Two sides of the same coin. In the space of forty-eight hours, the Corsican independence movement asserted its new contours. On Friday, the FLNC gave an old-fashioned clandestine press conference, with weapons, balaclavas and the Corsican flag. On Sunday, activists from a new party “Nazione” announced its creation in Corte. Nazione “is a nationalist, independence movement, which supports the armed struggle, we are the only political movement which supports the armed struggle and which demands the independence of Corsica,” Jean-Philippe Antolini told the media. Jean-Philippe Antolini comes from the collective for the defense of so-called Corsican “political” prisoners, Patriotti, which dissolved into the new organization which also absorbs the activists of Corsica Libera, the party led by Jean-Guy Talamoni, which no longer had only one elected to the Corsican assembly since the last territorial elections in June 2021.
Rejection of a “French destiny” and fight against “settler colonization”
“Nazione” places its political action in the “national liberation struggle of the Corsican people” and affirms as its objective “the accession of our people to independence and the creation of a Corsican Republic”, specifying “to combat the phenomenon of colonization of settlements” and bringing “political solidarity to the Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC)”, we can read in the creation motion, written in Corsican. In August 2023, the FLNC called, in a press release, for the creation of a “patriotic resistance platform” supposed to “transcend political parties, associations, unions and all the patriots who find themselves there”.
“Nazione rejects the prospect of a “French destiny””, specifies the motion which is in fact opposed to the “strategy” of the Corsican community of negotiation with the State. The movement declares the “ecological emergency” and the need to fight against climate change and for the “preservation of agricultural production” in Corsica as well as for “more social justice” and “economic development respectful of its culture”.
The creation of “Nazione” comes two days after the revelation of a clandestine FLNC press conference which judged that the autonomy currently under discussion with Paris would be incapable of “preserving the Corsican people”. In this speech, the armed struggle movement, energized by the rapprochement of these channels “Union of Combatants” and that of “March 22”, also recalled “the 45 actions of last October”, a series of explosions that it had then claimed.