For its entry into the competition, the French team will, after those of England and Belgium, indulge in this symbolic gesture against racism. An initiative that grinds teeth on the side of the right and the extreme right.
A small gesture for a strong symbolism. Tonight, for its entry into the Euro, the France team decided to mark the occasion. A few minutes before the kickoff of the shock against Germany, in Munich, the Blues will kneel down to mark their opposition to racism and discrimination. “Yes, it is planned”, the captain, Hugo Lloris, confirmed at a press conference on Monday.
In a few years, the gesture has become a true symbol of the fight against racism. In 2016, two African-American football players from the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, kneel down during the national anthem played before every NFL game to protest police violence against minorities. The gesture obviously does not come out of nowhere. It reproduces Martin Luther King kneeling in Selma, Alabama in 1965, during a demonstration for the suffrage of African Americans a few minutes before he was arrested by the police. “We chose to kneel down because it is a respectful gesture. I remember thinking that our posture was like a flag flying at half mast to mark a tragedy ”, explained Eric Reid in 2017 au New York Times. This position will cost Kaepernick his career, since no franchise will agree to recruit him after the end of his contract in 2016.
“Some [joueurs noirs] continue to be insulted ”
In 2020, the gesture takes on a new dimension and crosses the Atlantic when the “Black Lives Matter” movement seizes it after the death of George Floyd, killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Across the world, in every demonstration against police violence or racism, entire crowds kneel on the ground. The world of sport is following suit: every NBA or Premier League match (England’s football championship) begins with a «take-a-knee» of the vast majority of players. In March, the Ivorian Crystal Palace striker Wilfried Zaha, however, decided not to kneel to denounce what had, according to him, become “A simple part of the pre-match protocol”, explaining that, “Whether one kneels or remains standing does not change anything, some [joueurs noirs] continue to be insulted ”.
This Tuesday evening, the Blues will not be the first to kneel down in this Euro. Since the start of the competition, the English and Belgians have already observed this tribute at the start of the match. In Saint Petersburg, the Red Devils had also been whistled by the Russian public while the eleven Slav remained standing. Sunday at Wembley the take-a-knee of the Three Lions had meanwhile been covered with both applause and whistles.
#BoycottEquipedeFrance
In the French political class, the information caused a predictable reaction to the right and the far right. “Very sincerely, I regret it, Black Lives Matter is a drama, but it is a drama that happened in the United States, it is a drama that happened with the American police. The French police have never had these abuses ”, explained this Tuesday morning the candidate of the National Rally in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, Thierry Mariani on Europe 1. In an ever more right-wing bidding, the former president of the Movement for France (MPF) Philippe de Villiers did not hesitate to go so far as to call for a boycott: “Carriers of the Gallic rooster, they engage the entire country and thus designate the French people as racist. This genuflection is a shame. I invite you to cut the post ”, he tweeted.
Obviously, the CNews channel and its Time for the pros did not miss the event: “They buy a conscience for cheap, they do like everyone else but they do not fight anything at all in reality”, has stepped up to the plate Charlotte d’Ornellas, journalist for Current values. At midday, the hashtag #BoycottEquipedeFrance was at the top of Twitter’s France trends (much helped by those who denounce the said hashtag launched by the far right).
If the affair is making so much noise today, it is actually not the first time that the France team will make this gesture. The Blues had already knelt before the preparation match against Wales on June 2, but the gesture was then passed over in silence because of the absence of supporters in the stadium and the damn publicity cut imposed between the hymns and the kick-off.
.
