The French army’s forced exit from Niger has been wistfully termed the end of an era of great-power status. We should remember what this really meant: a zombie empire that crushed democracy in order to protect French elites’ power, both in Africa and at home.

France, it seems, is leaving Africa. At least, that was the news last month when France began pulling its 1,400 soldiers out of Niger. Similar events across Africa’s so-called junta belt have garnered extensive attention recently. While commentators in publications like Foreign Policy and Time have trotted out tired Cold War–era binaries, others have focused on the legitimate grievances that have led citizens in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Niger to seek new governments. Mbaye Bashir Lo, professor at Duke University, captured this spirit well when he declared, “Nothing good comes from France.”

However, lost in many of these discussions is a more international, and specifically intercontinental, struggle. French politicians, business leaders, and generals have not only supported kleptocratic and antidemocratic governments in Africa. They have also done so in France itself.

To prove this point, one need only look at another set of headlines. French news readers have become accustomed to the name Vincent Bolloré. The ultraconservative billionaire, head of the Bolloré Group, is best known as a major backer of the French far right. Bolloré’s conservative media empire, which includes CNews, often described as France’s answer to Fox, has amplified reactionary politics for years. Last year, it provided a major platform to the protofascist presidential candidacy of Éric Zemmour. What commentaries often ignore, however, is the fact that Bolloré’s ability to finance this far-right media ecosystem stems in no small part from his vast holdings across West and Central Africa.

The same day French soldiers began leaving Niger, a court in the French city of Nanterre ordered the Bolloré Group to pay €145,000 to 145 residents who live near its vast Cameroonian palm oil plantations. The judge condemned the group for recklessly polluting rivers across Cameroon for years. Like other members of France’s business elite, Bolloré has reaped billions in profits from neocolonial and environmentally destructive industries across Africa.