But another student of French Islamophobia, masked at the mouth, would enter a classroom with the French flag lording over it, proselytizing about the dangers of the pandemic while peddling fears of that older longstanding plague. … French President Emmanuel Macron walked into the Pierre Ronsard Elementary School neatly dressed, with a black face mask decorated with a tiny French tricolor covering his mouth. … Macron staged the event, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, to announce that the face mask he wore was to be mandated for every resident of France moving forward. Those who violated the policy would be fined 135 euros (roughly $150) and asked to return home to collect a mask before venturing out again.

SEED: An essay angle: how public-health directives get staged and weaponized as cultural assimilation rituals, drawing a parallel between pandemic masking and colonial-era civilizing missions.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 725