France's multicultural periphery once again pursues the globalist dream in the face of the rise of the far right

France's multicultural periphery once again seeks the dream of world glory as the rise of the far right continues to shape its political landscape. On Thursday night, while Kylian Mbappé scored his latest spectacular goal and Ousmane Dembélé sealed Morocco’s fate in Boston, thousands of kilometers away, police in Paris were tightening their body armor and helmets in the city center. The French team had won, but the order to control the streets remained unchanged, anticipating incidents regardless of the match outcome. In the 2022 World Cup, after France also defeated Morocco 2-0, a teenager was killed and nearly 300 people were arrested. However, on Thursday, despite some disturbances, the situation was less severe because the police restricted movement from the suburbs to the city center, closing the subway and limiting traffic. They also imposed a curfew for individuals under 16—measures akin to wartime tactics—to contain the tension within the banlieue, the peripheral neighborhoods of the capital where everything truly began. The Stade de France, located in Saint-Denis, is an architectural gem from the late 20th century, built for the 1998 World Cup. The construction project aimed not only to host the tournament but also to revitalize a region marked by significant inequalities stemming from migrations from former colonies. Its name itself carried a patriotic touch: Stade de France. The ten kilometers separating the stadium from the Arc de Triomphe multiply in terms of living standards and development indices. Football could symbolically bridge these distances, and it did so with a representative achievement: France won its first World Cup by defeating Brazil 3-0. Moreover, it achieved this victory with a multicultural team led by Zinedine Zidane, which entered history with the slogan Black-Blanc-Beur (black-white-Arab). The triumph, echoed by the thunderous singing of La Marseillaise before the final, seemed to dispel politically the specter of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had previously risen from being marginal to securing 15 percent in the presidential elections three years earlier. Winning the championship was believed to quell the storm, but the reality proved more complex. More than one million people gathered on the Champs-Élysées on July 12 of that year. Adjectives describing integration spread widely. The press hailed the triumph of diversity and peaceful coexistence. Comparisons even emerged with the crowd assembled after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Something similar occurred in Marseille during Zidane’s time, in the industrial north, in the tourist south. Even on the island of Guadeloupe, Guyana, and in Saint-Denis itself. That idealized image showed police singing and embracing young people with flags painted on their faces, encouraging the return of grandeur. President Jacques Chirac received the champions at the Élysée Palace, creating the perfect picture. The speech of the new globalist France was easy to swallow immediately, but the football glory turned into an illusion when it failed to mask the social failure or the political storm that followed: in 2002, the patriarch of the Le Pens surpassed the Socialist Party and made it to the second round, while the streets erupted. In 2005, the department of Seine-Saint-Denis returned to headlines—not because of the national team—but due to a wave of fury that ignited literally over the course of almost three weeks of autumn following the death of two teenagers chased by the police. Like a lit match soaked in gasoline, the unrest spread to other cities' suburbs. This experience was lived firsthand by a boy born just months after the 1998 World Cup. His name was Kylian Mbappé, and he grew up in Bondy, a satellite town of the highly populated department of Saint-Denis, known for producing elite footballers with immigrant roots (such as Saliba or Kolo Muani) and having one of the youngest median ages in the country. It is also a place where words such as stigma or poverty are not foreign, nor are the graffiti on walls that speak of ghettos and apartheid. During that week of flames, the young Mbappé witnessed the turmoil unfold around him, shaping the backdrop against which his future would play out.