The terrorist attacks on France were a shock. The ensuing wave of mostly uninformed foreign opining about France was not. Even more than other countries, France has a distorted international image.
Perversely, that’s because foreigners tend to feel they know France. After all, it’s the world’s most visited country. It used to foist its “civilisation” on other people. It still takes up disproportionate global mindshare. It rejects many international shibboleths on how to run a country. Many foreigners speak a bit of French. So the temptation is to feel that they understand France, and disagree with it. Hence the phenomenon that the French call le French bashing (something at which they themselves excel). I live in Paris and collect misunderstandings about France. Here are a few:
“France is sliding back into anti-Semitism.”Many French Jews are rightly scared. This month’s murder of four people in the kosher supermarket was only the latest anti-Semitic attack here. But it’s the anti-Semitism of a small jihadi cluster, a tiny minority within French Muslims. Meanwhile mainstream anti-Semitism looks weaker than ever: 89 per cent of French people polled by Pew Research last year expressed positive attitudes towards Jews. France today is neither Vichy nor Eurabia.