French Colonial Oradour.. the memory of crimes committed in the name

On February 25, 2025, a single sentence uttered by Jean-Michel Avati on the radio ignited a political and media earthquake: France “committed hundreds of massacres [in Algeria].” This is the starting point of this book,

in which the world of politics unearths a repressed memory: the memory of crimes committed in the name of the Republic in its colonies. These colonial massacres, far from being accidents or “mistakes,” were deliberate policy.

On February 25, 2025, journalist Jean-Michel Avati declared on RTL radio that France had committed numerous massacres similar to the colonial massacre of Oradour in Algeria. Immediately, Republicans,

the far right, and the propaganda media fabricated a scandal, claiming it was a crime against the nation. As the firstborn of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, it is inconceivable that France could have committed such acts. Distortion and euphemism are the foundation of this defense of the republican imperialist narrative,

which obscures numerous precedents. After 1945 and during the Algerian War, numerous figures denounced the Gestapo and the French massacres, such as the Oradour massacre, which were linked to the excessive violence of the counter-revolutionary war.

Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison analyzes these atrocities and re-examines their origins: the total war waged by General Bugeaud from the 1840s onward, with its massacres of civilians, smoke inhalation, repeated genocides, and devastating raids.