At the end of July, I went on holiday, casting, I admit, a slightly envious glance at our British neighbours. The transfer of power between two bitter political adversaries – the Conservative Rishi Sunak and the current Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer – had been a model of democratic courtesy and political elegance (all things that our representatives seem incapable of secreting). But my envy did not last. Because the last few weeks have revealed, across the Channel, tensions and identity torments that, by their scale, seem even more serious and dangerous than ours. First, in the middle of the summer, there was a kind of promise of civil war. It followed the murder, on 29 July, of three little girls, savagely attacked with knives in a dance school in Southport (in the north-west of England). The affair had, of course, moved the country. Then, in the following days, violent anti-immigration demonstrations were provoked – a migrant centre targeted, a mosque threatened, etc. –, largely organised by far-right movements, including the English Defence League. Opposite, Islamist processions, sometimes armed, also undertook to demonstrate their strength. As in Bolton, on 4 August, where a crowd of men dressed in black chanted threats in unison. It was the end of July/beginning of August. The magic of the Olympic Games was in full swing. The start of the school year then brought its share of worries and “breaking news”. So that we did not take the measure of what had happened, these feverish days, in the United Kingdom. Nor did we understand the alert that this constituted.
And now for this recent news, which I had to reread several times to check that it was not a hoax: on Wednesday, September 4, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that he had set up a bus line in the north of the capital for Jews: “I have been touched by the testimonies of families frightened by the insults and threats they were subjected to when changing buses,” he explained. From now on, therefore, a dedicated line will connect Stamford Hill to Hackney and Golders Green to Barnet – neighborhoods where many Orthodox Jews live, easily recognizable by their dress. The BBC tells us that in reality, London Jews have been demanding this “secure” line for more than ten years. But since October 7, Islamist anti-Semitism has been so rampant in the streets of London that this request has become necessary – let us recall, in passing, that the very serious daily The Telegraph headlined on March 7 that the British capital had become a “no-go zone” for Jews, because of the virulent, threatening and identity-based turn that demonstrations in support of the Palestinians were taking.
From multiculturalism to separatism
In many ways, October 7th acted as a “stress test” for Western societies. The British example shows us to what extent the multiculturalist model pushed to its conclusion leads to separatism. The sacralization of difference, the emphasis on particular customs rather than the common core and the accommodation with the political injunctions of religions do not pacify societies. They antagonize them; they make them vulnerable to conflicts that are played out thousands of kilometers away.
The heralds of multiculturalism only have the word “living together” on their lips, but their living together has a strange appearance: that of a bus for Jews.
The French model, which we have allowed to crumble, is supposed to protect us from this: by relegating particular claims to the background, by demanding the discretion of cultures of origin, our philosophical heritage is often criticized (notably by the Anglo-Saxons) for its “lack of tolerance”. But on the contrary, it is by creating republican citizenship that we cement a society. This state of mind persists among many French people of all origins, of all religions. This is why we are not at the level of the torments of the United Kingdom. But let us not delude ourselves: our nation has already partly shifted to the multiculturalist model, and the geographical division that goes with it. If we continue like this, if we do not re-appropriate republican universalism, we will face irreversible dangers.
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