"Corsican youth who produce violence have reproduced"

• Every Friday, 20 Minutes invites a personality to share his news in his appointment "20 Minutes with".
• On the occasion of one year since the death of independence activist Yvan Colonna, 20 Minutes interviewed Thierry Dominici, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux and a specialist in Corsican nationalism.
• "We have the impression that in Corsica, there would only be young nationalists, while, in the end, this youth, like everywhere else, feels downgraded compared to the offer offered by the system in terms of success, jobs or creation of a future, etc.," says the researcher.

Since the death of Yvan Colonna following his attack by a fellow prisoner in Arles prison, Corsica has observed a certain resurgence of political violence initiated, in particular, by young people. In the past two months, a new clandestine group, the GCC, "Ghjuventu Clandestina Corsa" (Corsican Clandestine Youth), has formalized its creation and the FLNC has claimed responsibility for 17 attacks. To try to understand the link between this youth and nationalist struggle in Corsica, 20 Minutes interviewed Thierry Dominici, researcher at the University of Bordeaux and specialist in the Corsican question.

What portrait can be drawn of Corsican youth today?

It's a bit complicated because if you like, we tend to imagine youth as a generational population, but homogeneous, whereas in Corsica as elsewhere, they are not homogeneous populations.

In Corsica, something masks the socialization and politicization of young people in general, it is the nationalist mobilization. It is omnipresent in the framing of the media, in the framing of policies and also in the framing of research. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it: you have the impression that in Corsica, there are only young nationalists. However, in the end, these young people, like everywhere else, feel downgraded compared to the offer offered by the system in terms of success, jobs or the creation of a future.

This youth, which feels downgraded, turns to several forms of mobilization or politicization, the most visible of which is nationalism. But this is not the only point that defines it. If we listen carefully to the message carried by a large fringe of these young people, during the riots following the assassination of Yvan Colonna, they put forward this idea of downgrading.

Nationalism is therefore in Corsica the first contact of young people with politics?

Today, nationalism has settled on an island social and societal whole. In my work, I speak of massification, which means that nationalism has reached a popular dimension today. This means that wrapping oneself in a nationalist discourse will make it possible to produce a certain identity, even recognition. The nationalist thing, today, has become the main discourse of this society. Because as you said, nationalism is everywhere, including in sport and football.

A fifteen-year-old who has not experienced life outside the island is already immersed in a nationalist environment. Afterwards, he will stand out, but always in nationalism. It will produce, for example, a Corsican political environmentalism. It will introduce a Corsican republicanism. And so that's it. This is the new phenomenon that this youth is experiencing, from a generational point of view, today.

Precisely, this Corsican youth, finally bottled to the nationalist massification, would it not seek to want to live "its FNLC moment" to mark its political existence and make its entrance? I am thinking in particular of the CCG, which claimed its existence.

This is not the first time that new groups have been created. There have been a lot of groups that have come and gone from the political field. Whenever there has been a group, and especially the FLNC, it has always been claimed and carried by the youth. The FLNC was built, imagined by the nationalist youth - we said independentist at the time.

The GCC already claims this reality, that is to say the revolt carried by a youth as already supported by the FLNC. So afterwards, are they young people or not? Perhaps these are young people totally supported by the older ones, in other words young people who have been managing the armed struggle for more time. Or perhaps, quite simply, it is young people who are organizing. But for now, the only thing we can see is that we have people who have claimed about twenty very homemade attacks.

Politicized Corsican youth, the one who is radicalized if you like, has been producing violence for several years. It has even reproduced itself from a generational point of view because those who started are now less young. They are now found in politics with functions, positions and titles in terms of socio-professional status. So, we can imagine that these young people, because they could not know the myth of nationalism and the projection into the social bandit that the FLNC represents, wanted to organize themselves and hope for the honors.

But this hyptoesis of a youth who would like to "live his FLNC moment to access honors", would only be true if, and only if, this youth was not tied to a political party. Because most of these young people, for the most politicized, are close to Core in front or members of Corsica Libera. It is not Simeonism or even Jean-Christophe Angelini's PNC that have the most resonance with politicized young people.

Should we fear a return of mass political violence in Corsica?

If it reappears, it would be a failure of massification. This would be the failure of the political family that appeared in the years 75 (Aleria) and 76 (FLNC). If this happens in 2023, this political family will disappear So, there may be a new generation, but will it get the same popular massification?

I believe that as long as we do not depoliticize the Corsican question, we will not succeed. What is interesting in the current discussions is that we are indeed in a logic of transfer of competences, on a region that aspires to more autonomy, and that is administrative.

Our file on Corsica

But Gilles Simeoni no longer needs, since the last election, separatists who might want to recover more political space.

These separatists need more political space and they will do everything to recover it. They may be crooked, but they will not emerge from the bogeyman of a massive return of armed struggle, I do not think so.

• Society
• Corsican
• Flnc
• Yvan colonna