Six years after the Algerian civil war started, the French public is at last taking an interest in the conflict. But the dispute in Algeria about who is responsible for the bloodshed is mirrored in Paris.
"Last night it was the eradicators, tonight it's the conciliators," an Algerian-born Frenchman joked as he shivered at Thursday night's outdoor `demonstration of solidarity with the Algerian people'.
If the turn-out was anything to judge by the `eradicators' - who oppose Muslim fundamentalists and are more lenient towards Algeria's military regime - are winning the battle for French public support.
More than 2,000 people crowded into the MaubertMutualite auditorium in the Latin Quarter on Wednesday night to, in the words of film-maker Romain Goupil, "forcefully denounce Islamic fundamentalism." The group's sensibility, Mr Goupil said, was "close to that of Salman Rushdie or (the Bangladeshi writer) Taslima Nasreen."
French distrust of Muslims is rooted in the Middle Ages, the crusades and Roland's battle with the Saracens at Roncevaux.
The misleading claim of the Algerian `eradicators' that they defend secularism and `democracy' against an Islamist onslaught appeals to French politicians and intellectuals across the political spectrum; participants in Wednesday's rally included the former right-wing ministers Alain Madelin and Francois Bayrou, as well as former Socialist ministers Jack Lang and Robert Badinter.
Ms Khalida Messaoudi, a redheaded feminist member of the Algerian parliament, has become an icon for anti-fundamentalist French intellectuals. She was in Paris on Wednesday night, receiving the praise of the philosopher Andre Glucksmann and interpreting the testimony of two veiled Algerian women who had been kidnapped, raped and held in slavery by the extremist Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Writer Bernard-Henri Levy - known for his flowing locks and shirts open to the navel - is another fan of Ms Messaoudi. When he travelled to Algeria as the guest of the Algerian government this month, Mr Levy said, he was "doing my job as an intellectual."
Mr Levy criticises the Algerian security forces for failing to protect their citizens, but remains silent on their use of napalm bombs, summary executions and torture.
He and other `eradicators' would rather forget that it was corruption and repression by this same regime that created radical fundamentalism in Algeria. The trend among French intellectuals - and among European politicians - is to consider the Algerian generals as the lesser of evils.
The `eradicators' claim Islamists are responsible for all of the massacres - despite growing circumstantial evidence to the contrary - and reject proposals for an international investigation into the killings. "We've had enough of people who say you don't negotiate with terrorism in Paris, but in Algiers you have to compromise with baby-killers," Mr Levy said.
Djallal Malti of the French journalists' group Reporters Without Borders and one of the organisers of the smaller rally of `conciliators' on the Pont Neuf on Thursday night, called Mr Levy's and others' speeches `scandalous.'
"The whole purpose of their rally was to exonerate the army," Mr Malti said. "They kept repeating that they were against any form of negotiations. French intellectuals bear a grave responsibility for misleading the public."
Perhaps the freezing temperature accounted for the low turnout of about 300 people - or perhaps the `conciliators' nuanced approach to the war in Algeria is less easily understood.
One of the saddest figures at the `conciliators' demonstration was Mr Hafid Mekbel, whose father Said - Algeria's most brilliant journalist - was assassinated in 1994.
Said Mekbel's killing was attributed to the Islamists, but his son disputes this. "My father was more afraid of military security than the fundamentalists," he said.