characteristics beyond their control) and socio-economic conflicts. -economic (between groups defined by the situation of their members in the internal socio-economic hierarchy). Reality can of course hybridize these categories. One can choose the criterion of the modalities of the armed confrontation, more or less conventional or asymmetrical. The number of contending factions can also vary, giving rise to more or less complex political and strategic situations. Civil wars can also give rise to foreign implications, or even be superimposed on foreign wars.
But, in any case, for a collective conflict, whatever its nature, to turn into an effective civil war, there must at least be an internal polarization around a conflict considered central by all the parties and that violence is manifested in an armed, organized and sustained manner for the purpose of preserving or remodeling the original political unity and its internal order. Thus, not every central conflict in a society necessarily results in a civil war, nor is every violent internal conflict necessarily a civil war: […] for example organized crime, a food riot, highway robbery, etc., all violent phenomena which can be met with violent repression. Is terrorism criminal, civil war or war? As a technique of violence, nothing qualifies it to appear in one class rather than another.. (4)”