This is a trial before the 17th correctional chamber of the Paris judicial court that should make noise. La France insoumise is suing Raphaël Enthoven for “public insult”, claiming the sum of 10,000 euros from him. At issue: a message on the X network (ex-Twitter) in which the philosopher and writer described LFI as a “detestable, violent, conspiratorial and passionately anti-Semitic party”, and added: “And they are so stupid that it is not even necessary to bribe them so that they take up the narrative of Hamas or Putin to the letter. We can’t stand this club of deficient people who, after having tried to bring Islamists into the Assembly, are trying to bring Hamas into the European Parliament.”
For the far-left party launched by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, these remarks “are an opportunistic and gratuitous attack and constitute a considerable attack on the party’s image, aimed at discrediting it in public opinion”, as can be read in the summons to appear sent to Raphaël Enthoven on July 22. The intellectual will be defended by Richard Malka, the historic lawyer of Charlie Hebdo. In L’Express, he contextualizes but maintains these words which according to him are an “observation”, assuring that “La France insoumise is a piece of North Korea in France”.
L’Express: La France Insoumise is suing you for a tweet you published on May 1, in which you described the movement as “detestable, violent, conspiratorial and passionately anti-Semitic.” In your opinion, this sentence is not an insult, but an “observation.” Why?
Raphael Enthoven: Because I wouldn’t say it if it were false! And, in this case, everything is easily demonstrable. “Detestable and violent” is this movement of thugs whose deputies (national or European) try to intimidate their opponents, this movement of ill-mannered people who refuse to shake the hand of political opponents and who operate by exclusion, purge, threats and puffed-out chests. “Conspiracy theorist” is this sectarian movement led by a madman who thinks that Mohammed Merah’s crimes were controlled by the government, or that the Republic secretly has an “Islamophobic” agenda.
And “passionately anti-Semitic”?
“Passionately anti-Semitic” is the movement that, fifty-two years after the Munich Games, openly threatens Israeli athletes, multiplies the “dogwhistles” (like the red hands, the “celestial dragons” or even the inverted red triangle of Hamas), popularizes the fake news of Hamas that it refuses to call “terrorist”, presents the Jewish people as deicide and conservative, suspects the CRIF of governing France in secret, resurrects and popularizes old anti-Semitic clichés (like the image of the Jew poisoning wells), promotes Dieudonné or Soralian candidates, applauds a gathering that excludes Jews from an amphitheater, spits on an association of feminists attached to having the rape of Israeli women recognized, says that the Israeli army trains dogs to rape prisoners, calls Jews “Zionists” because they are Jews and not because they are Zionists, etc. etc. etc.
The particularity of such anti-Semitism is that, in the vast majority of its manifestations, with the exception of the delusions of Thomas Portes or Rima Hassan, it is not reprehensible. There are many ways to be anti-Semitic without being bothered by the presence of a piggy bank covered in Stars of David, when you index the opinions of BFMTV to those of Patrick Drahi, when your first reflex is to say “and Gaza?” after seeing the images of October 7, when you tell a French Jew who was attacked that he has “his place in France” (as if such a thing were not self-evident), you are not doing anything illegal, but you are anti-Semitic, sometimes passionately, and you are spreading an anti-Semitism of atmosphere that must be fought on the ground of opinion, more than in the courts.
LFI also accuses you of calling them “idiots” and a “club of deficient people”. Are these not insulting remarks?
I didn’t exactly call them idiots. I said they were “so stupid” that it was “not even necessary to bribe them to take up Putin’s or Hamas’s narrative.” It’s not the same thing. It all started with a perplexity: how can they defend, without being forced to, the arguments of the Russians or the Islamists? The RN is pro-Russian, but the RN is the party of the foreigner. The RN represents years of allegiance to the Putin regime and its banks. We can understand that they don’t like Ukraine. It’s a question of survival. Whereas the Insoumis are pure. They are sincere. They are disinterested when they say that NATO threatens Russia or that Ukraine must be demilitarized and Crimea handed over. It comes from the heart. In these cases, the only explanation left for their speech is profound stupidity. A stupidity without limits, abysmal, sublime and proud of itself. Incapable of second degree, incapable of any nuance, perfectly sectarian and dogmatic, impervious to any objection, incapable of exchanges, the Insoumis for years have offered the face of pure stupidity in action.
Are we responsible for our own stupidity? That’s debatable. My feeling is that in a sense, the Insoumis are innocent, because they are innocent. It’s not their fault if they are completely idiots, if they believe that with 182 deputies they have an absolute majority, or if they think they are advancing their cause by deliberately spreading fake news. There is no contempt in the observation of their inadequacy. Just understanding.
“Socialists and Insoumis are like Butch Coolidge and Marcellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction””
As for “club of the deficient”, since when has it been an insult? Do you have to despise deficient people to be offended that you are assimilated to them! Like stupidity, deficiency has explanatory value, and cannot be blamed on the person who suffers from it. It is not their fault if they take everything literally, if they do not understand that a pogrom is “terrorism” or if they believe they are doing something tolerant by defending the wearing of the abaya. By blaming deficiency for what others blame on hatred (or electoralism), in a way I exonerate them. In fact, the Insoumis are so unintelligent that they see an insult in the diagnosis that exonerates them from their responsibilities.
You have long advocated for the possibility of debating and exchanging on social networks, despite their limitations. Have you not yourself succumbed to the excesses of digital invectives?
I gave up a long time ago on the possibility of convincing these people. I spent years trying to build polite exchanges and substitute debate for combat. But when faced with the Insoumis (as with Islamists or fascists) it is absolutely a waste of time. The Insoumis do not go on social media to discuss or share the truth, but to impose their views and disqualify those who do not share them.
The Insoumis have mastered the art of spreading news in a pack that they know is false, but whose content pleases them. For example: as I speak to you, they have all let their post (dated October 18) run on the “500 dead” due to the (imaginary) bombing of the al-Ahli Arabi hospital by the Israeli army. They know it is false. They know it is in fact a rocket fired by Islamic Jihad, but they do not care. They are not there to tell the truth, or acknowledge the truth. They are there to spread the propaganda of a terrorist group. What is the point of trying to re-establish the truth in the face of a cohort of people delighted to spread what they know is fake news? All that remains is sarcasm, war and uncompromising diagnoses.
What do you think this procedure says about Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party?
Such a procedure says about the Insoumis that they do not support freedom of expression in particular, and freedom in general. La France insoumise is a piece of North Korea in France. La France insoumise is a soviet disguised as a sect (or the other way around) where places are fixed and the freedom of each person is strictly regulated. No vote comes to disturb the hierarchy of apparatchiks or the execution of purges. However, when you operate in this way, you have no trouble attacking the freedom of others. Since, by dint of being stupid, they are beaten on the ground of opinion, they are now trying to go through the legal route. Let’s bet that it will not work any better, and that we are always free, in this country, to say what we think.
In L’Express, the day after the formation of the New Popular Front, you denounced “an aberrant merger” between socialists and Insoumis. Do recent developments confirm this opinion?
With Raphaël Glucksmann’s score in the European elections, the socialists had an opportunity, just one, to free themselves from the yoke of the Insoumis, but they did not seize it. Not because Macron dissolved the Assembly and it was necessary to unite at full speed, but because the socialists are afraid of their own shadow and have no way of getting elected without an alliance with LFI. The socialists invoked Macron’s “despotism” to justify their rallying to the Insoumis, when they would have rallied anyway, and at any time. The result is a stormy cohabitation between two camps that hate each other but need their respective troops to avoid disappearing.
The socialists and the Insoumis are like Butch Coolidge and Marcellus Wallace in pulp Fiction : no one hates each other more and left to their own devices, they kill each other. But the situation requires them to be united to get out of the cellar where they are being held prisoner. Or like porcupines in winter that the cold forces to come closer together but that their quills immediately push away. My wish is that the NFP holds out as long as possible so that we can enjoy their arguments.
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