"The conquest of Algeria was a huge series of crimes against humanity (awful... but few, few really know about it, In France and in Algeria too) but putting all this stuff on the political scene is pure foolishness." Hmmm, I am not sure. "Les colonnes sanglantes" in Senegal and even the conquest of Algeria were brutal and bloody. Might qualify as war crimes, but as it was not a policy, these were not genocides. A genocide is a notion invented in 1945 to named the impossible to name, the industrial scale and planning of the final solution. To equal the "colonised" to the "genocided" is stupid.
The problem, imo, is every one wants to be victim of a genocide, and some were.
More stupid from him was the "je vous ai compris"... Every French knowing a bit of his history just cringed at this... The biggest ever betrayal in recent history... Necessary, but still...