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Fez – It is in difficult times that we get to know the true faces of people, namely who are our true friends and who are our enemies. At a time when the Moroccan state is facing its worst natural disaster since 1960 and the bereaved Moroccan people are mourning their dead, the French mainstream media has decided to launch a campaign of fake news and slander against the Moroccan state.
The main, obvious goal of this smear campaign is to drive a wedge between the Moroccan state and its people, and ultimately to disrupt the social cohesion and peace of the country.
A paternalistic contempt
This disgusting attitude of contempt and paternalistic indifference stands in stark contrast to the behavior of the Spanish, American, and British media, among others, all of which have covered the tragic earthquake with great compassion, sympathy, and humanism.
While their counterparts in other countries are concerned with fairness, sensitivity, and journalistic ethics, ensuring that their readers and viewers around the world are aware of the catastrophe facing the Moroccan people, these French media seem to take malicious pleasure in discrediting the Moroccan state by caricaturing King Mohammed VI and suggesting that the Moroccan authorities have refused humanitarian aid from certain countries, including France, of course.
Morocco World News — the website I founded with my brother in 2011 — being our country’s leading English-language media outlet, we have been inundated with requests for interviews over the past few days. News websites and television channels from around the world reached out to our newsroom for broader context and local insight into the ongoing tragedy, and all of our journalists have given several interviews over the past week.
And because I’m currently in Morocco and experienced the earthquake myself, although its impact in Fez was very minimal, I gave 14 interviews between this past Saturday and Monday to media outlets such as the BBC, Al Jazeera English, London’s Channel Four, as well as several radio stations.
In none of these interviews did I sense any desire to politicize the situation or any malice toward Morocco. All the journalists who interviewed me simply wanted to know how Moroccans felt as the ground shook underneath them and how they are feeling now in the catastrophic aftermath.
More particularly, my interviewers wanted to know how Moroccans have been coping with the tragedy and how the Moroccan state has been handling the situation. None of the people I spoke to asked me about Morocco’s alleged rejection of humanitarian aid from certain countries.
French diplomacy’s disarray in Africa
With its media frenzy over Morocco’s alleged refusal to accept French humanitarian aid and the newspaper Libération’s despicable caricature of the Moroccan monarch while the people of Morocco are in mourning, the French press has once again shown its true face in all matters concerning Morocco.
Yet in its thinly veiled attempt to discredit the Moroccan state, the French press has unwittingly demonstrated to those who still had doubts that it is indeed a tool at the disposal of a French state in deep disarray on the global stage.
As anyone closely following the current and emerging trends in world affairs would know, France’s increasingly detached and self-important diplomacy in its former African colonies has hastened the country’s geopolitical decline and exacerbated Paris’s loss of prestige and growing embarrassment across Africa.
This anguish and Paris’s inexorable loss of its one-time imperial prestige are increasingly felt in Morocco, where France is increasingly hated and loathed by a significant fringe of the Moroccan elite and public opinion as a whole.
At a time when the whole world was expressing its sympathy and compassion with the devastated populations in the areas most affected by the tragic earthquake that hit central Morocco late last week, France’s mainstream media gave a clear indication of their desire to incite the Moroccan people to rebel against their government.
But their mistake was to forget that the monarchy and King Mohammed VI are sacred symbols of the unity and integrity of the ancient nation of Morocco.
There will certainly be a before and after September 8, 2023 in the steadily tense relations between Paris and Rabat. While the Moroccan state and people began a long process of dissociation from France a few years ago, the paternalism and malice toward the Moroccan people and its monarchy in these very difficult times will certainly speed up the simmering divorce between Paris and Rabat.
As the tension deepens, the disdainful and arrogant French political and intellectual class should not be shocked or surprised if the sense of suspicion and distrust Moroccans have long harbored towards France becomes a sentiment of open hostility and hatred in the coming months and years.
Judging from its neocolonial and self-entitled discourse on Morocco, it is obvious that the condescending and aloof French elite still doesn’t seem to fathom Morocco’s determination to assert itself on the African and global stages and totally free free itself from the neocolonial grip of France. The new, increasingly assertive Morocco demands that France treat it like the independent, centuries-old nation it truly is, not a satellite state or a department of metropolitan France.
The need for decolonizing the Moroccan mind
As our country slowly, painfully emerges from this catastrophic earthquake, we Moroccans need to use the unity and sense of urgency and purpose we have displayed over the past week to come to terms with another tragedy: the continued grip of colonial, Eurocentric narrative or worldview on our national psyche.
Even today, too many Moroccans are enamored with the French language and culture, believing that enrolling their children in French mission schools will guarantee them more prestigious social standings. This mistaken belief must end, and we should re-embrace our traditional values and our national self-confidence.
But don’t get me wrong: I’m not calling for animosity or hostility between ordinary Moroccans and their French counterparts. I’m aware that many Moroccans have settled in France, with some even having become French citizens who love both their nations with the same passion and devotion. Just as I know that there are French people who have genuinely fallen in love, have settled down in the kingdom or visit it regularly due to their love for its rich history and cultural diversity.
Take Sarah Frick, a French tourist who was in Marrakech during the tragic earthquake and who, when asked about her experience in the grief-stricken city, spoke admiringly of Moroccans’ compassion and kindness towards her during this difficult time.
Indeed, when her French interviewer appeared to attempt to get her to speak negatively about Morocco, Frick refused and insisted instead that she plans on returning to the kingdom for another vacation.
So, far be it from me to call for hostility or enmity between our two nations, many bridges have been built on both sides of the divide over the last few decades, centuries even.
Instead, mine is a call for cultural revolution and a fundamental mindset shift among Moroccans who still admire French culture. My aim is to deconstruct the myths with which France’s intellectual and political elite have won and sustained the admiration of Francophile Moroccans, many of whom seem oblivious to the numerous times when Paris undermined Morocco’s vital interests and tarnished the kingdom’s reputation.
As Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o eloquently argued in his book “Decolonising the Mind,” genuine decolonization demands a radical paradigm shift, including freedom from the mental shackles of colonialism and recovery of both political and cultural autonomy.
Samir Bennis is the co-founder of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.
