The Algerian Orwell in chains: How the West is abandoning Boualem Sansal

To understand Sansal’s fight, you have to understand what was erased. Before Algeria’s independence in 1962, the country was home to over 130,000 Jews – many of them there for centuries. They were granted French citizenship in 1870, stripped of it under Vichy, and swept into exile after independence. Today, not a single Jew lives openly in Algeria. Not one synagogue remains in use. The memory has been wiped out. Even the mention of coexistence has become taboo. And Sansal, who dared to write about that silence – who tried to reinsert Jews back into Algerian history, not as colonisers, but as natives, neighbours, citizens –was treated as a traitor.

Since independence, the Algerian regime has survived by nursing a single story: that it is the eternal victim of French colonialism. That story is not without basis. The colonisation of Algeria was brutal, and the war for independence left scars on both sides. But instead of building a new national identity on freedom, democracy, or pluralism, the regime built one on grievance. That grievance soon curdled into censorship, corruption, and, later, into a tacit alliance with Islamist ideologues who offered “moral clarity” – and a scapegoat.

Over the years, Algeria has positioned itself as a champion of the “Global South,” a defender of Palestine, an opponent of Zionism, Western imperialism, and American hypocrisy. It has aligned itself with the Islamic republic of Iran. It has hosted Hamas leaders. And yet, it still enjoys diplomatic courtesies from Western governments who prefer to see it as a strategic partner rather than what it is: a repressive, kleptocratic regime wrapped in postcolonial rhetoric and Islamist sympathies.

Sansal always refused that pact. He wrote novels that linked Nazism to jihadism. He published essays warning that antisemitism wasn’t an aberration but a system. His latest book was a letter to Jews and Arabs alike – a plea to remember their shared history before it was completely erased. It was too much. Not because it was false. But because it was true.

And today, the truth has enemies. Some wear uniforms, others wear academic robes. As the Algerian writer Kamel Daoud has warned, we are witnessing a dangerous convergence between jihadism and decolonial ideology. What once carried a Kalashnikov now speaks the language of grievance. Islamism has learned to mask itself in Western discourse – to wrap itself in postcolonial theory, intersectional language, and the sacred vocabulary of resistance. It denounces Israel, the West, the Enlightenment. And in return, it is granted legitimacy – in universities, on campuses, in the streets of Paris, London and New York. Not despite its antisemitism, but often because of it.

For the Algerian regime, truth is dangerous. It disrupts the myth. And the myth is essential – not just for holding onto power in Algiers, but for projecting it across the Mediterranean. Algeria doesn’t just repress dissent at home. It exports its narrative abroad – into French mosques, immigrant communities, and intellectual circles where anti-Zionism, anti-French ressentiment, and selective memory converge.

This is where Sansal’s arrest becomes a French story. The regime in Algiers plays a double game: it imprisons dissidents like Sansal while presenting itself as the voice of an aggrieved diaspora in France. And France, afraid of losing control over its own fragile social fabric, often plays along. Macron called Sansal’s detention “arbitrary” and expressed concern for his health. But there was no rupture in relations. No freezing of diplomatic ties. No real cost. That can be understood – the president is still hoping for a pardon. But what about so many others? The far left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon hasn’t said much. Worse – it voted against resolutions calling for his release. And some his members of parliament even called the Algerian regime “an inspiration.”

Why? Because Sansal is the worst possible figure for them. His defence of Jews makes him suspect in certain circles. His critique of Islamism makes him radioactive in others. And at a time when Israel and Palestine dominate the headlines, when pro-Hamas slogans echo in French streets, when the postcolonial imagination is being used to excuse terrorism, a man like Sansal – who defends Israel, denounces antisemitism, and calls out the lies of his own government – cannot be easily absorbed into polite society.

That’s the real scandal. Not just that Algeria threw him in prison. But that so few in France, or in the broader West, have stood up to say: this matters.

It matters because authoritarianism never stops at the border. It matters because the Islamist narratives tolerated by the Algerian state don’t just stay in Algeria. They travel — through satellite channels, through TikTok, through student groups, into the heart of Europe and beyond.

It matters because French Muslims – many of whom want nothing more than to live freely, peacefully, and fully – are being spoken for by regimes like Algeria’s, which use their identity as political capital while crushing anyone who actually speaks freely.

And it matters because if the West can’t defend someone like Boualem Sansal – a writer who embodies everything we claim to stand for – then we have no moral high ground left.

Boualem Sansal is sitting in a prison cell right now because he told the truth. The rest of us are free. But the question is: free to do what?

Because silence, too, is a choice. And history remembers that choice.

Simone Rodan-Benzaquen is the Paris-based Managing Director of AJC Europe