The Origins of the French Nation State

Jeffrey Toobin: The idea that there's some ethnic core of Frenchness, that constitutes the real nation as opposed to mere nationality. He says France is not one of a kind of homogeneous ethnicity but rather an outward-facing declaration of universalism. Toobin: This sort of e-right racialist defense of the modern French state or the post 1789 French state as a racial project goes against the very founding idea of the nation state.