After Paris, Nice is by far one of the most well-known French cities abroad. For more than a century, Nice has symbolized the tourist allure of France, the Mediterranean culture, and the openness to the other shores of Mare Nostrum.
Nice is the emblem of a Mediterranean lifestyle and culture, today confronted with Islamist monstrosity.
Let us not forget that the ideologues orchestrating jihad from the Middle East are mired in a religious paradigm and immersed in symbolism.
It is by questioning the symbolism that the city of Nice conveys that one can begin to find some answers: the Mediterranean University Center.
Symbol within a symbol, this Center was created by Paul Valรฉry, who wanted to make it the beacon of Greco-Latin thought, the vector of civilizational unity in the Mediterranean basin.
Our civilization rests on three pillars, Valรฉry repeatedly said: Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. In other words, the respect (even love) for others from the Old Testament, the freedom to think and question born on Greek soil, and Roman law.
The masterminds did not make a mistake: by striking Nice, they struck the city that more than any other embodies Mediterranean culture, and particularly Greco-Latin culture, the root of our civilization.
It is because it is a land of diversity, a melting pot of what Europe can produce at its best, that Nice was targeted.
With its Greek name, Nice comes from the Greek Nikรจ, which means Victory: today dismayed, the city of Nice could well symbolize, in years to come, the definitive victory of Mediterranean culture over barbaric fanaticism.
