Race in the French Foreign Legion

My journey to race realism is a long and winding one. I was born in the coastal town of Bangor, North Wales, and grew up near Snowdonia National Park. It’s a region defined by its natural beauty: forests, lakes, lush green fields, and of course: the spectacular view of Mount Snowdon’s perennially snow covered peak. It is also a very white region. I can’t remember ever seeing a “person of color” when I lived there.

Our family was eventually forced to move south, to England, in order to find work. It was there that I first encountered other races, mostly South Asians. In school, whites and Asians barely interacted at all. The Asians weren’t mean, and us whites did not hate them — the two groups were simply indifferent to each other. At the time, there was no forced socializing or “awareness raising.” In my teens, I lacked guidance and role models, and fell in with the wrong crowd. This led me to commit a crime that landed me in prison for six months at the age of 16. It was there that I learned about “black culture.” It was amazing to see just how many blacks there were in prison, given their tiny share of the national population.

The first thing I noticed about blacks was how tribal they are. They seemed to instinctively recognize each other as members of an extended family, and would always take the side of a fellow black over a non-black. Unfortunately, I caught the attention of a 28-year old Nigerian, who had lied about his age to get into the much laxer young offenders institute. Our disparity in age and strength gave me little chance of beating him in any physical confrontation, so I got robbed and beat up a few times. This seemed to be par for the course for the British prison system’s white minority.

Once I was released from prison, I amended my thuggish ways and became determined to make something of myself. So, I set off for France with the aim of enlisting in the French Foreign Legion (FFL), as I thought the military would make a man out of me. Little did I know that this part of my life would force me to confront the reality of race once again.

The FFL has members from all over the world, and although the French government would have you believe the ranks are unified in a colorblind adopted “French-ness,” this is not the case. Without a doubt, the FFL is the most racially tense environment I have ever been in. During working hours, everyone must speak French. The penalty for getting caught speaking anything else is a beating, followed by hours of scrubbing, and then having to write a report about your behavior in flawless French. But once the officers who doled out these punishments were out of sight, everyone would fracture off into what were known colloquially as ‘“mafias” — cliques centered around a shared race or nationality — and speak in their mother tongue.

Racial and national heritage were dividing lines in every aspect of life in the FFL. The base in Aubagne, near Marseille, was Arab and everyone knew that Americans, Englishmen, and most especially, Jews were treated horribly there. I entered the parachute regiment (2REP), which was roughly 70 percent Russian. The rest consisted mostly of Eastern Europeans with a spattering of Westerners and sundries. The Russian influence was so strong that sometimes (when the officers were not around) orders were given in Russian, and you would have to ask a “comrade” to translate for you. The mere mention of the 2REP was enough to send shivers down the spines of non-whites. Early on, I noticed black officers warning newcomers to stay away from the 2REP at all costs — they all took that advice. Race matters in the French Foreign Legion, and it matters outside of it.

The FFL is somewhere between a microcosm of, and a warning to, the West. Many people believe that if we simply force people to integrate and punish those who don’t get with the program, we will soon all join hands to sing and dance in harmony. All society needs to do is deny racial differences, and in a generation or two — once the old white people are dead — we will experience the ecstatic bliss of a “post-racial” utopia. This is a fantasy that goes against human nature in much the same way communism does.

Forcing people of different races together in an attempt to make them forget their identities and feel as though we are all just members of the human race is doomed to failure. This strategy most often does the opposite: it wakes people up to the stark reality of innate differences. The people behind this agenda will only ever create a never ending “cold war” between the races. And that’s true in and out of the FFL.