On April 21, nearly one thousand active service members of the French military joined dozens of retired French generals in signing a letter that stops just short of calling for a coup against the elected government in the name of “putting an end to chaos.” Published in one of France’s leading far-right magazines, Valeurs Actuelles, the letter is a call to arms by right-wing military forces — and has already won the backing of Rassemblement National leader Marine Le Pen.

The letter begins saying that the “hour is grave, and France is in peril” — threatened by “mortal dangers.” Specifically, this danger is “disintegration,” the loss of the imagined timeless integrity of the France of yesteryear. Who and what do the signatories blame for this disintegration? To the surprise of no one who’s been paying attention to the rise of right-wing nationalism and nativism in the Global North, the culprits identified by the soldiers are anti-racists and people of color — particularly those who practice Islam.

Here, the article sheds any veneer of even the “color-blind” variant of racism so typical in French public discourse, and parrots disgusting white nationalist talking points. It argues that Muslims, rather than being legitimate citizens or residents of France, are a “horde” of foreigners whose ideologies and practices threaten France’s natural identity. The signatories claim that the areas around several major French cities have been transformed by their nonwhite residents into zones of “lawlessness” that shake the foundations of the French Republic. They chide the politicians for their supposed inaction and timidity — decades of police and law enforcement abuse notwithstanding — and argue that the army cannot stand by and allow this to continue. Here, minorities’ very presence is a threat to France’s nationhood.