To paraphrase philosopher Antonio Gramsci, we are witnessing not an event, but an epoch. The eventual rise to power of the National Rally would be one of its chapters.

This epoch began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and the forces at play today are the mature offspring of that “war on terror”. While these movements refuse to hide their supremacist nature and authoritarian intent behind a veneer of political decorum, they do not fundamentally differ at their core from the governments that preceded them; they merely call for draconian Islamophobic measures to be adopted faster, with the backing of entire societies.

The proposed hijab referendum in France should not be understood only as the move of an obsessively Islamophobic party, nostalgic for its colonial past. More broadly, it offers a perfect opportunity for an obsessively Islamophobic nation, nostalgic for its colonial past, to adopt legislation that could drive the last nail into the coffin of Muslims’ freedom of religion.