Martine Gozlan

The loss of these concepts and the lack of decency in expression, a mark of moral and political bankruptcy, have opened the way to a tragic competition of extremes. It culminated in a coup de théâtre – the dissolution of the French Parliament – which turned the hexagon into the mirror towards which the democracies of the old continent turned, fascinated. How do we deal with the aftermath of yesterday’s world?

Let’s look at the reasons for the great upheaval. They are not only social but also cultural. What mutation is the crassness displayed by the political class – with a few exceptions – the name of? When the National Assembly became the venue for the France Insoumise happenings, when a crowd hysterised by the instructions of fanatical pasionaria Rima Hassan, now an MEP, swarmed TF1 to demand the banning of an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, what exactly was it all about? Which journalists’ union has reacted to this appalling attack on press freedom in an environment that is so quick to react? When Gabriel Attal, who is so full of himself, bursts onto a television set to grab Valérie Hayer’s microphone, who is ineffective, does this mean that everyone is obliged to bow down to the most powerful, the youngest, perhaps the most male? When the election posters of Raphaël Glucksmann – who was not sparing in his criticism of the Israeli government, calling in particular for the suspension of the association agreements between the European Union and the Hebrew state – are smeared with stars of David and insults, is the anti-Semitic fury that has taken hold of several European capitals not on full display? When the hunt is on for independent minds in the university world whose job is to train and protect them, what kind of future are we promising our children, young Frenchmen and Europeans by birth or adoption, lost heirs to the universal heritage of Montaigne, Montesquieu, Descartes, Diderot and Leibnitz? When French secularism, the sole guarantor of individual fulfilment and national cohesion, is denounced as an offence against the sacredness of God and – to cap it all – against freedom of opinion, isn’t the lie in motion?

Here is the amnesia recommended in an intellectual and media universe that truncates history. To each his own memorial, ethnic and racialist path. Identity? Unfortunately, words are a trap, as Jean-François Kahn reminds the left in his latest book, extracts from which we are publishing. But let’s go further: it’s not just about the left. Whole pages of vocabulary have been perverted. Identity, for example, that natural, essential and partly constitutive element of personality, paradoxically even in its rejection. How could a being not seek one of the keys to its mystery in the forest of the past? Yet some want to abolish identity, while others swear by its reign. The evil lies precisely in this manipulation, in the enslavement of doctored identities to the ideology of the extremes. Combined with the mud of invective, the ban on speech, the of hatred of the Jews that has always heralded the beginning of a catastrophe, this phenomenon characterises an extremely brutal social and political mode of functioning, based on instinctive reflex, the absence of an ego, the return to tribalism, the vertigo of force. It’s not totalitarianism, not yet. France is a democracy and the democratic fabric of Europe remains solid. However, totalitarian influences are penetrating this vast and coveted area. Whether we are talking about the Muslim Brotherhood, the architects of anti-Semitic speeches and demonstrations promoting Hamas under the guise of defending the Palestinians, or Russian destabilisation campaigns, we are in the eye of the storm. The atmosphere of civil war that has prevailed over recent months is the counterpart to the wars that surround us. The borders of propaganda have been stretched to the point where we are close neighbours to Ukraine and Gaza. Here again, let’s be careful with the words: we’re not talking about a globalised footprint, but a totalitarian one. We are facing up to rising perils.